My name is Kristina Killian and I am about to graduate with my master’s degree in Educational Technology from San Diego State University. I am currently working as an Instructional Design Specialist at The UPS Store/Mail Boxes Etc. corporate office in sunny San Diego, CA.

Education has always been my passion. When I was a little girl growing up in Cary, North Carolina I spent many summer days setting up my stuffed animals and teaching them how to do math problems from old textbooks my teachers had given me. I loved pretending that I was helping someone learn and grow. In today’s world, knowledge really is the key to success and I wanted to share that knowledge with others.

Starting as early as high school, I took every opportunity I could find to work with kids and teach them something new. I volunteered to teach Sunday School at my church and I spent my time after school and during the summer working at the YMCA. After high school, I attended North Carolina State University where I received a degree in Middle School Math Education. I spent the next 3 years teaching 6th grade math in a Wake County public school. During my 3rd year of teaching, my husband found out that his PhD advisor was moving to San Diego, CA. We decided the best choice for his career was for us to also move to San Diego so he could continue working with this same advisor at UCSD.

After moving to San Diego for my husband’s PhD program, I decided that it was time to take my career in a new direction. I still wanted to stay in the arena of education, but I wanted to change my focus to the design and development of educational materials. And so began my search into different masters degree programs around the area. I came across the Educational Technology Masters Degree at San Diego State University and decided that this was just the kind of change I was looking for. I actually began the program with very little knowledge of the field, though I quickly found out that much of my job as a teacher had been instructional design. As I progressed through the program, I began to understand the theory behind the design methods and learned much more about how instructional design could be incorporated into many different fields, not just K-12 education.

In the fall of 2006, I found myself with an opportunity to complete an internship as an instructional designer at The UPS Store/Mail Boxes Etc. I excitedly took the job knowing that it would be a very different environment than the one in which I was used to working. Now, I would be able to use these new theories to support the education and instruction of adults within the workplace. This internship gave me a great opportunity to explore adult learning theory and different training methods, so I decided to continue there as an Instructional Design Specialist.

As I complete my degree, I find myself thinking about what I would like to do in the future. I have now had experience in the classroom, consulting on the design and development of K-12 educational materials, and creating training for a national corporation. So what does the future hold for me? All I know is that I’m looking forward to another new experience where I can apply all of this new knowledge to help a whole new group of people learn and grow.

Navigation: