Melinda White devoted dozens of weekends to shuttling from Los Angeles to New York City to spend Saturdays studying in the ILR School's Master of Professional Studies Program (MPS).

"One of the reasons I chose Cornell ILR is because it's known on the West Coast. This is the premier school. It will open doors," said White, manager of academic relations for engineering and research at Yahoo.

White, who has also worked as technical talent acquisition lead at Yahoo, returned to college part time for a master's degree through the MPS program, which began 10 years ago in New York City.

Two years of Saturday classes more than 2,000 miles from her home in Long Beach, Calif., didn't faze her. White will graduate in May.

Courses on collective bargaining, human resource management, labor economics, organizational behavior, law and policy, and research methods helped White " think more analytically" about the workplace.

Learning alongside working professionals from diverse fields who also wanted to complement their workplace experience with academic interests was also a motivator, she said.

"We learn from each other -- people from their 20s through their 60s," said White. More than 100 students have enrolled in the MPS program during the past decade. The current enrollment is 22 students from the private, public and nonprofit sectors in fields including aviation, education and human relations.

Faculty members encourage dialogue, White said. "They want our perspective, which I value, and it's reciprocal."

Sara Edwards, director of the program, said, "The most exciting thing about the MPS program is that it draws professionals with such a diversity of expertise -- and the accompanying diverse perspectives -- but who share a real engagement with the realities of the workplace."

Alecia Prince, graduating in May, said she leverages her MPS network for information on best practices.

"You really do form strong connections with professors and students," said Prince, manager of organizational development for American Express.

Prince's MPS research project is on e-learning and social media tools in the workplace. It contributes to a companywide initiative by American Express to expand the relevance and attractiveness of Web-based learning for employees, she said.

."This program is consistent with the ILR tradition of bringing quality academic work to the practitioner," said Samuel Bacharach, ILR's McKelvey-Grant Professor in the Department of Organizational Behavior and director of Cornell's Smithers Institute for Alcohol-Related Studies and the Institute for Workplace Studies in New York City, who founded the MPS Program. "It is embedded in the tradition of the founders of the ILR School, bridging the world of theory and practice."

Edwin Lopez, manager of the New York City chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association, said his Cornell experience has changed the way he works.

"Being in an academic atmosphere ... the stimulation of thinking and talking and debating people ... it's an opportunity for working professionals to structure the way they think, plan, lead, make decisions and, ultimately, perform at work," he said. The MPS Program is "a tremendous fit ... it gave me the formal training and the ability to look at what it is I do and almost rethink what I do."

Decisions previously guided by instinct now have an academic context, Lopez said. "I'm more exact, better at affecting change, encouraging other people and getting people on the management side engaged. I go in with more conviction."

Mary Catt is the ILR School's staff writer.