Onward, employment

As many have already noticed from my Facebook status, I have quite recently found employment! I’ve been getting a lot of “Where, why, what?” type inquiries, so I thought I’d write a little post to describe the goings-ons.

I’ll be working for MPR Associates, Inc. as a Web Developer. To quote their–our?–website:

MPR is one of the nation’s leading education research and consulting firms. Our work is based on the belief that policy and practice should be informed by impartial, rigorous assessment of their effectiveness. For more than twenty years, MPR has conducted research and provided a variety of services for all levels of the U. S. education system, with the goal of strengthening the system and expanding educational opportunities.

Our clients include schools and local programs, districts, states, the federal government, universities, and private foundations. MPR’s work addresses such topics as K-12 school reform, including career and technical education; teachers, instruction, and assessment; accountability and standards; school finance; adult education and literacy; and postsecondary education, especially issues related to student financial aid, access and persistence, and degree attainment.

As a Web Developer, I won’t likely be involved with the actual data collection or the crafting and testing of hypotheses in relation to that data, but I will likely be working with the data in terms of helping to manage, maintain, and build tools and websites that can be used to manipulate and display various information. For instance, the University of California StatFinder, a nifty tool that I’d actually already used once or twice at my previous job, was created by MPR and can display and transform information on things like undergraduate admissions, enrollment, and graduation.

I’m very excited to get started; the work sounds as if it will be both challenging and fulfilling, the people on my team seem awesome, and the environment feels as if it will fit my personality perfectly. Plus, I’ll have an income (hurrah!). I feel very lucky, what with the economy in the state it is and jobs not exactly sprouting from trees at the moment, and on top of everything the projects I’ll be working on at MPR revolve around an area about which I am truly passionate–namely, education.

Oh, and did I mention the office is a 10 minutes walk away from my apartment? ;-)

So, here’s to employment! Thanks for all the well wishing, everyone.