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Home > People > Alumni Profiles > Spotlight
SI SpotlightSara Ulius-Sabel (MSI '03)
"I was impressed by SI's collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to learning. I was also intrigued by the Human-Computer Interaction program, as it was a wonderful hybrid of many of my passions -- technology, psychology, and design. It really was a perfect fit for me, in terms of synthesizing my undergraduate studies, work experiences, and interests into a cohesive program."
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Before SI: Prior to SI, she obtained a bachelor's degree in applied social psychology and a minor in art and design from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
"Originally, I began my undergraduate career as an architecture major, but switched majors in my sophomore year once I realized that architecture, as both a career field and academic discipline, was not as collaborative as I had hoped. Psychology was far more collaborative and cooperative, and appealed to me for that reason."
The connection to architecture paid off, however, when she worked in the Cal Poly library's architecture collection. "I helped them build a digital database of their 150,000-item slide collection, and I also worked with instructors to better use the Web as a teaching tool," she says.
After college, Sara worked briefly for a nonprofit agency in Sacramento, California.
At SI: The value of group projects, even with the memory of the hard work and long hours that went into them, is one of the values of the SI program that Sara remembers.
"I don't think that I had ever worked that hard either prior to SI, or since," she says. "Of course, I am very proud of the projects that we produced and the caliber of thinking that went into them."
Sara participated in the 2002 and 2003 Alternative Spring Break programs in Washington, D.C. "During the 2003 ASB trip, I interned with EDUCAUSE and had the opportunity to sit in on a congressional hearing about digital music copyright and online piracy.
"My experience with EDUCAUSE later led to an invitation to publish an article on intellectual property ownership in the EDUCAUSE Review."
Sara's advice to students is to broaden your perspective. "Think broadly about your education," she says. "While I went through my studies in HCI and educational techology, I never even thought about working in product development -- let alone home appliance development.
"I believed that I would end up in distance learning or educational software development. The skills that I learned, however, apply well in my current environment. I would advise prospective students to think about an SI education as a foundation for multiple career paths, not simply librianship, archives, or HCI."
After SI: In her position as metrics manager in the Global Consumer Design Department at Whirlpool Corp., Sara has the opportunity to travel and work with colleagues in Asia, Europe, and Mexico.
As often happens, a summer internship opens doors to later full-time employment, and that was the case for Sara. She began her career at Whirlpool as a usability intern in the summer 2003. She returned to U-M to complete a dual-degree program in educational technology at the School of Education. Then she was hired by Whirlpool as a usability specialist in January 2004.
"As a usability specialist, much of my day-to-day work was based on my HCI training at SI. At one point, I called Professor Judy Olson and thanked her personally for her SI 622: 'Evaluation of Systems and Services' course.
"That course, as well as others, was invaluable to me in terms of providing me with a foundation of how to plan, conduct, and analyze usability studies.
"My SI education has also provided me with a strong foundation about information design and management, in general. I am constantly aware of the need to think about how information is collected, stored, shared, and designed. How information is organized and presented is often as important as the content. Well designed information has helped me to captivate the attention of senior leaders within the company," she adds.
"Good ideas presented well go much further than good ideas alone."
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