Career Talk: Marc Posner, director of Campus Communications at Cypress College

Marc Posner had a more than 20 year gap between starting college and earning his degree at Brandman University last spring. Although he didn't need a bachelor's degree when he started as a journalist — he worked at the Anaheim Bulletin, the Daily Pilot and the Los Angeles Times community editions before switching to public relations — he knows that anyone seeking those jobs now would need one. With the help of his academic advisor, Rebecca Warner, and supportive faculty members, he completed his degree in 18 months. In this second Brandman Speaks: Career Talk podcast, Posner talks about why he went back to college, what he had to overcome, how it has helped shape his current role at Cypress College and his plans for the future. More Brandman Speaks podcasts are available here or on iTunes. Transcript Cindy O'Dell: Welcome to Brandman Speaks: Career Talk. I'm Cindy O'Dell, communications manager at Brandman University. In this episode of our series focusing on the career choices of Brandman graduates, we'll hear from Marc Posner who completed his bachelor's degree a year ago. Marc is the director of campus communications for Cypress College, a community college in North West Orange County, California. Like many Brandman students, Marc had a big gap between when he started college and when he finished. But first we wanted to know how did his current career match his earliest career goals. Marc Posner: When I was younger, I really wanted to be a photographer. And you know I always had this sense of chasing after fire trucks, chasing after police cars, so I think I knew real early on that there was a journalist hidden in me. I just didn't quite grasp the writing part of it at the beginning. I had a neighbor who was a professional photographer for Rockwell, and he kind of talked me out of that path. And then when I took journalism classes when I got to high school, I was told you have to take journalism classes to be on the newspaper. I tried explaining I wanted to be a photographer and they said, yes and you still have to understand the fundamentals of news. And I really fell in love with writing, early in high school, probably my freshman year. O'Dell: Marc says he was lucky to get his first job in journalism, but like so many first jobs, it grew out of a personal connection. Posner: I attended classes at Fullerton College, enough classes I probably could have earned a bachelor's degree there if they had offered them. But I had amazing faculty. Julie Davy was my primary journalism instructor there, and I had a friend who was at the Anaheim Bulletin at the time and they were looking for a production editor so I stepped out of classes kind of directly into an editor's role and bypassed what a real traditional path starting with the journalist aspect of it. That paper ended up going from a daily to a weekly, and I ended up moving into a reporter role so that was a little bit more traditional from there. And then I had covered Golden West college as one of my stops in journalism and I heard their public information officer was leaving for another job and I called to wish her well and by the end of the conversation she had convinced me to apply for her job. So I made the transition from journalism to public relations in 1996, which is way early for that trend to occurred, and I'm extremely fortunate to have done it with you know essentially no college degree at that point. That really wouldn't happen today. O'Dell: Making the decision to finally complete a degree didn't come easily. Posner: Well it was really hard for me to go back. I had probably 18 years in higher ed at the point I decided to go back and complete my bachelor's degree and I had completed my associates along the way. I had a college president here at Cypress who had talked to me about completing my degree probably on a monthly basis...