Dr. Anna Stumpf directs the online Master’s of Information and Computer Sciences program at Ball State University. She calls herself an “edutainer” and she doesn’t disappoint. During our conversation, Anna told me about how she earned the name “Golden Ticket Prof” and why she believes it’s imperative that teens (among others) develop a personal brand. Her story about the three types of helicopter parents will entertain you but there’s also a lot of truth there too! #guilty We talk about the importance of students having a job and how the gig economy will change the working world as we know it. Lots of good stuff here for parents of teens and young adults!
About Dr. Anna Stumpf
Anna currently directs the online Master’s in Information and Computer Sciences program at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. She has ten years of management experience with the world’s largest company and has collected two master’s degrees and a doctorate. Anna has taught high school as well as undergraduate and graduate courses. So she’s been in and around education for most of her life.
Throughout her career in teaching, Anna began to notice one
thing consistently, people are not fully leveraging their own value which
results in them turning to a degree or staying in a role that is not fulfilling
and that’s why Anna decided to officially become “The Golden Ticket
Professor”.
Anna is a mom and wife. She lives in central Indiana, just north of Indianapolis. She is a first-generation college student from Missouri. When she told her parents she wanted to be a teacher, her Dad said no. He said that he wasn’t working hard his whole life to send his child to college just so she could make less money than a garbage collector.
During college, she interviewed with every company that came to campus. Walmart came to visit and although she had no intention of going to work for them, Anna ended up working for them right out of college. She spent 10 years working for Walmart, two of them in corporate training, which was teaching. Anna met her husband at Walmart. They both decided on their last move that they both wanted to become teachers. They moved to Indiana and both went back to school to become teachers. Anna taught high school for eight years and then one day realized she was teaching computer applications to fifteen-year-olds and wondered what she was doing being the internet police.
Anna wanted to teach at the collegiate level, so she had to go back to school to get her MBA. Her first college teaching experience wasn’t great but then a former student reached out to Anna to tell her about the school she was attending and suggested it would be a good fit for Anna. So, she interviewed and loved the school then spent 6 years there teaching social media, marketing, and sports marketing at the undergraduate level. Most recently, she began teaching marketing at the MBA level and then created a class in personal branding.
Episode Highlights
- The Importance of Personal Branding
- Every Student Has a Golden Ticket
- Helping Teens Build Confidence
- The Three Types of Helicopter Parents
- Calculating the Cost of College
- Alternatives to College
- The Growing Gig Economy
- Academic Rigor Versus Part-Time Jobs
- Anna’s Advice to Her Teenage Self