David Wojslawowicz is certainly no exception. A 2008 graduate of our M.A. in  History program, and now a student in our Master of Public Administration program, Senior Police Officer Wojslawowicz embodies the qualities that so many of our graduate students share: a dedication to the greater good, a strong intellect, and a desire to make a positive impact on the world. As an officer with the City of Charleston’s DUI task force, he makes a definitive impact by keeping drunken drivers off our streets and literally saving the lives of the city’s residents and visitors.

His outstanding work caught the attention of The Charleston Post and Courier’s David MacDougall, who wrote this article about him in today’s paper:

DUI’s Worst Enemy

Officer among state’s most prolific in enforcing drunken driving laws

By David MacDougall

The Post and Courier

Monday, November 9, 2009

Charleston Sr. Police Officer Matthew Wojslawowicz administers a field sobriety test to a driver. He was testing for horizontal gaze nystagmus, an involuntary jerking of the eyes as a result of intoxication.

It’s a Friday night, and Charleston Senior Police Officer Matthew Wojslawowicz is staring intently into the eyes of a young man he’d just pulled over.

Wojslawowicz, a member of the city’s DUI Task Force, is among the most prolific officers in South Carolina in enforcing the state’s drunken driving laws.

He was staring into the young man’s eyes to see how smoothly they were able to follow a moving object, a ballpoint pen he was slowly and ever so deliberately moving far to the mans’s left, and then far to his right.

It’s the first part of the Standardized Field Sobriety Test. He was looking for horizontal gaze nystagmus, an involuntary jerking of the eyes as a result of intoxication. The other parts include the “nine-step walk and turn test” and the “one-legged stand.”

Pronouncing his last name correctly (voy-sla-VOH-vitch) is not part of the test. If it were, most of his fellow police officers would fail. They simply call him “Wojo.”

Wojslawowicz, 28, is a certified instructor in the Standardized Field Sobriety Test and frequently holds classes for other officers.

A native of Bayonne, N.J., Wojslawowicz decided in high school that he wanted to be either a police officer or a teacher. He enrolled at University of Richmond with plans to teach history in high school or college.

“One day I woke up and decided my skills would be better used in law enforcement,” he said. After graduating with a master’s degree in history, he applied to the Charleston Police Department. He wanted to move even farther away from the cold weather he grew up in, and he was fascinated by the region’s history, he said.

Wojslawowicz was hired by former Police Chief Reuben Greenberg in 2003 and worked as a regular patrol officer for the first three years.

In 2006, he moved to the Traffic Division and started handling more DUI cases. In June 2008, he wrote up a proposal for a DUI Task Force and presented it to police Chief Greg Mullen. This year, the S.C. Department of Public Safety honored Wojslawowicz as Officer of the Year for his DUI enforcement efforts in 2008.

He said he likes working DUI cases, despite the verbal abuse he often gets from drunks. “Some people get into this because they have a relative killed by a drunk driver or something,” he said. “Fortunately, that hasn’t happened to me. That’s not why I do it. I think I am really doing something that saves people’s lives.”

Not only the lives of drunk drivers, he said, “but the lives of countless others who could be killed by them.”

Mullen has beefed up traffic enforcement considerably and emphasized getting drunk drivers off the road. There were two officers on the task force when it started. Now there are six. The department just received a $169,697 highway safety grant that will be used to strengthen the task force, said police Lt. Chip Searson, supervisor of the traffic unit.

“Over the past several years, the Charleston Police Department, with the inception of the DUI unit, has made a renewed commitment to remove individuals who chose to drive impaired from our streets and highways,” Searson said. “Matt Wojslawowicz is a dedicated professional who has made a significant impact towards that unit’s success.”

Arrest records show that the effort has been successful. In 2006, there were 143 DUI arrests. In 2007, there were 489 and in 2008, there were 662. The department had more than 600 DUI arrests in 2009 as of last Friday.

Officers on the task force would not have such high DUI arrest numbers were it not for the participation of all of the city’s police officers. Task force members can, and will, spot drunken drivers on their own, but many of their cases begin with a call for help from a regular patrol officer.

Though task force members specialize in DUI cases, they also write regular traffic tickets.

On this past Friday night, Wojslawowicz parked his cruiser in a position where he could aim his radar at traffic crossing the Ashley River Memorial Bridge from the peninsula into West Ashley. The posted limit on the bridge is 35 mph. Few people were driving that slow. Wojslawowicz could get them all for speeding if he wanted to.

“I don’t write anybody a citation for anything that I would do myself,” he said. “We all go over the speed limit.”

Like most police officers, Wojslawowicz allows a certain amount of leeway between the posted speed limit and the speed that will get him coming at you with blue lights flashing.

A pickup truck came off the bridge at 54 mph. Wojslawowicz flipped on the blue lights, wheeled the cruiser around and pulled the driver over. Wojslawowicz sees every stop for speeding as an opportunity to look for a DUI. This driver was not visibly intoxicated. He was issued a citation for speeding.

Wojslawowicz doesn’t let people off with warning tickets. “How can I let one person go with a warning and give a ticket to another person? I go to sleep at night knowing I was fair to everybody,” he said.

His cruiser, a police-package 2008 Dodge Charger with a 5.7-liter, 368 horse power V-8 engine, serves as his office, complete with a laptop computer, a printer, a radar system, and an in-car video system. Personal accessories include a GPS navigator and a satellite radio receiver.

He described himself as a huge sports fan and said he listens to games on the satellite radio. That Friday night, he was listening to NCAA basketball games.

Though he is single with no children, Wojslawowicz said he doesn’t have a lot of time for fun because he’s working toward a master’s in public administration at the College of Charleston. The coursework keeps him busy, but he has season tickets to Cougars basketball games. He and his father attend them whenever they can. His parents moved to Charleston last year.

Though he loves the satellite radio, the most valuable gadget in his car is the video camera. It records video and sound for every traffic stop, every DUI arrest. In DUI cases, the video alone is often enough to elicit a guilty plea, he said. And the camera protects him from citizen complaints.

“If you are doing what you’re supposed to be doing on this job, the camera will be your best friend,” he said.

He has set a personal goal of writing at least 10 traffic tickets and taking at least one drunk driver off the street every night he works. “It’s a goal,” he said. “Not a quota.”

There are no quotas in the department, he said. Still, there was a misunderstanding recently when Searson sent out a motivational memo with suggested goals for traffic officers, Wojslawowicz said.

Meeting his self-imposed goal is rarely a problem, he said.

On that same Friday night, he was able to write four speeding tickets while watching the traffic coming off the bridge. Then he started cruising the streets of the city, looking for intoxicated drivers.

The crunch and squeal of a pickup truck’s tire hopping a curb as it turned onto Calhoun Street caught his attention. He followed the driver closely for a block and saw the truck swerving from side to side. He flipped on the blue lights and pulled the truck over.

Wojslawowicz approached the driver, a 21-year-old college student, and smelled alcohol on his breath. The driver said he’d been to a party where he’d had a few drinks.

Wojslawowicz asked the driver to step out of the truck and he began the field sobriety test. The driver failed the test, and he was arrested and handcuffed for a trip to police headquarters on Lockwood Drive.

There, in a jail cell where the city’s two Datamaster breath analysis machines are installed, Wojslawowicz gently instructed his prisoner on the procedure. The driver refused to take the breath test, choosing instead to lose his driving privileges for six months.

All told, it took about 90 minutes from the time Wojslawowicz pulled over the driver to the time a police transport officer took charge of the prisoner for the trip to the county jail. Had the man’s friends not been on the scene and able to drive away his truck, there would have been additional time spent waiting for a tow truck, Wojslawowicz said.

And he would spend an additional half-hour or so back in his cruiser, writing up his arrest report, before being able to go back on the street to hunt for another DUI offender.

Wojslawowicz doesn’t mind the time it takes. “When you take someone off the street for DUI,” he said. “You’re making a sizable impact.”

So, we send our congratulations and much-deserved appreciation to David Wojslawowicz for his outstanding service, and we wish him the best in his continued studies at The Graduate School of the College of Charleston.

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I returned to my hotel that evening, ready to write a Monday Motivation post providing links to blogs that talk about life after college. My hope was to provide enough links to show those facing graduation that they’re not alone. There are so many people, from those ready to graduate to those ready to retire, who have no idea what they want to do with their life. And then, like the woman I talked with in Florida, there are some who have an idea but they have yet to clearly identify the path that will lead them to their career aspiration.

I was Googling phrases like, “life after college” and, “after I graduate” when I found this gem of an article from the NPR archives. Then I found another referencing the same book. And then finally in his own words, the author of What Should I Do With My Life has a six-page feature in Fast Company. This morning, I read that Po Bronson has released a sequel, What Should I Do With My Life, Now?

“Your calling isn’t something you inherently ‘know,’ some kind of destiny. Far from it. Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling after great difficulty. They had made mistakes before getting it right.” -Po Bronson

Graduate school is full of people looking to fulfill their calling, whether they’re changing careers or enhancing the knowledge they already have in a certain field. But, it will not help you find your calling unless you can decide whether,  “your choice is something that will stimulate you for a year or something that you can be passionate about for 10 years?”

Bronson’s first book is a journal about the experiences of 900 people realizing their dreams and making them happen. I haven’t read the book yet, but the two articles mentioned above are enough to make me consider purchasing a copy. Hopefully, they will spark hope and inspiration with those getting ready to graduate and those who are still trying to figure out what it is they want to be when they grow up.

(Photo Credit: brunkfordbraun)

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The College of Charleston Library is part of a consortium of 40+ academic libraries across the state that make borrowing quick and easy.  The consortium is called PASCAL (PARTNERSHIP AMONG SC ACADEMIC LIBRARIES) and the service is called PASCAL Delivers.  (We librarians are clever folks)

If  you don’t find the book in the College catalog, you might see the bright blue PASCAL Delivers logo:

Click on the logo and you’ll  see the other libraries in South Carolina that own the book.   And if you click “Request this item,” you can quickly request the book and get it delivered to the Interlibrary Loan Office within three days.

It’s that simple – as many of your colleagues have already discovered.

Of course,  you may need books that are not owned by any South Carolina academic library.  In those cases,  fill out the standard Interlibrary Loan Request form  and our staff will borrow the book from libraries beyond SC borders.  But you’ll discover, PASCAL Delivers will make Interlibrary Loan even faster and easier than ever before.

Questions – call the friendly staff at Interlibrary Loan at 843-953-8010.

It’s hard for me to believe that I just turned in my second midterm as a graduate student. Part of me hopes that time continues to fly this fast and that I’ll have my degree in no time. The other part of me wants to slowly savor the challenge the next 11 courses will undoubtedly bring. But I suppose that’s what trade conferences are for; continually learning more about your industry and those you serve.

I love being challenged, but what I’ve found to be most challenging as a grad student is finding the energy and time to read for class. Granted this semester is a little insane on my schedule. Take this week for instance. I have to read a 100+ page book which is typically no issue for me. Since I stare at a blank wall at my desk at home, and because I can’t stay away from Twitter if I’m at my desk in the office, I decided I would try to find a good place to call my “study home.”  The college doesn’t have a formal student union, so the library is the typical hot spot on campus. I tried studying there last semester, but that was an utter failure for someone with such short attention spans like myself. (Although, a man sitting in the cubicle next to me one night had the brilliant idea of ear plugs.)

My job has allowed me to embrace a work shifting mentality, and I’ve found a great home in Panera Bread as a temporary office when I leave Charleston. With that in mind, I figured I could attempt studying at a local bookstore. It worked for my boyfriend, so it could work for me, right? How about no. I was more focused on the music coming from the ceiling above my chair than I was on the words in front of me. Plus, my left foot kept falling asleep.

In hopes of getting through at least a chapter of the book Monday night, I went home thinking I would sit at my desk and read until I found a better place. That’s when procrastination kicked into fifth gear and I felt the need to clean up my usually spotless room.  Finally, after the room was vacuumed, the receipts put away and all the old magazines recycled, I was able to finish the last few pages of Chapter One.

I haven’t opened the book since Monday night, which means I need to get moving and finish the book before the Buffalo Bills start playing on Sunday.  Even though I know how it will end, I still want to watch the game and munch on a chicken finger hoagie. So, hope for the best for the Bills and wish me luck in finding a good study place!

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Considering it’s the middle of October, there is a chance that your school already hosted a fair. That doesn’t mean it’s too late to continue your research on the graduate schools you’ve already met with though. Feel free to contact the recruiter or program director with any questions you thought of after leaving the fair. Trust me: we love hearing from you.

If you have not yet gone to a fair and plan to do so this Fall, take a look at the questions below. Get a feel for what questions are important to you and approach recruiters of the schools that interest you. Don’t be bashful, either. Approach us and ask as many questions you want. We’ll tell you just about anything including what we ate for breakfast. And sometimes, we even give you things you wouldn’t have expected. Like a free GRE  book or thumb drive.

Some grad students don’t have the option of choosing a grad school. If they have settled down, they may apply to a program that is in the vicinity of their home or office. If that’s not the case for you, then you want to make sure you’re choosing the program that best suits your personality and career aspirations. Below are questions you will want to ask yourself, students enrolled in the program, and the faculty with whom you’ll be working.

• How much will the program cost? What financial aid is available?
• Does the department’s specialization match your goals?
• Do the faculty exhibit special strengths and research qualities through their graduate advisees, published works and funded research?
• Are the libraries, laboratories, computers and other research facilities adequate for your educational needs?
• Does the department offer a sufficiently large and varied  curriculum to allow you a broad offering of courses and options?
• How accomplished are the professors in your area? What are their interests and how available will they be?
• What are the degree requirements? Number of hours required? Will you have to write a thesis/dissertation?
• Are support services adequate to make campus life conducive to the needs of minority students?
• How long will it take you to complete the program?
• How are advisers assigned/selected? Will you have a choice of who your advisor will be?
• Are study space/office carrels available for graduate students?
• Are the current students happy? Do they appear to be good colleagues?
• Are the graduates of the school or program sought by recruiters?
• What are your opportunities for employment after graduation?
• Are the institution and the program accredited?
• How many applicants are accepted?
• Are the faculty and student body diverse? Diversity in a program can make it stronger, since diversity leads to a broader
  world view.
• What size is the program? Will you feel comfortable in a small or large setting?
• What is the community like, and does the institution work closely with the community? How closely the two work together could assist in your research and with employment opportunities after graduation.
• What is the cost of living?

Fun With English is a blog chronicling all kinds of fun ways to be creative with English. It also pokes fun at us English-speakers with some good-natured humor.

PhD Comics (PhD is short for Piled Higher and Deeper) are made for those of us in the academy. They really nail what it’s like to live the grad school life.

Free Rice is a fun site that quizzes you on vocabulary and other trivia. For every correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program.

Free Kibble has a similar concept to Free Rice, except it’s geared towards our furry friends. For every correct answer, pet food is donated to animal shelters around the country. There are versions for dogs and cats, so you answer trivia and donate food for either.

Mental Floss is a website with a lot of fun trivia, games, and factoids about everyday topics. It won’t necessarily help you study, but it will make you feel smarter.

Typeracer lets you test your speed and accuracy through a series of fun typing exercises. It’ll make you feel more productive because those papers will get done faster in the future.

Thanks to everyone in the office who contributed. Enjoy your weekend, and let’s get busy doing nothing productively!

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For some of us, the decision is already made because certain graduate programs only allow one specific test. For the rest of us, we have some options. It makes sense to evaluate the different tests in order to determine which test(s) might be appropriate.

Education and The Humanities

If you are applying to a program in education or the humanities, you often get the option of choosing between two tests: The Miller Analogies Test (MAT), or The Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Both tests are drastically different, and as this article points out, you should consider each on the basis of what you consider to be your academic strengths and weaknesses.

Some education degree programs may require PRAXIS exam scores for entry as well, especially ones designed for already-certified teachers.  Ultimately, many state departments of education also require PRAXIS tests to obtain certification at the end of degree programs that are designed for beginning teachers.  To learn more about the PRAXIS tests, visit this website.

Business/Accountancy

Business and Accountancy programs most often require the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT). The GMAT is designed to test skills required by students entering into business or accountancy degree programs. To find out more about the GMAT, read this helpful article.

The Sciences, Public Administration, Historic Preservation, and Everyone Else

Here at The Graduate School of the College of Charleston, the standard requirement for most other programs continues to be the GRE. If you have questions about the test requirements and deadlines for specific programs, check the Application Requirements Grid.

Law School and Medical School

Everyone who is considering a law school program will have to become familiar with the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), and everyone who plans on entering medical school should prepare adequately for the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). For specific requirements on these tests, contact the admissions office of the law or medical school that you’re interested in.

To everyone taking an entrance exam this Fall, we wish you the best of luck. As always, if you have any questions please feel free to drop us an email or visit us on the web.

Test Registration and Information Sites:

GRE
MAT
GMAT
PRAXIS

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Career and education fairs. If you’re an undergraduate student, see if your school is hosting a Graduate and Professional School fair.  These are often held during the Fall semester and sponsored by the Career Center.

Browse the internet. Explore websites that are dedicated to graduate education such as gradschools.com and petersons.com.

• The Princeton Review. Sending out grad school applications is time-consuming and expensive. Skip the blitz method; don’t apply to every school with a program in your field. Instead, focus your attention and energy on a few carefully chosen schools.
• Quintcareers.com. You’ll find the information you need to evaluate each program in various graduate school guides and directories, as well as from the catalogs and Websites of the individual graduate programs that interest you.

Get opinions. Do not hesitate to make contact with a school at multiple levels: the graduate school office, the departmental office, key faculty members and student associations. Also, speak with friends of your family who are prominent alumni, and even current graduate students.

• The Mathematical Association of America. Unless your school has a graduate program it is difficult to find graduate students to talk to. We decided to ask four mathematics graduate students about how they chose their graduate schools and what advice they have for you.
• Mahalo Answers. Three grad students give insight into their decision process.
• Computational Complexity. Tips from Bruce Maggs’ 2001 interview in Higher Cohomology.
• Brazen Careerist. I especially like points six and seven.
• Linked In. Is an Ivy League education worth it?

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As I mentioned before, we plan to visit cities and universities up and down the East coast through mid-November. Below is our schedule blocked according to week:

Tuesday, September 15: Charleston Young Professional’s Luncheon (College of Charleston)

Thursday, September 24: Walterboro, SC’s Business & Community EXPO
Monday, September 28: Virginia Tech
Tuesday, September 29: James Madison University
Wednesday, September 30: University of Virginia
Thursday, October 1 – 2: Appalachian State University

Tuesday, October 6: Wofford
Wednesday, October 7: Furman University

Thursday, October 15: South Carolina State University
Thursday, October 15: Verizon Wireless Education Fair (Charleston, SC)

Tuesday, October 20: Florida State University
Wednesday, October 21: University of Florida

Tuesday, October 27: BOSCH (Charleston, SC)
Wednesday, October 28: Charleston Southern University
Wednesday, October 28: The Citadel
Thursday, October 29: College of Charleston

Thursday, November 12: Elon University

If you’re in the area and want to talk grad school, let me know and we’ll work out a time to meet. Adam will be holding down the office and @GradSchool while I’m on the road, so you can find me at @ndeweese. You can also email me and follow my adventures as a part-time grad student holding down a full-time job.

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Web Apps: They're not just for the iPhone...

We were browsing our awesome new website when we came across this news article about Web Apps for Students. In the interest of getting the word out to grad students, we decided to reprint the article’s list. If you get a chance, be sure to read the entire article for more information on learning how to use these and other Web Apps.

So, what are web apps and why do we think they’re especially important for grad students? Web apps are one of the neatest things to be invented since sliced bread, and if you’ve never used them, you’re missing out! They add features to websites, make doing repetitive tasks  (like bookmarking all of your research) easier, and have other helpful functions that you can’t get elsewhere. In other words, they can save you lots of time, which is your most valuable asset in graduate school. The fantastic staff at the Addlestone Library have come up with this handy list of their Top Ten Web Apps for Students:

Keeping in Touch with Family and Friends:

• Brightkite geographic social networking  – Brightkite is about connecting with the people and places around you. The application can help you spend more time with your friends, show you new places and introduce you to people in your neighborhood.
• Skype – With Skype’s free software, which works seamlessly with your internet connection, you can chat away and never worry about cost, time or distance.

Finding Information/Library Resources

• Amazon/Library Catalog search plugin - The College of Charleston Library/Amazon.com Catalog Mashup plugin allows a user who is on Amazon.com to compare the books they are browsing with the holding in the College Library’s catalog. In addition, the plugin will also check PASCAL holdings to see if one of our lending partners has a copy of the title. If no title matches are found in the College’s catalog or in PASCAL the plugin displays a link for the Interlibrary loan request.
• LibGuides Facebook app – download research guides directly from Facebook – LibGuides is the first library application available within Facebook. A user simply needs to select LibGuides from the list of applications in order to access LibGuides content. LibGuides will recognize the user’s school affiliation and present them with their “home” LibGuides system.

Personal Productivity, Working Collaboratively and Managing Time

• Google docs – A source to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. You can also upload existing files and share with others.
• StudyStack – Find data or use your own data to create printable electronic flash cards that you can use online or export to a cell phone or iPod

Collecting and Organizing your Work

• Zotero – a Firefox extension to help you collect, manage and cite your research sources

Creating Multimedia Presentations

• Creative Commons – find licensed images or music files that you can share, remix or reuse for presentations
• VoiceThread – Offers free and subscription accounts. A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents and videos and allows people to comment.
• Microsoft’s Photosynth – Allows you to create interactive 3-D images out of a bunch of photos of the same scene or object.

If you like these, then you should check out the Literacy, Information, Technology, and Education (L.I.T.E.) Workshops @ Addlestone. This semester’s theme is “The Top Web Apps to Help With College Life.”  Just Register here to attend, and before you know it, you’ll be zipping around the web like a seasoned professional.

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