How good does someone have to be to earn a free pass when they're bad?

Earlier this week, one of the top stories in Provo, UT (where I live and work) was the Provo School District's suspension and planned termination of a popular football coach at one of the local high schools.  It is a sad story on a number of levels:  at least one person (and probably more) will likely lose his job, students and athletes at the school will have to deal with a number of distractions for the rest of the academic year, community members are upset, and public education (especially athletic departments at public institutions) has been given another black eye.  As I watched things play out over the last week, I couldn't help but think back to the Penn St. sex abuse scandal that dominated the media a few months ago.

Obviously, financial misdeeds seem incredibly benign juxtaposed with sexual abuse of children; however, there are some interesting parallels.  Both stories seem to illustrate a more general archetypal pattern of the fallen sports hero.  These stories contain a number of common elements.  First, the hero (usually a player or a coach, although in some communities some kind of athletic administrator may rise to this position) emerges through his (I use that pronoun intentionally here because I can't think of a fallen sports hero that isn't a male) consistent on-field success, contributions to the community (e.g. mentoring of young athletes, improved community morale around a winning team, charitable work, etc.), and general likability or charisma.  Note that this rise occurs over a number of years as in order to be considered a hero (rather than a one-season wonder) the character must establish an athletic dynasty, build a following in the community, and demonstrate (especially to those critics of traditional athletic culture) a level of integrity and commitment worthy of others' admiration.

The conflict in the story comes when the hero falls.  Although losing seasons may be part of this fall, losing alone isn't enough to qualify a narrative as a fallen sports hero story, because at their core, these are stories of betrayal and lost hope.  As much as we love our teams, we don't feel betrayed when they lose (in fact, the most die-hard fans increase their loyalty when losses pile up--do you know any Cubs fans?), just disappointed, frustrated, or maybe even angry.  Heroes fall when something disturbing happens in the overlapping space between their personal and professional lives, and we as their admirers are forced to confront a discrepancy between their actions and our idyllic image of them as societal models.  They break the law, mistreat individuals in their personal life, or in some other way act counter to the values we have previously believed they exemplified for us.  And, we are left feeling betrayed, hurt, and wondering if there is any good left in the world.

There are at least two typical responses at this point in the story.  First, athletic skeptics (and new believers who were once skeptics of athletics) use the fall as justification for their beliefs that athletics has nothing positive to contribute to the world (e.g. "All successful coaches cheat and lie and hot-shot players are entitled jerks who take what they want").  The other response, which is the more interesting one of the two, takes the form of praise for all the hero has done for the community and a profession of faith in the innocence and continued goodness of the hero.  This type of response is evident in a statement made by prominent author Stephen Covey, in support of Provo's current embattled sports hero:

"I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach. He represents Timpview      and he stands for excellence. He is as fine a man and leader as I know."

Another example from the hero's attorney:

 "What Lou did for the school and community went far beyond the field of play.  What he did is what we want our educators to do — care about the kids who are entrusted to their care, to help them, to teach them to make the right choices, to be team players, to cooperate and to work for what they get." 

While much of what is contained in these statements is probably true--I don't doubt that the coach really did care about students and players or that he possesses tremendous leadership skills--they make no attempt to address the wrongdoing.  Instead, they seem to imply that, because of the hero's long record of good deeds and established reputation as a good citizen, it isn't possible that he could be guilty as charged.  The same type of response was apparent in the Penn St. scandal as well when Paterno supporters criticized his termination by providing long lists of his good deeds (again, supporters rarely addressed the validity of the actual charges, just provided character references and expected that to be enough to clear him).  Beneath all of this rhetoric seems to be a belief that heroes', through their good deeds and exemplary lives, earn "free passes," that society is then obligated to accept as payment for wrongdoing.  

I don't know whether Louis Wong is completely innocent, just naive, or guilty.  We'll probably never know, and to give him any one of those labels would probably be overly simplistic.  However, it would be helpful if more of us were willing to admit that our heroes are usually both heroic and flawed as evidenced in this statement from Bob Gentry, interim Superintendent for the Provo School District:

"It’s extremely gut-wrenching and heartbreaking.  I know Coach Wong personally, and I think he’s a good man. I personally think he didn’t have criminal intent, but he made mistakes and we can’t ignore those mistakes." 


What would really be heroic in all of this would be for everyone involved to be completely honest about mistakes that were made.  That would include Wong as well as the former principal at the school, district officials, parents, assistant coaches, and anyone else involved.  But, that would be a fairy tale.

What does it mean when a student cries in my office?

I've had an interesting week.  On Monday morning I walked into my office after having been away from campus for the better part of three weeks, attending conferences, going on vacation with my wife, and playing hooky so that I could spend time with a three-year-old girl who is growing up far too fast.  Being gone that long, coupled with the fact that this is a busy time of year in the department where I work, meant that work had piled up and deadlines were fast approaching.  I was extremely overwhelmed, didn't have any idea how I would get everything done, and wished I were 35 years older and could retire.  On Tuesday, I felt even worse. A day had passed, the list had grown longer, and was worn out.  On top of that, I looked at my schedule and saw that I had meetings scheduled with about 20 students, some who work in our department, others who would be interviewing for a chance to work here.  It was going to take a lot of time, I would have to be a good listener and ask good questions, and it was likely to be emotionally and physically draining.  On that morning (and even now as I type this) I felt guilty--guilty because I am supposed to care about students, be interested in their welfare, and show a commitment to serving them.  All I wanted to do was close my door, drop my blinds, and work on my list.  Listening to students, caring, and forgetting about my concerns takes work and effort.  And, I wasn't sure I was up to it.

Letting Microsoft Outlook run my life is typically not a virtue, but on that Tuesday morning it was and I kept all my appointments that day and every day for the rest of the week.  I survived the week and it's now Friday evening and I'm getting ready to head home for the weekend.  Although my list is still just as long and I have an entire paper to write and submit in the next 6 days, I feel both calm and reflective.  That strikes me as a bit odd because my meetings with students this week were just as draining and time-consuming as I anticipated.  And, they were some of the more unique meetings I remember having in quite some time.  Here's a summary of some of the interesting ones:

• A student whose father passed away just before Christmas and who told me about how hard things have been and how much her grades have suffered.  But, who believes she is a completely different person--in a good way--than she was four months ago.
• A student who is suffering from anxiety and depression, whose parents are in my estimation both  insensitive and unsupportive, who is at sea trying to find a major and life path, and who has felt like a failure in her work in my department for most of the semester.  But, who, after telling me all of this, somehow left with a sense of optimism and contentment I haven't seen in her before.
• An applicant to our department who broke down in tears while telling us about her first failed test from the previous semester and how she recovered from it and finished the semester with an A- (I've written about this course in a past post).
• An applicant who was so nervous, unsure of herself, and concerned about how she was being perceived that, when asked at the end of the interview if she had any questions, responded:  "Give me some feedback.  How did I do in this interview?"
• A student who I had initially viewed as lazy or unmotivated, but who now has my utmost respect because of his courage to tell me about the anxiety and extreme self-criticism that have plagued him the last 10 years of his life.  

I honestly don't know what any of this means.  And, this is likely to end up as one of the most incoherent posts that will ever appear on this blog.  But, I feel like I've learned some important things this week that bear articulating, even if they are fuzzy and disconnected.

1.  Keep appointments, even if you don't want to.  You might help someone.  If nothing else, you'll feel good about being dependable.

2.  Students are incredibly reflective when invited.  All we really need to do is listen, ask a few questions, and try to understand.  Most often, they'll figure things out and leave feeling a whole lot better.

3.  It's better to listen than to try to give advice or solve others' problems.  We feel inadequate, they feel misunderstood or judged, and we both leave the conversation frustrated.

4.  If we work with students during times of transition (e.g. virtually any point in their college experience), we're likely to have someone cry.  And, tears (at least the sincere ones that seem to come unexpectedly) seem to make the crier feel better.  And, somehow, the rest of the conversation seems more open and comfortable (I still don't understand this).

5.  Just because someone cries in an interview doesn't mean we should hire them (or not hire them).

6.  Human beings are complex.  We never have each other "figured out" or know the whole story.  Give people the benefit of the doubt and listen (see #3 above).  You'll rarely be sorry you did.

7.  Being in relationship with people is both hard and incredibly rewarding.

8.  Focusing on people doesn't make the list get shorter or the workload get lighter, but you feel better about the list, the work, the people around you, and yourself.  

9. Going on vacation with your wife and playing hooky with your three-year old daughter are worth it, even if it means a lot of work when you get back.

10.  Things always look better on Friday night.

The First-Year Experience movement: Are we serving or exploiting?

"I am not confident that we serve those we research well. . . .  With skepticism we should continue to question our rationale for studying the disenfranchised. . .we serve ourselves too by taking up their cause."


This is one of the more insightful things I've read in the last few months.  It comes from a book I've referenced before in a previous post.  The author is a qualitative researcher and, like many of his methodological peers, he spends a great deal of time researching populations who society views as "in need" in some way or another.  However, unlike many of his peers, he is astute (and probably humble) enough to realize that his work may not always be as helpful as he thinks.  And, it made me question the motives I have in my work and whether I am as "helpful" as I think I am.


I would consider myself to be one who is involved in what has come to be known as "the first-year experience movement."  I am an administrator in a program designed to serve first-year students, I have in the past been heavily involved in new student orientation programming on my campus, and the research I do is either focused directly on first-year issues or involves data gathered from either first-year students or the peer mentors who work with them.  I would like to think that my work serves this population in some way and that what I do each day when I come to work makes some kind of difference.  On the whole, I would like to think that my motives are pure and see myself as one who "serves" the students on my campus.  However, it would be unfair to claim that I am completely selfless in all of this.  Not only do I do this work for a salary and benefits (pretty good benefits compared to most of higher ed), but I travel to conferences 2 - 3 times a year (usually in warm places that are nice to visit anyway), am beginning to publish research on my work, and occasionally get invited to make presentations relating to my work and research.  So, the first-year experience movement has been good to me.


All of this has me wondering if, despite our good intentions and noble purposes, those of us who do this work might occasionally (and probably unintentionally) be guilty of exploiting the very population we claim to be serving.  We claim to do work that helps or serves these students as they make the transition into higher education and our scholarship is intended to advocate for these students and somehow improve the experience they have on college campuses.  But, what if the article I publish is only read by a handful of people?  And, what if after reading it, they don’t approach their work any differently than before?  Have I then used the first-year student population on our campus and elsewhere to further my career, without making any real contribution to the experiences of the real people experiencing the first year of college?  Or worse, when write a conference proposal am I ever more interested in visiting a new city and taking my wife with me, than in moving forward an argument or idea with real merit? What about that article that will be published this month? Do I really think it will add to the dialogue and help other practitioners, or did I just want a line on the vitae I'm trying to build?  


It seems like those of us purporting to serve first-year students (and this may be true for any researcher or practitioner, especially those in the social sciences) should take care to avoid becoming a player in the scholarship game where we do research, publish studies, and present at conferences, simply for the sake of those activities.  Ultimately, we probably can’t ever really know if our work or scholarship is a benefit to others and if we spend too much time worrying about any of this, we'll go crazy. All of us will at some point sincerely try to conduct a study and write a report that will “serve” someone somewhere and still miss the target.  Maybe the important thing is to be vigilant, honest, and ethical by holding ourselves to high standards and continually committing to doing the highest quality work we can. . .a helpful thing for me to remember next week when I'm enjoying warm weather and the San Antonio Riverwalk at the Annual Conference on the First-Year Experience.

What if admissions offices cooperated rather than competed?

Earlier this week, Inside Higher Ed reported on initial results of the Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework and the potential for this data to connect students to those online institutions to which they are best suited (the title of this particular section of the article is "Match.com for Higher Ed").  The senior statistician for the project, Sebastian Diaz, comments that his data set positions admissions and recruitment officials more effectively find, recruit, and enroll those students who are most likely to be successful on their campuses.  But, the article points out that this sort of academic matching service would require a level of collaboration and sharing among institutions that doesn't seem very feasible at present.

On the surface, viewing admissions as a purely competitive process makes sense.  After all, for any given institution there is a limited number of students who are, first, at all interested in enrolling at that campus and, second, who are good candidates for the experience provided, whether that is an intimate liberal arts experience, a distance ed experience, or the traditional state school experience (if there is even such a thing any longer).  What's more, for a group of institutions who share much in common, this pool of students is largely the same.  So, at some level, it is perfectly understandable that institutions compete for students.

However, this standard view of the admissions process, while acknowledging the competitive dynamic among peer institutions, fails to acknowledge two things.  First, among institutions who are very different, there is no real need to compete for students.  Second, many of the students who apply to a particular school aren't students that school is competing for and, in fact, may be better candidates for another institution.  And, despite the best efforts of campus recruiters and sometimes very expensive marketing campaigns, campuses don't always get the students they want.  So, if you and I are both in admissions on our respective campuses (and lets assume we aren't at "peer institutions" but that our campuses differ in some meaningful ways) I will, inevitably, receive applications from students that my institution doesn't want, but that yours does (and the reverse is also likely to be true--you'll receive applications from students that I want).  The trouble is that we aren't ever likely to realize this or talk to one another about it.  Instead, we'll each send our diplomatically written "thanks but no thanks" letters to our respective applicants, they will hit the trail again hoping to find a school that does want them, and we will hope that the next application we receive is from a student we do want.  Ironically, we both have pieces of information that would be helpful to each other, but we'll never share it.

So, what if an institution worked to develop collaborative partnerships with a diverse group of institutions, whose missions, enrollments, geographic locations, were different from its own .  This might be something akin to the "bridging capital" Bob Putnam describes in his book Bowling Alone, that connects us loosely to people quite different from ourselves and that facilitates access to community assets and promotes information dissemination.  If these partnerships were formalized in some way, institutions could "compete" with their peers, by collaborating with their "distant relatives.  These partnerships might give member institutions access to students they may never have found and help students by connecting them with institutions better suited for their needs, interests, goals, etc.

Typically, college athletics is not a good place to look when trying to solve broader institutional challenges; however, in the case of admissions, we might be wise to make an exception.  Like admissions, the college sports landscape is highly competitive.  Each year there are a small number of blue-chip recruits that every Div I coach wants to sign and bring to campus in the fall.  But, once you get through those 100 or so athletes for the particular sport in question, things are a lot less competitive--athletes are trying to find coaches who want them and coaches are trying to find athletes who would be a good fit for their team and campus.  What's more, the NCAA's practice of classifying athletic programs into divisions (Division I, Division II, and Division III), there is a clear and simple way of knowing if another coach's program is a "peer" or a "distant cousin."  Consequently, it isn't uncommon for a Division I coach to court a recruit and then, after realizing   that she probably won't be recruited by top Div. I programs, to make a phone call to a fellow coach at the Div. II level to let the coach know that they ought to "take a look at her."  I saw this happen fairly regularly as a student athlete.  As an example, one of my teammates at Mars Hill College in the late 90s was initially recruited by a handful of good Div. I soccer programs; however, his standardized test scores were not high enough to qualify him to compete at the Div. I level (due to NCAA regulations).  At that point, the coach from one of these programs contacted his friend who was the head coach at Mars Hill and let him know that this player may be a good fit for the program.  In this situation, both my friend and Mars Hill benefited.  We got a great player who was a four year starter and all-region player, and he got a nice scholarship and a great experience at a small liberal arts college.  The Div. I coach didn't benefit directly from this exchange; however, in coaching, reputation is everything, so he likely benefited indirectly.  The difference, then, between athletics and admissions is that when an athlete isn't a good fit for a team, there is at least some chance that the coach who has turned him down might be able to help him find another home.

While it would take some coordination and there would definitely be complexities to work out, is there any reason why this sort of sharing and collaboration among distantly related institutions couldn't happen at the level of general admissions and even be formalized in some way?  If it were to happen, it would seem to require a few things:

1)  The right kind of groupings or consortiums:  As mentioned, if everyone in the partnership is competing for the same students, it isn't likely that much sharing will take place.  So, member institutions would need to be different enough that they aren't drawing from the same applicant pools.  At the same time, if the institutions are too different, they aren't likely to have applicants that, although not a good fit for one institution, would fit somewhere else.

2)  Very clear understanding of one another's missions:  If the members of the group don't know each other well (their missions, their geographic locales, their academic offerings, etc.), they won't be positioned to make good referrals.

3)  Lots and lots of trust and good will:  As with any social contract, the success of an arrangement like this would require a collection of campuses that are willing to commit to act in the interest of one another and of the students they serve.  At the point that one member starts to hold onto students who would be better served by another member of the group, just to bump enrollments and increase tuition, things will fall apart.  Similarly, if back-room alliances between selected members result, the whole enterprise is in trouble.

I'm not overly familiar with the admissions landscape, so it's possible that this proposal has grown from a gross naivete on my part.  But, as an occasional idealist and advocate for the power of community, I want to think that it has promise (or, better yet, that it is already happening in some corner of higher ed and I don't know it).

Getting lost in learning: A confession and a glimmer of hope

It's slightly embarrassing to admit this, but for someone who blogs and talks about deep learning as much as I do, I'm still a bit superficial when it comes to my own formal learning (in my defense, I'll argue that is true of most of us).  I'll use my current qualitative inquiry graduate course as an example.  Last week I was in class when another student commented that she had read ahead in one of the texts for the class.  My immediate thought was--"Don't you have anything better to do?" and I cast a glance at a friend in the class much like what I did as a high school student when one of the "nerds" made a comment in class (apparently, I have matured very little since my days at Skyline High School).  More evidence of my failure to consistently be a deep learner:  I almost always set a timer for myself when I'm working on research or other scholarly projects and quit as soon as it goes off, I can't think of a time when I have ever read ahead in a class, and I once opted to turn in an entire paper for a political science class because I knew it would make no difference in my final grade.  However, I occasionally have moments of brilliance when I become, if only for a moment, the kind of learner I expect students on my campus to be.  It happened last night and after it was all over, I wondered what had happened and why, for those 60 minutes or so, I "went deep."

I was reading Bob Stake's very excellent commentary on qualitative research (Qualitative research:  Studying how things work)--not because I chose to, but because it was assigned for class--and came across a statement Stake makes about the usefulness of intuition when making judgments about quality (the statement and commentary are too long to discuss here, but on pp. 162 - 163 Stake makes a fascinating comparison between professional judgments about quality and God's statement in Genesis about the "goodness" of the Creation).  Before I knew it, I had jotted down a question this raised for me in the margin's of the book, pulled my copy of Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) off my bookshelf, and read about the psychology of impressions for close to an hour.  It's worth noting that this happened at about 7:00 p.m., after a 10 hour workday with no lunch, and at the end of a particularly long week.

So, what happened?  What triggered or facilitated this episode?  Here are some guesses:

1.  Interest in the subject matter.  I am actually fairly interested in qualitative methodologies.  They seem far more human and useful to me than p values, degrees of freedom, and ANOVAs.  So, while my excitement about fighting off hunger to read Chapter 9 of Stake's book at the end of a long day may not have been high, I did have a latent interest in the general subject matter.  So, the potential for coming across an idea or concept that was interesting was better than if I had been reading Research Methods and Statistics (also on my shelf, but not likely to be pulled down anytime soon).

2.  Connections to current concerns or experiences.  I am currently working on a paper, which will be presented in April at AERA's Annnual Meeting, that uses qualitative methodologies to explore how learners integrate theoretic and experiential knowledge by sharing narratives with one another.  So, qualitative issues are on my mind a lot (in large part because I don't want to look stupid at the conference).

3.  Potential for learning/thinking to be made public.  One of the requirements for the class is that we post our thoughts to a class google document where the professor and (in theory) classmates read one another's thoughts.  So, when I came across the passage I mentioned above, I immediately thought about what I might say about it in my posting to the Google Doc.  I also knew that at some point in our next class meeting, I would be asked to comment on the reading.  Rather than regurgitating ideas from the reading, but using different words (which sometimes happens), I wanted to raise the question I had while I was reading (which was whether articulating a rationale for intuitive judgments is dangerous) and then have some kind of relatively cogent response to give.  I also thought it might be interesting to bring in an "outside" book to the discussion.  Hence, my willingness to spend an hour reading something that I didn't have to.

4.  Time and space.  Had I read the same chapter from Stake's book on another evening when I needed or wanted to get home early, or if I had been reading at home with my daughter's Disney movie playing in the next room or the allure of what might currently be on tv, things wouldn't have turned out like they did.  However, last night was a night when I didn't need to rush home and had a quiet office to study in.  Context and environment played a role in my deep learning experience.

5.  A relatively broad base to draw from and connect to.  This will seem overly simplistic and slightly obvious, but it is probably worth stating.  I could connect Stake's ideas to Gladwell's, because I had read Gladwell.  Part of deep learning is making connections to related concepts.  So, in theory, the more one knows, the more connections they can make.  However, "connections" don't always have to be to things we've read previously.  All learners have a set of life experiences to draw from and connect to, whether that is books read, classes taken, memories from childhood, the trip to the grocery store yesterday, or anything else.  If we can bring this set of experiences to mind for learners and then invite them to make connections, deep learning is a lot more likely to occur.  However, it's worth reminding ourselves that novice learners are more likely to struggle with this, so we have to scaffold, nudge, encourage, and model it a lot when learners aren't accustomed to "going deep."

I've tried with this list to illustrate that deep learning is dependent on a number of factors--the learner, the instructor, and the environment.  Those factors aren't always (maybe "very rarely" would be more accurate) under our control.  At the end of the day, deep learning is an organic, spontaneous thing that may or may not happen.  But, as learners and instructors we can increase the likelihood of deep learning occurring by being aware of what can lead to episodes like the one I had, and trying to do our best to throw the right things into the pot.  So, I guess in some ways it is an act of faith, but one worth taking.

Small programs with big impacts

Yesterday morning I attended a monthly meeting that, typically, is painfully boring and disengaging (part of that may be my fault and the attitude I bring with me to the meeting).  To avoid becoming completely cynical and disengaged, I have committed myself to approaching the first 15 minutes as a "probationary period" of sorts where I genuinely try to listen and give the meeting a fair shot.  Yesterday, after an uninspiring presentation from a representative from financial services and figuring that the next item on the agenda wasn't likely to peak my interest much, I was settling into the article I brought to read.  I knew that BYU has a Women's Services office on campus, but never really understood what they did or how they did it (which, I'm now quite embarrassed about).  The next 20 minutes of the meeting were eye opening for me.

BYU Women's Services and Resources is a small program within the Dean of Student's Office on campus.  They have one full-time employee, a small office in the Student Center, and (I'm guessing) not much of a budget.  In many ways, it is the kind of place that is easy to overlook and which would be an easy target when budgets are being tightened.  To be honest, if it weren't associated with a fairly politicized issue (the experience of women on campus), I'm not sure that it would survive on a campus as big as BYU.

Despite all of that, LaNae Valentine and her team of undergraduate students and graduate interns, are doing more good on our campus than many realize.  They offer a wide range of ongoing programming and special events for women on campus; however, to their credit their larger interest is in providing good educational resources and experiences than they are with putting on events (that isn't always true of student life areas on campuses).  Consequently, their programming is closely aligned with their mission.  The combination of their large target population and diverse, yet focused programming means they reach a fair amount of people.  What's more they are positioned to make a tremendous difference in the experience for a relatively small number of students (although not as small a number of students as their budget, square footage, and one line on the campus directory would lead many to believe) who are often in desperate need of the support provided through the center.

This is an interesting phenomenon on campuses where big, expensive programs get a lot of attention.  And, we like to believe that these programs, centers, and initiatives are what make the biggest difference for students (after all, if they didn't, why would we spend so much money on them?).  Although their size, resources, and very broad missions (broad sometimes means ambiguous and unarticulated) make them highly visible and allow them to "touch" a large number of students, these same characteristics may simultaneously keep them from engaging with students in deeper and more personal ways--the ways in which Women's Services and Resources and other units can.

I'm not calling for the dissolution of SGA's, large student service organizations, or other "big" programs.  But, just hoping that more people on college campuses will discover, appreciate, and advocate for the small programs that offer a very different, more personal, and often impactful experience for particular segments of the student population.  They don't cost much money, don't need much office space, and are usually quite self-sustaining (if they aren't, they don't survive); however, they touch student's lives and bring a much-needed diversity to our campuses.

A closing word of caution for these programs.  Often the success of places like Women's Services comes about largely through the efforts of a single charismatic and tireless leader (this is almost surely the case for Women's Services).  In fact, I don't know how else small and resource-starved programs ever survive.  The problem is that when there is only one leader, who almost single-handedly keeps the place afloat, long-term survival becomes questionable.  What happens when that dynamo leaves?  It's important that those who care about these small programs (especially the heroes I've described above) be strategic about looking for, mentoring, and grooming someone to take over, otherwise the impact of these programs will only last as long as the career of their champions.

A tribute to good mentors

In December, I graduated with a master's degree in Instructional Design from Brigham Young University.  In many ways it was anticlimactic--I immediately started a doctoral program, I still have years of school ahead of me, and my thesis was approved nearly a month before I was actually awarded the degree.  Still, it was a long road and it feels good to be a little closer to being "finished" (if we ever really are).  By nature, I am a fairly reflective person, but especially at transitional times like beginnings and endings.  So, not surprisingly, I have spent a fair amount of time thinking back over the last few years and my experiences.  In doing so, I have been reminded of how much I owe to good mentors.  It is always risky to thank individual people because of the chance that someone is left off the list; however, I'll do it here for two reasons.  First, without the support of those I'll list here, I would never have finished, let alone started a graduate program.  Second, because there is a good chance that no one will ever read this, the chances of anyone being offended by being left off the list are small.

First, I am grateful to mentors from my undergraduate experience who nurtured my passion for teaching and learning, and who never quit encouraging me to consider a career in higher education.  My experience with Pat, Gary, and Stefinee in the now defunct Freshman Academy program was the single most influential thing that happened to me as an undergraduate student.  I learned more sitting in their offices listening to and observing their meetings, than any course could have ever taught me.  I learned what good thinkers read, what kinds of questions they ask, and how they interact with others in ways that open the door for change and innovation.  It was during those afternoon meetings and early morning chats that the scholarship seed was planted for me.  And, without my experience in the Freshman Academy program, I would probably never have been hired to come back and work full-time at BYU (which then opened the door to graduate school much wider for me).

Once I began graduate studies my path was somewhat unique in that I was still working full-time.  This would not have been possible without a supportive work supervisor.  Pat (yes, the same one as above) was not only accommodating in allowing me to adjust my work schedule to fit around classes and research meetings, but has served in many ways as a 4th member of my graduate committee, engaging me in conversations about my ideas, pointing me in the direction of scholarship relevant to my interests, and providing much-needed and well-timed feedback.  This last summer when I was conceptualizing and implementing my master's project, she not only gave me generous amounts of time to do my work, but nudged and encouraged me to do more than I thought I could.  As a result, my finished project was much better than it ever would have been otherwise.

If you had asked me, ten years ago, what I would be doing when I turned 30, working in higher education wouldn't have been on the list of my 50 best guesses.  Often, we need others to help us identify our latent passions, broker opportunities for us to grow, and encourage us when we don't believe in ourselves.  My friend Stefinee has been that person for me.  I distinctly remember the first time I met her as an undergraduate student.  For some reason I had been invited to attend a meeting to discuss a research project she was working on with Pat.  She must have sensed that I felt incredibly out of place and out of my league because she made it a point of sitting next to me in the conference room (interestingly enough, the very same conference room that she and I were in when I defended my master's thesis about seven years later), asking me questions about myself, and including me in the conversation throughout the meeting.  Since then, on more occasions than I can count, she has played that same role--helping me feel comfortable when I wanted to run, nudging me to stretch myself, and giving me access to conversations I wouldn't have been a part of otherwise.

Of course, there are others; however, none who have played as significant a role as these good friends, mentors, and colleagues.  So, to them (as well as the others)--thank you!