In the past, I had done one short online course in mapping within my Master’s program but it was primarily a theoretical course. I was attracted to the PHDA program because of the applied nature of the courses. I found all of the PHDA courses very useful, and at different times during my program different courses served me better. For example, I was doing mapping in my job when I took the Population Health and GIS (PHDA 03) course. Then later I happened to be using statistics in my job when I took the Epidemiological Statistics (PHDA 02) course. In hind sight, I wish I had completed the courses in order of least difficult to most difficult, as the order in which I took the courses affected the learning curve involved for me. (i.e.: I did PHDA05 before I had taken PHDA01 where I could have learned basic SAS skills). I found PHDA03 and PHDA02 the most useful to me as they supported my immediate work needs the most.