Joel DiGirolamo

Video Transcript

I'm Joel DiGirolamo, president of Turbocharged Leadership in Lexington, Kentucky, and I'm a Wildcat.

I have a bachelor's degree in engineering, and an MBA, and I chose to go back to school to make myself more portable so I could work with more organizations, or even possibly go out on my own. And so I chose to get a master's in industrial and organizational psychology.

I found the K-State program, and I really liked it because it allowed me to be on campus and to meet the people, meet the professors, but then stay in my current job, work in that job, and then continue over the internet, doing the rest of the degree there.

I really enjoyed the on campus part of the Kansas State program because it allowed me to put faces with names and to get a rapport with my fellow students as well as my professors. This particular part of the program was very good, because once we got to the internet part, with the bulletin boards and posting different items about the assignments, I knew who I was interacting with and how they might react to what I was saying.

I only had to spend two weeks on campus at Kansas State, and the rest of the time I could be working at my job, doing the program in the evenings or on the weekends.

With this program, I learned that there is a whole new world out there, this area of industrial and organizational psychology. With that information, I could create my own company, and this company would take that information and help individuals and companies take their businesses and their careers to a whole new level.

Turbocharged Leadership is a business that I created that takes this psychology research and applies it in an organizational setting to help individuals and corporations grow.

I highly recommend the Kansas State program to anyone who's looking for a degree in industrial and organizational psychology. The faculty in the psychology department at Kansas State were superb. They have a lot of knowledge, and they know how to get this information to the students and motivate the students to learn.

Quick Facts about the Industrial/Organizational Psychology Program

Degree: Master of Science
College: College of Arts and Sciences
Description: Skills and knowledge to perform in a complex organizational environment
Course delivery: Online, face-to-face
Application requirements: Bachelor's degree with 3.0 minimum GPA on last 60 credits
Two years of human resource managerial or supervisory experience
Completion of specific courses*
Admission to K-State Graduate School
Completion requirements: 38 credit hours with 3.0 minimum GPA

Master's Degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Lexington, Kentucky

During the economic downturn of 2001, Joel decided it might not be a bad idea to broaden his knowledge of the business world and give himself more options. So he enrolled in K-State's MIOP program and completed courses while traveling all over the world for his job at Lexmark, Inc. After finishing the degree, he started his own business, a corporate consulting company called Turbocharged Leadership. Even though the distance aspect was a great advantage, Joel says the best part about the program was the on-campus portion he spent getting to know his classmates.