September 2024
Happy fall to my fellow HEAA community members! Thank you for electing me as the next Secretary of the HEAA Board of Directors, I am excited to get started. As I mentioned in my candidate profile, I am Harvard Extension School’s biggest fan – with an ALB, ALM, and graduate certificate from HES (plus degrees from other institutions) – and I look forward to this next part of my HES journey.
Fall (aka “autumn”) is my absolute favorite time of year, especially in New England where the leaves are just starting to change colors. This is the one time of year the seasonal change doesn’t sneak up on us or just morph from one season to the next without clear delineation. Mother Nature guides us, counting down the months as the trees slowly turn hues of orange and red, and the leaves slowly fall to the ground as we make our way toward winter; we know what’s coming and we have time to prepare – much like an extension school syllabus prepares us for the end of a fall semester.
If you’ve been in Harvard Yard in the fall, you might agree there is nothing quite like the sight and sound and smell of walking through rustling leaves that have fallen off trees that were planted generations ago, amongst buildings that were built centuries before.
And so here I am, 36 years after moving to Boston in the fall of 1988, and emerging from the Harvard Square T-stop to walk through Johnston Gate for the very first time. Maybe it was the same for you, but walking through that gate (and past Mass Hall where I would work decades later) was a life-altering experience for a young person who grew up in a one-mile-square village in Upstate New York.
A few years later, fall welcomed me again as I started my Harvard Extension journey in 1992. In those days, classes were all in person on campus, and it took me five years to complete my degree while working full-time and going to school part-time. In 1997, this first gen student (!) graduated with an ALB in Extension Studies with a concentration in social sciences and a self-directed field of study in race and ethnic relations. It was a busy time for me with college, work, a wedding, and family obligations – but that meant I was a typical HES student. I didn’t make many connections outside the classroom (no cell phones, only landlines and answering machines, in those days), but many of us had the same experience (ironically).
Thankfully, these days we have the option to attend classes online where smaller classes with breakout rooms make it easier for students to make personal connections with each other and the professor. In addition, HEAA has made great strides to create opportunities for social connection for current students and alumni (stay tuned for more on that).
In 2020, when the world was mostly remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I returned to HES to begin my ALM in Extension Studies with a concentration in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and along the way earned a graduate certificate in organizational behavior. My ALM experience was much different from my ALB as I made several personal and professional connections with fellow students all around the world – technology helped greatly in this way.
Professionally, I have a background in C-suite support, event planning, communications and outreach, and currently work at Harvard University. I have served on many committees, in various leadership roles, and my degrees have been helpful in that regard. In general, I think a liberal arts education is a good foundation for any field of employment, but the knowledge I gained in my HES classes in industrial and organizational psychology, and organizational behavior, have proven helpful in my daily pursuits.
In my spare time, I am a newspaper editor for several local newspapers; am very involved in my community – including as president of the longest continuously-running women’s club in America (circa 1775); am founder of TheValueOfFriendship.com; plan my high school reunions; and love spending time with my two grown children (a software engineer and a social worker) at our home in Boston’s MetroWest area where the leaves are also starting to turn.
In closing, I wish you a colorful fall, and I look forward to meeting many of you during my tenure. Thank you again for your vote, and I wish you the best.
In friendship and community,
-Theresa
Theresa Knapp Enos ALM ’97, ALM ’24
Secretary
HEAA Board of Directors
Photo credit: Theresa Knapp Enos
