This is by no means urgent, but as long as I hang out here (and lurk elsewhere) I feel constantly confronted with my next step academically. A big part of me wishes to get a graduate degree in CIS (or something very similar), but a bigger part of me wants to just take classes for personal pleasure and maybe step it up to an MA in American History. I already teach at the college and I doubt I will want to do that full time (academia bores me to death, but watching eyes light up and "get it" is a lot of fun so that's why I do it). I don't need a CIS degree for work reasons. I don't want to teach history or poli-sci either. I know how bleak those chances are, and again, academia is boring. I just like to know how the world works. I see that APU has both history and poli-sci degrees that look like an awful lot of fun. So perhaps this is more suited to a blog entry than anything else, but it helps to see what I'm thinking by putting it into words.
Since you say the graduate degree is not an employment requirement and you are interested in personal fulfillment at this point pursuing a graduate degree in history makes sense. Unless you feel passionate about a subject there is little reason to study it; education should be above all else an enjoyable adventure. Now a graduate degree marrying CIS and history would indeed be interesting and unique. Hmmm... the influence of "business information systems" on American society since settlement of the Thirteen Colonies.
And, of course, if his "just for fun" graduate degree pursuits eventually include a PhD in History, two of the history professors at the Union Institute www.tui.edu are cross-trained in history and computers. One has a master's in IT and a PhD in the History of Technology and the other has a PhD in the History of Consciousness and wrote his dissertation on the history of computer-based weapons systems in the US military since World War II.
That would actually be a very interesting thing to consider. I wonder if Mountain State would let me do something like that. I think studying history, political science and economics would be the most fun. That would be a good way to fill in a lot of the blanks on the reason the world is the way it is, and how it got to this point, as well as perhaps where it is going.
Mountain State University, formerly known as the College of West Virginia, does have an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies with History concentration on offer via dl and they also have a Department of Information Technology through their School of Business; however, their IT degrees are offered only at the AS and BS levels. But it might be worth a try to see if they'll let you put an IT professor on as your second committee person for your MAIS degree.
