When Michael Stovall ’04, Ph.D., public policy, came to UMBC as a graduate student in 1996, he wasn’t just looking for a change of pace. He was ready to change his life.
A recent article in the Frederick News-Post chronicles Stovall’s second career as chair of the Business & Social Sciences Department at Carroll Community College, where he helped develop an Aging Studies program that has lead to a number of transfers to UMBC’s Aging Services program, he said.
Read the Frederick News-Post’s story, “Teacher Thankful for a Chance at a Second Act” here.
Stovall came to UMBC to study public policy after years of working in government and community-based jobs in Frederick. He quickly grew to love the field of aging, and with the encouragement of his professors chose to focus his dissertation on “Innovations in Senior Centers in Maryland.”
“I had the good fortune of taking Soc/Anthro courses with Kevin Eckert and Leslie Morgan who are both respected experts in the field of aging which got me interested in the field of aging/gerontology,” he told UMBC.
Stovall presented his dissertation research at the National Society on Aging/American Society on Aging Conference in Philadelphia in 2005 and started teaching sociology at Carroll Community College in the fall of 2005. He currently teaches and serves as chair of the Business & Social Sciences Department there.
“My favorite thing about teaching at CCC is the variety of students that come to a community college,” said Stovall. “It is the diversity of students and the different paths they take that bring them here. I feel that my experiences as an older student at UMBC and my years of working with a variety of government and community services enable me to communicate effectively with all kinds of students. I still find each class to be an adventure, and in every class I learn more from my students than they learn from me.”
