Treat yourself like a business. That’s one piece of advice Dr. Wendell Waters gives his students. The faculty member and dissertation chair with California Intercontinental University knows how to invest his resources and, in his view, everyone’s first efforts should go into educating themselves. It’s the path to career and self-development Dr. Waters knows well because he has walked it.
After earning his Bachelor of Science in Radiologic Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Waters became a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technician and spent years working in front line healthcare in trauma situations.
“Leadership was and is a critical point in the frontline medical care mentality,” he said during a recent online interview. You are constantly assessing the difference between what needs to be done and what needs to be done right now. These are decisions that can be the difference between life and death for your patients.”
That interest in leadership, combined with his experience in frontline healthcare, inspired Dr. Waters to earn both a Master of Science in Healthcare Quality and Safety and a Master of Business Administration degree.
“Healthcare is a very, very competitive environment,” Dr. Waters said. “When I became interested in leadership, I joined several professional groups and groups focused on career and personal development. I met people who had two or three masters’ degrees and I knew, to make myself stand out, I would have to treat myself like a business and have the focus and drive to make myself a product from the very best ingredients.”
That focus and drive brought him to Liberty University where he completed his Doctorate in Business Administration for Healthcare Management.
There was one other source of inspiration that brought Dr. Waters to his DBA studies. .
“I got the news that my youngest brother had gotten into law school,” Dr. Waters remembered. “We grew up in a small, rural town with not a lot of opportunities, so for him to accomplish that made me feel that I could do more too I thought, if he can give my parents a lawyer, I can at least give them a doctor too!”
Now that John and Dorothy of Plantersville, Alabama have watched two of their sons achieve the highest of educational credentials, that doesn’t mean Dr. Waters has stopped learning. Learning about teaching, and reflecting upon his own experiences as a learner, have been extremely valuable.
“I deal with students from so many different countries and they often need referrals to writing services and other resources to help them with APA style and other issues,” Dr. Waters said. “One day, I was grading papers and I noticed that some students make the same mistake over and over again. On my laptop, I have every paper I have ever written, so I read through some of them and the professors’ comments and, you know, they just weren’t that good! So, I just sat quietly with that for a while and realized I was being too hard on my students.”
Getting his first teaching job last year was a challenge. Waters worked with The Babb Group to create his CV. He also used the job application service.
“They really shaved a lot of time off my job search,” Dr. Waters remembers. “When you’re working full-time and want to continue to achieve, you really need to save time wherever you can.”
It was time he saved and re-invested in the business of Dr. Wendell Waters.
Dorothy Miraglia
Latest posts by Dorothy Miraglia (see all)
- Faculty Training: Your Gateway to Becoming the Best Online Instructor You Can Be - August 29, 2022
- Training for Your Online Teaching Job: Tips to Help you Succeed and Survive - August 18, 2022
- Success Story: Dr. Bonnie Jones-Jackson - July 23, 2022