When signing up for the Instructional Design Summer Intensive Program in 2009, Patrick Chadd didn’t know he would be making lifelong friendships.  The intensive 2-week experience provides distance learners a wonderful opportunity to come together and create personal relationships with each other as they are immersed in the face-to-face-coursework. “I met so many wonderful people that summer,” recalls Patrick, “and the bonds continued even though I was a distance learner living in New Jersey who couldn’t always communicate with them in person.”

Three years after earning his MEd in 2011, Patrick is still close with many of the classmates and faculty he met that summer.  Including Jolene Clark, Judith Erdman, Jenn Novak, and others, even though they reside in states other than his own. “I still get together with classmates for dinner and get to spend time with some at work conferences,” he says. “I have hired former classmates and was actually given a reference for my current adjunct teaching position from a fellow instructional design faculty member.”

This spring, Patrick is planning on making the trip to Boston to watch one of his friends, Mike Sullivan, graduate. “Walking across that stage was an important culmination of all the hard work for me and I cannot wait to celebrate that moment for someone else.  I’m really looking forward to going back and experiencing that feeling of community in person again.”

Patrick Chadd currently works for the Rowan University Osteopathic Medical School as the director of academic technology and is an adjunct professor in the Instructional Technology Department at Chestnut Hill College.  He is working towards his interdisciplinary leadership doctorate at Creighton University.  Some of his projects include creating virtual patients that allow medical students to practice diagnosing dementia and creating online continuing medical education opportunities for physicians.