You might not know Jon Friesen; but if you’ve ever experienced an emergency situation in Sedgwick County, you might know his work.

Friesen, who graduated from the Master of Organizational Development (MSOD) program in 2008, manages the education and training of more than 800 emergency-medical responders in Wichita and Sedgwick County.

“In this position I have two key areas of concentration,” Friesen said. “I work with education and training staff personnel from the different system agencies to develop, deliver, and assess the effectiveness of medical training and education for our providers. Additionally, I work to develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities of our trainers and educators throughout the system.”

Friesen chose the MSOD program at Friends University because he said it mirrored many of the challenges he faces in his job.

“I am, in many ways, both an external and internal consultant who must work with individuals and different agencies to help them achieve positive systemic results,” he said. “The MSOD program content was a match from the start.”

Friesen said some of the more valuable lessons he took from the program are the critical thinking, leadership and effective questioning.

“By hearing the story of those that I am working with, I am able to make better contributions to whatever task we are working toward,” Friesen said. “This may seem like a small thing, but reinforces the knowledge and skills that I learned from the core content in the program.”

Support from family and faculty fueled Friesen’s success; however, classmates in his cohort drove him to complete the program.

“There were people in my cohort group who challenged me and helped me grow and succeed in the program,” Friesen said. “I had tried online learning prior to coming to the Friends program.  Without the interaction of peers and the challenges that come from articulating your ideas in front of people who view the content differently from you, it is easy to be short changed at the end of a program. Friends provided a setting that pushed me to succeed past my own expectations and past the core content of the program.”