Student Spotlight: The Art of Being a Lifelong Learner
Molly Wiebe (MIIPS Online '25) is leveraging her education to make the world a safer place on Youtube
By Hannah Brelsford
A student, teacher, researcher, and soup lover are just four ways to describe Molly Wiebe.
After 20 years in the classroom and devoting herself to furthering her education with a Master of Arts in Education and a Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Studies, Molly decided that it was time for a career pivot.
“I landed on Carnegie Mellon University’s Integrated Innovation Institute online program because it offered everything I wanted to learn about and become.”
The Fast Facts: A Summary of Molly’s Time in the MIIPS Online Program
Life Long Learner 📚
- Worked for 20 years as a researcher & teacher
- Masters of Arts in Education
- Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Studies
- Pivoted to UX Research
- Current Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services Online Degree Candidate
Industry 💻
- Working on YouTube’s Trust & Safety Team
- Making Youtube a safer platform for its users
What’s Next 🎓
- Two Goals: potential career pivot & to never stop learning
Go Deeper
Life Long Learner
After years of working to understand students, Molly was primed to apply her knowledge to the field of user experience (UX) research. With her experience in mind, she was advised to shift from studying students to studying users.
“Someone pointed out to me that I may be interested in user experience research. I had no idea what that was at the time and I decided to approach it as a researcher. I learned everything I could about it.”
The Integrated Innovation Institute’s (iii) online program was particularly desirable for her because it met her where she was at in her life. At first, Molly wasn’t sure if she would commit to the master’s degree or just a few certificates, but the Capstone project sold her on the value of the online degree.
After talking with Athena Huether, the iii Head of Graduate Enrollment & Associate Director of Admissions, she saw that the capstone was taught with an emphasis on hands-on-experience. “I was excited about the opportunity to work with a company to solve real problems and to use my experience and knowledge to help them innovate.”
Working full time, balancing a personal life, and being an online student can be demanding, but Molly found that logging into the Carnegie Classroom (the online program’s live classroom environment) instead of commuting to a school was a huge bonus for her.
Another bonus: interacting with people from all over the world.
“I appreciate that my peer group is global. I have classmates from Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea. Just being able to interact with them and learn from them and learn about their perspective in terms of innovation is very eye-opening.”
Beyond learning from her classmates, Molly found it particularly beneficial to learn from her professors who had hands-on industry experience.
She credits the interdisciplinary learning style of the iii and how it allows for cross-pollinating across disciplines for strengthening her as a student.
Industry
Molly currently works for Key Lime Interactive as an UX Researcher as a dedicated research consultant for Youtube on the Trust & Safety team. In this role, she ensures the wellbeing of Youtube users by making the platform a safer place. She was apprehensive at first about her career pivot, but knew that she could leverage her background in human experience and education to make an impact.
The MIIPS Online program, specifically courses such as Introduction to Design Innovation and User Experience Research for Digital and Physical Products, taught Molly the tools she needed to learn about different components of UX research. She learned qualitative and quantitative research methods and communication methods for stakeholders, as well as across teams.
Molly loves that she can be part of a team in her current role while working with cross-functional partners to solve problems to make YouTube a safer platform. “As an educator, I can see how harmful the internet can be, so having that mission of making a widely used platform safe for young children is very impactful.”
“I feel good that I get to be on a team that is making a good impact on the human race and protecting people from harmful content.”
What’s Next
Molly plans to leverage what she has learned and continue to foster relationships that she gained at the iii. Molly may continue to pivot within her career, but one thing she knows for sure is that she will never stop learning.
“One of my goals is to never stop learning. I will always learn whether I enroll in a course, get another certificate, watch a webinar, or go to a conference. I will not sit still with what I know because the world is changing so fast and learning is one way to keep up with the changes of the world.”