WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 [music] 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:10.000 GIROD: Julia was nominated by her peers and also a very large group of students who spoke unabashedly 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:14.000 about the role that Dr. Smith has played in their lives and in their learning. 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.000 As coordinator of the Rehabilitation Counseling Education program, 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:24.000 Dr. Smith works closely with students in a 2-year program to become certified rehabilitation counselors. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:32.000 These students must learn skills and techniques to connect with widely diverse individuals, seeking services to improve their lives. 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:35.000 Learning to do this is a challenge. 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:44.000 In the words of one of her students, "I told Dr. Smith that I felt as though someone had handed me a lab coat that was several sizes too big. 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:51.000 She smiled and told me, 'Wear it anyway.' I did and in wearing it, I grew." 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:56.000 In Julia's own words, "There is no greater joy for me 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:64.000 than watching a student delight when he or she identifies an unintentional bias that blocks their ability to see someone clearly." 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:12.000 And in the words of one of her peers, "Dr. Smith is an ideal role model for universal human empowerment." 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:22.000 That's pretty high praise. Each of these offers a glimpse into Julia's classroom. Excellence in teaching, mentoring, and changing lives. 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:29.000 Please welcome the 2013 recipient of the Mario and Alma Pastega Award for Excellence in Teaching, Dr. Julia Smith. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:33.000 [applause] 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:41.000 It's such a delight to be here. Thank you very much. I really want to start with appreciation of my faculty and staff, 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:47.000 and people in my division who put together an unbelievable nomination packet. 00:01:47.000 --> 00:01:56.000 That for me was enough, seeing the letters that were written in support, reading the nomination letter, the original nomination letter. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:61.000 I would have been happy to have been done with that. But no, it went a step further. 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:09.000 So, I am going to talk with you about stepping off the beaten path and opening our eyes to diversity. 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:14.000 I am really, really proud to be a faculty member here at Western Oregon University. 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:19.000 I'm currently doing a search for a new faculty member, 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:26.000 and when I talk to these applicants who want to come to Western Oregon University, 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:32.000 what their job requirements are, what they are expected to do in these different university settings, 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.000 I can see where they wan to come to someplace like Western 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:43.000 because we really do honor the teacher/student relationship, and 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:52.000 that really means a lot to me. I've looked at the list of Pastega award winners in the past and they're just incredible teachers, 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:60.000 and I even look around the room right now and I see these wonderful models of teaching that are all around me. 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:03.000 So I do want to say thank you. 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:07.000 Some of my current students are actually here, and I would like them all to stand up. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:14.000 These people, I think they're the best-dressed students on campus. [laughter] Look at them! Do they not look sharp? 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:20.000 Look it, this is what graduate students look like in the RCE program. So thank you very much to all of you. 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:24.000 [applause] 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:28.000 So what I'm going to talk about is hiking the Narrows. Hiking the Narrows. 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:36.000 Mark had been looking for me the day he had been informed that I had actually won this award. 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:40.000 He had been looking for me and I am a busy person. I was a hard person to find. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:46.000 So it wasn't until 9:30 that evening that he was able to locate me at home, 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:54.000 and I was busily packing because I was getting ready to go on a 4-day excursion with my two sisters to Zion National Park. 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:59.000 How many people have been to Zion National Park? Ooh-hoo! Alright, yeah. 00:03:59.000 --> 00:03:68.000 It's a beautiful, beautiful park. It's a couple hours north of the GRand Canyon. It's in southern Utah. It's a gorgeous park. 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:16.000 My younger sister had suggested that perhaps we would try hiking the Narrows. 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:20.000 Now I'd heard of the Narrows. How many people have hiked the Narrows at Zion? 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:27.000 OK. So, I'd heard about it. It sounded a little scary to me, but I'm a great adventurer, 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:35.000 and I said, fine. We'll figure out what the weather is, we'll see if there's any flash storms. That's the danger of hiking the Narrows: the flash storms. 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:42.000 But I thought, you know, why not? I think that that would really be a fun adventure. 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:48.000 So, the Narrows are located at Zion National Park, 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:58.000 and the literature calls the Narrows the most legendeary and unusual hike in the whole Colorado Plateau. 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:11.000 It's also rated the #5 adventure out of 100 in the National Geographic, so it's a big adventure place to go. 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:16.000 In other words, it's really off the beaten path, right? It's not what most people do. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:22.000 I mean, most people when they go on vacation, they don't look for adventure. They look for relaxation. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:33.000 So hiking the Narrows is little bit different than a normal hike at Zion National Park. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:38.000 Zion has beautiful trails. You have to choose the right season. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:48.000 You have to choose the right season, and here's a little chart. I was going in March. Yellow is the right season to go. 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:56.000 I was in orange in March, but we happened to have picked a perfect day. 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:65.000 And the people at the ' the rangers told us everything looks pretty good, doesn't look like there's any storms in the future. 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:13.000 The other thing that's unique about this hike is that 60% is in the water. 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:18.000 Now in March, 75% is in the water. 00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:26.000 When I say in the water, it's ankles to knees, to chest, and swimming. [laughs] 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:36.000 So with that, you can imagine, because the river that you're hiking is called the Virgin River, 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:39.000 and it runs through the middle of the national park. 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:48.000 It's water that just comes off of the mountains, and it's cold. It's so cold! I can't tell you. 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:55.000 It says here 40 to 45. Uh-uh. It's colder than that. It was icy in March. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:64.000 So, to protect yourself from that, you have to wear a protective suit. A special suit. 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:06.000 You saw that picture on the first slide. 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:14.000 Red and black. Kind of looked like Star Trek, but it's not flattering. I mean, there's nothing flattering at all about it. 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:20.000 But the dry suit is very, very tight around the neck, 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:24.000 the wrists, and the ankles, and then you wear these kind of funky shoes. 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:33.000 But no water comes in, so you can walk in this freezing water for hours and be okay. Be okay. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:43.000 But you must have a pole, because in the river there's unseen rocks and dips, like little boulders. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:48.000 You need to have the right equipment to be successful in hiking the Narrows. 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:59.000 So what does hiking the Narrows have to do at all with teaching at Western Oregon University? 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:04.000 So I'll start with my background. 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:13.000 I grew up in San Jose and the high school I went to, people with my color skin were in the minority. 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:22.000 It was a wonderful experience for me. When I went to college, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:28.000 The first student teaching class I went into, I realized I can't do this 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:35.000 because I had all these students who had different issues that were looking at me. The diversity in front of me was too great. 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:42.000 I couldn't get through my lesson plan because I was too drawn to ' well, this person over here didn't understand. I could tell they didn't understand. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:48.000 I wanted to teach to each of those individual people, and ... 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:54.000 I didn't have a very good mentor. So I thought, well, this obviously is not the right field for me. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:58.000 So I went into psychology and I became a mental health counselor. 00:08:58.000 --> 00:08:66.000 I get to look right at that person and be very focused on the person who's just in front of me. So it was a perfect choice. 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:21.000 and I started to learn how to balance my need for looking at the individual 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:25.000 with my OCD with getting through my lesson plans. 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:35.000 My students know that I have this certain amount of material I want to cover in a day, and how am I going to cover that in that class? 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:43.000 It was really a challenge for me to figure that out, but I think I did. I'm learning. 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:50.000 Western Oregon University. I came here as a graduate student back in the mid-70s. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:58.000 Now I'm from California, and one of the first things I noticed when I came to Western Oregon- oh, it was OCE at that time. 00:09:58.000 --> 00:09:65.000 When I came to OCE, I couldn't figure out what it was. But soon I realized, it was everybody was white. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:12.000 I mean everybody was white. Everybody was white. All around me, lots of white people. 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:18.000 It was so different than what I had experienced growing up in California and my neck of the woods. 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:24.000 That's changed dramatically. It's changed dramatically and that shows in this room. 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:30.000 It also shows out in the grocery store and in the community. It's wonderful. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:43.000 And with that, Western Oregon University has done a great job of helping us acknowledge and embrace diversity across campus, 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:47.000 and I think that that's really important. 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:51.000 I think we're getting more and more successful at the way we do that. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:55.000 There's a lot of diversity in my program. 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:61.000 I have students where English is their second language, where their first language is not English. 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:07.000 That's something that I have to really kind of keep in mind when I'm teaching a class. 00:11:07.000 --> 00:11:11.000 There's also students with disabilities. 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:21.000 In my program, because we're training students to work with people with disabilities, we really advocate 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:30.000 and specifically recruit students who have disabilities. Oftentimes in our program, up to 50% of the students have documented disabilities. 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:37.000 So it's quite diverse in my specific program, but for Melissa, 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:45.000 there's at least 400 students who have signed up to receive services here on campus who have disabilities. 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:52.000 And in regards to English as a second language, we have over 280 international students. 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:55.000 [scattered laughter] 00:11:55.000 --> 00:11:59.000 I'm distracted! [laughter] 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:07.000 We have a lot of international student,s which is good. 280. 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:14.000 Students from multicultural backgrounds, we have over 950 on campus, which is incredible. 00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:17.000 So it's not just in my classroom, it's all across campus. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:24.000 And then of course, for all of us, when you look at the students in your classroom, 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:30.000 you know that there's tremendous unique learning styles with each student. 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:36.000 That's true in every single class. You can teach the same course over and over again, 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:40.000 and, depending on who the students are in the classroom, it's going to feel different. 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:46.000 The outcome's going to be different. The dialogue in the class is going to be different. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:50.000 It depends on those unique students in the class. 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:57.000 So there's some things that I've learned about how I balance. 00:12:58.000 --> 00:12:66.000 I can balance my need of seeing and recognizing the diversity in each individual in my class, 00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:11.000 and I can get through my lesson plan. Here's some of the ways that I've learned to do this. 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:20.000 The syllabus. The syllabus. I know ODS has a statement that they suggest you put on your syllabus. 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:29.000 It's an excellent statement, and it talks about the need for students, especially who disabilities, to contact Disability Services to talk about accommodations. 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:35.000 But I really emphasize on my syllabus that I want students to come and talk to me. 00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:39.000 I want to know what their unique learning styles are. 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:45.000 I want to know what might be helpful in the classroom so that I can keep that in mind when I'm working with them. 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:55.000 But with this, I have to really preserve confidentiality of that dialogue that my students and I have. 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:63.000 My policy is to never--this is my policy-- never inform the class 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:07.000 about a student's unique needs unless requested by the student. 00:14:08.000 --> 00:14:16.000 I've made mistakes. I've made mistakes. I've made mistakes where students have told me thing confidentially, 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:20.000 and I will then go to class the next day and look at the class, 00:14:20.000 --> 00:14:24.000 and maybe look directly at the student and say, 'Is what I'm doing okay? 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:32.000 It's really not okay to do that. That's a no-no, and I'm learning. I'm learning. I'm much better now than I was 10 years ago. 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:40.000 It's an ongoing process, but maintaining that confidentiality is really important with your students. 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:46.000 I also have students sit ' this would not work for me in class. 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:52.000 Although, there's no chairs looking this way. This is good, so they set this up pretty nice. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:61.000 But you can't really see each other, and I know that there's a lot of classrooms where you don't have any options about that. You do what you can. 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:09.000 But I say to students, you are going to be learning from me but you're also going to be learning from each other, so you've got to see who's talking. 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:12.000 You've got to see where those ideas are coming from. 00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:19.000 That's how you network. That's how you hook up with somebody after class is when you see what their comments are. 00:15:19.000 --> 00:15:25.000 But if they're sitting in the back and you've got to twist around and look and where ... who's talking. It's hard. 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:30.000 So I really try to keep that visual, and if I can't have the visual I talk to students. 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:34.000 They give me ideas of maybe how to set up the class. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:43.000 And I call out students' names. My students will tell you I'm very rigid in class. I'm very structured. 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:46.000 Students cannot talk unless they raise their hand. 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:56.000 You know in most classrooms there's lots of over-talk, right? People talk over each other, and there's excitement and there's passion. 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:59.000 It's just a fury. It's wonderful. 00:15:59.000 --> 00:15:67.000 But, people are being left out. People that I'd talked about from that diverse group are being left out. 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:15.000 So if I have them raise their hand, then I will call their name, and when I call their name 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:19.000 they're going to say whatever their comment is or their suggestion, 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:23.000 and everybody gets to see who's doing the talking. 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:30.000 It also teaches people to postpone gratification. If they've got an idea, they don't have to throw it out there. 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:36.000 They can contain it and then maybe say, "You know what? I've decided I'm not going to say what I was going to say," 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:40.000 which is also a good thing. I see my students who are nodding their heads. 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.000 TO SELF: No, I'm way on, way on that. Okay. 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:52.000 So those are all things that have helped me to really support the diversity in my class. 00:16:54.000 --> 00:16:60.000 The other thing, I love PowerPoints. I love PowerPoints because it really does help structure the information, 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:08.000 and with that structuring of the information, it allows students to understand what's going on in the class. 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:14.000 But I will say, I used to teach on- how many people here used to teach only with overheads? 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:18.000 Yeah. Oh you look way too young for that. But there were go. 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:25.000 We used to teach only with overheads. We would Xerox them, we'd put them on this plastic sheet, we'd put the plastic sheet down, 00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:31.000 we'd take a piece of paper and we would slide the piece of paper down point to point. Right? 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:42.000 So much control. We had so much control over what we're showing our students, and it slowed everything down because you have to look down here, 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:46.000 you have to think about what you're doing, and the students are on board with you. 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:52.000 With PowerPoints, my goodness, you can just flip through this and poor students, 00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:57.000 who are, especially if they're having to look at these wonderful interpreters, 00:17:57.000 --> 00:17:65.000 their eyes are going back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, and the anxiety and the exhaustion that comes with that is unreal. 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:15.000 So I really, really try to think about the PowerPoints in a similar fashion than the old-fashioned overheads 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:23.000 to go point by point and kind of slow it down, and allow a moment to not do this fast food kind of thing. Click, click, click, click. 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:31.000 But allow a moment for students to read what's on the ' I'm not doing a very good job today, but that's what I try to do. 00:18:31.000 --> 00:18:35.000 So allow time to see the slide. And then of course, these next points. 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:44.000 It's so helpful. These PowerPoints are probably more valuable to students with unique learning styles than you even know. 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:55.000 They are the organization. They help connect what you're talking about in your lecture. It prepares the students. They understand it better because the points have been made. 00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.000 So with that, Melissa and I talked about this. 00:18:59.000 --> 00:18:65.000 I said upload to Moodle--everyone uses Moodle, I'm sure--24 hours in advance. 00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:12.000 And Melissa said, "Oh, with students with disabilities it needs to be 48." And I'm thinking, I just can't do it. 00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:22.000 So I kept it at 24, Melissa, just to let you know, because I don't know always what I'm going to talk about until right before class. 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:30.000 But I do work really hard to get all my PowerPoints up to Moodle 24 hours in advance, 00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:36.000 because not only does it help give the interpreters a chance to be competent in what they do, 00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:42.000 but it also gives students who may have more difficulty with the English language, 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:48.000 may have more difficulty with other kinds of issues. It gives them that outline, which I think is really important. 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.000 So just a couple more things. 00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:62.000 I've been with these fighters, before the ADA even, to think about closed captioning, some kind of captioning on the films. 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:13.000 I just finally did a boycott. I wouldn't show any films in my class unless they were captioned because again, almost impossible with students with certain needs. 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:21.000 It just wouldn't work for them, and I wasn't going to have one person not feel like they had access to what I was talking about. 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:28.000 So the ADA now says yes, you need to have all those films captioned. But I will tell you, if you go to YouTube, 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:36.000 look at those captions before you show it in class. I mean, if you wanted to kind of joke around, it's really good. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:44.000 It's almost like the Siri, when you're trying to train your Siri, and you go,'Wow! You think that's what I said? 00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:48.000 And it's do now what I said. YouTube's the same. 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:54.000 You've got to really look at it and check it out and see if it even makes any sense. Oftentimes it doesn't. 00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:63.000 It's great that they have the CC there that you can hit, but don't swallow it. Don't believe it. You've got to check it out for yourself. 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:07.000 The importance of repeating student's questions and comments. 00:21:07.000 --> 00:21:13.000 AGain, for students who have a different processing style, that is a really important point. 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:24.000 Even today in 2013, even though we've done this great education around students who are deaf and communicating with people who are deaf, 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:31.000 people will still look at the interpreters when the person is signing over here, as though that's where the communication is. 00:21:31.000 --> 00:21:36.000 Always look at your student. Always look at the person giving that communication. 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:42.000 So, I'm going to pull these together now. [laughs] Hiking the Narrows ... 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:53.000 ... and teaching. I just want to say first of all that the way you teach is awesome, 00:21:53.000 --> 00:21:61.000 because you've got information, you're giving it to your students, and it's just fine. It's the same for me when I go hiking. I just put on regular hiking boots. 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:06.000 I would have had a great time at Zion just doing regular hiking. 00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:14.000 But I chose to do something a little bit more exploratory, and I think what I try to do in the classroom is the same thing. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:21.000 Try to go that little bit deeper with really taking a look at who's in my environment. What's out there? 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:28.000 So what I found that doing it that way is a very unique experience. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:36.000 You have to have the right equipment and the right information, so you have to be thoughtful. You have to be kind of prepared, 00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:43.000 and to do that you have to ask questions. You have to know your environment. You have to know the students in your environment. 00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:51.000 But it's very beneficial. It expands your own world, 00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:56.000 as well as expanding the student's world, and there are great rewards. 00:22:57.000 --> 00:22:61.000 So thank you. And here are these funny suits. Now who would wear those, you know? [laughter] 00:23:01.000 --> 00:23:07.000 But when you have sisters, it's okay. You know, you all look the same. So thank you. 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:12.000 [applause] 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:21.000 Here at Western Oregon University, Mario and Alma Pastega Award for Excellence in Teaching and and in Scholarship 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:27.000 has come to represent the highest level of recognition available to faculty. 00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:30.000 TARTER: Tonight we recognize Tom's academic achievements, 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:37.000 which are a culmination of his intellectual pursuits and his years of experience as a working musician. 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:44.000 I'm pleased and proud to introduce Dr. Tom Bergeron, another one of our wonderful colleagues who make the world a much more interesting place 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:50.000 and winner of the 2013 Pastega Award for Academic Excellence at Western Oregon University. 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.000 [applause] 00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:64.000 I can't imagine a career that I would enjoy more. My job is to hang out with friends and talk about and play music. 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:12.000 Then, to stay current in my field I have to hang out with other friends and talk about and play music. 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:20.000 So it's a joy, and so here I am and I'm being recognized for getting up in the morning 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.000 and getting to bed at night and in-between, doing what I want. 00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:28.000 So thank you for this opportunity to reflect on that. 00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:32.000 So this is my first band. [laughter] 00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:39.000 I was 16 years old and we played weddings, anniversaries, office parties. 00:24:39.000 --> 00:24:43.000 Here a gig like that is called a 'casual', 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:49.000 but back in New Hampshire we used to call those 'general business' or 'GB'. 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:55.000 This was back in the day, of course, when such events required music, right? 00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:64.000 So here I am playing at one of those weddings. You can see I'm probably singing, 'The bridge cuts the cake. The bride cuts the cake. 00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:08.000 My music teacher was a consummate working musician 00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:16.000 and taught me when to have the first dance and how to do the Grand March and all of that. 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:24.000 So one of the tunes that I really enjoyed playing at that time was this one. You'll probably recognize it. 00:25:24.000 --> 00:26:39.000 [saxophone] 00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:43.000 In closing, I would like to quote Mario. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:59.000 But if along our path of life we gave a helping hand to fellow human beings, it will have made a difference. 00:26:59.000 --> 00:26:67.000 That is precisely what our values are and what we do here at Western proudly. 00:27:07.000 --> 00:27:13.000 [music ends]