WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Welcome everyone to the 2016 Mario and Alma Pastega Faculty Awards Ceremony. 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:11.000 This is the 38th year for the scholarship award 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:16.000 and 31st year for the award in Excellence in Teaching. 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:21.000 Over this time, the Pastega name has become an organic part of our institution. 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:27.000 We don't associate the name without thinking of excellence and quality when that last name is mentioned on campus. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:33.000 We do appreciate that Mario and Alma's sons Ken and Gary Pastega 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:38.000 continue to be engaged with us in representing the Pastega family. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:46.000 I'm pleased to call out and have Ken stand. So Ken Pastega's with us today. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:47.000 Ken if you can wave. 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:51.000 applause 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:53.000 So glad you could join us. 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:61.000 We do come here to celebrate 2 colleagues in recognition of the exemplarily work that they do as faculty here at Western Oregon University. 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:05.000 There is some teaching in scholarship. 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:15.000 What I will do is at this time call upon Dean Sue Monahan, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:21.000 to introduce, set up, for our first award winner. 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:27.000 And I will turn the podium over to Dean Monahan and Dean Monahan will 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:36.000 introduce the Division Chair who will introduce the Speaker and at that moment we'll bring up President Fuller for a formal presentation of the award 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:43.000 and then we get to listen to why we came here and that's to share with the expertise of our colleagues. 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:45.000 So Dean Monahan. 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:49.000 This is my favorite room on campus. I wish my office was in this room. 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:55.000 And this actually one of my favorite days on campus because we celebrate what WOU does really well 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:58.000 which is teaching and also research 00:01:58.000 --> 00:01:62.000 and what our faculty contribute to our campus. 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.000 I'm going to introduce to you Dr. Hamid Behmard. 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:10.000 He is not only the chair of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, he's himself a mathematician. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:14.000 So it's especially appropriate that he's going to do this introduction. 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:22.000 So it's my honor to introduce Dr. Cheryl Beaver, this year's recipient of Pastega award for Excellence in Teaching. 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:28.000 I have 2 parts here. One, I'd like to mention something about the credentials of Dr. Beaver. 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:34.000 So Dr. Beaver received her PhD in Mathematics in 1997 from University of Arizona. 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:41.000 She spent a year, '97 to '98, at Berkeley as a Post-doctorate Fellow. 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:47.000 And then from '98 to 2005, she served at Sandia National Lab 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:50.000 as a principle member of the technically staff. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:59.000 During that time, she had progressed her research and developing applications related to cryptography 00:02:59.000 --> 00:02:64.000 so we feel safer when we're doing transactions on the internet. 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:11.000 Then from 2005 'til now, she has been a faculty in the mathematics department. 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:17.000 I'd like to also relay a story with you. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:26.000 Some of you may remember from your undergrad years when you were going to visit your mathematics professors or physics professors. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:30.000 They had different methods of helping you with your problems. 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:35.000 Like for example, I had a physics professor undergrad that I would go 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:37.000 and during office hours, the door was closed. 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:44.000 As soon as I would knock the door, you would hear him on the phone, and he was busy on the phone. 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:48.000 Then you would say, well he's busy, but when it happens 10 times, 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:52.000 you would wonder, huh such a timing. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:60.000 Then you know mathematics professors sometimes you go ask them a question and they just the problems for you. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:06.000 Some of them, you go sit and they just sit there and just stare at you and at the problem. 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:11.000 Then you just wait there 10 minutes, 15 minutes. 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:15.000 Then you finally give up and you leave. 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:23.000 With Cheryl, it's very interesting because our offices are closed so I can't hear what's going on in there. 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:28.000 We have a lot of students that take the same classes. They go with her and meet. 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:34.000 So they go there and they ask a question and you hear Cheryl very calmly 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:41.000 explain some, say let's do an example here and she does some work. 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:47.000 She let's students see what's going on and that goes for maybe 5, 10 minutes. 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:51.000 And then suddenly, they say "Oh I got it!" 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:56.000 Then the laughter. The laughter is the mark of oh that student got it, 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:59.000 because they just become so happy when they see it. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:04:67.000 This is really the method that Cheryl uses with her students without really giving too much to them 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:16.000 so it takes that challenge away just showing some examples for them to just progress through this problem. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:21.000 They get to the point that they see how that problem's supposed to be solved. 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:25.000 A lot of these students are going to become high school teachers. 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:30.000 So they see her as a role model on how you help your students. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:34.000 I'll tell you, our students love Cheryl because they know that 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:40.000 her care for them is really genuine. There is no cover there. 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:48.000 The last thing I'd like to mention is that Dr. Beaver is the first recipient of the Pastega award in excellence in mathematics. 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:52.000 She is the first one. Congradulations. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:59.000 applause 00:05:59.000 --> 00:05:62.000 Thank you Hamid for that nice introduction. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:09.000 Thank you to the Pastega family for this award, making it possible. 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:13.000 Thank you to my colleagues. There's so many excellent teachers at Western. 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:19.000 It's really a big honor to be up here and I do truly appreciate that and acknowledge all of you people. 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:23.000 Thank you to the committee for your work as well. 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:28.000 Congratulations to Darryl, it's an honor to be here with you as well. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:34.000 What I want to talk to you today is about finding fun and fulfillment in mathematics. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:38.000 For some of you, those words might not go together very well. 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:47.000 So I'm hoping that by the end you'll see that if you can find that in math, then maybe we're doing a better job of teaching math. 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:56.000 If you ask people what the nature of mathematics is and you ask someone who maybe doesn't use math everyday or recognize they're using math, 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 you might get answers like this. 00:06:58.000 --> 00:06:63.000 You might get people saying, and maybe this resonates with some of you, that it's about calculations, 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:08.000 it's about procedures, it's about finding the right answer. 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:11.000 I asked my daughter Elizabeth, I should thank my family for being here too, 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:19.000 what she thought math was and she said it's about finding the answer. I have an equation I need to solve for x. 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:26.000 And so it's no wonder that some people think that there's not a lot of point in doing math and maybe 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:28.000 we can just let computers take over for us. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:33.000 But if I ask a mathematician what they think, I asked my colleagues what they thought, 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.000 and they gave me some quite different answers. 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:43.000 You can see here their thoughts but I highlighted some of the ideas that it was endlessly interesting, 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:49.000 that it was infinite, that it had patterns and required creativity. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:55.000 They talked about it as a language, as a sanctuary, as something tangible. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:60.000 This seems quite lofty and exciting I think if you see it this way. 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:03.000 They gave me some quotes about it. 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:10.000 You can see here that one quote says it's broad and multidimensional, requiring creativity and it's constantly changing. 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:17.000 That's quite a different picture of math than that of just doing procedures and following rules and doing computations. 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:24.000 When people find out that I'm a math professor, they often find compelled to tell me something about what they think about math. 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:30.000 When we have our students in many of our pre-service teachers classes, we ask them for a math-ography. 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:36.000 So a little history about their experience with math. How do you feel about it? Do you have any concerns about this class? 00:08:36.000 --> 00:08:40.000 At Western, they have to take 5 math classes. That's kind of a lot. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:44.000 What I hear from people are things like this. 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:50.000 I hear people say that well I like math but I'm not very good at it. 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:53.000 Or I'm just not a math person. 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:57.000 Some people love it and they'll tell you how good they are at it. 00:08:57.000 --> 00:08:62.000 There seems to be this message that it's one way or the other. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:06.000 Then people might ask the question what can you do with math anyway? 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:07.000 We've heard that in our classes. 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:12.000 I'm sure there's other disciplines where they hear that but I don't think there's many others where 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:18.000 you can Google a math t-shirt that say's 'another day has passed and I didn't use algebra once' 00:09:18.000 --> 00:09:20.000 and get 2 million 5 hundred thousand hits. 00:09:23.000 --> 00:09:28.000 So it makes me wonder if people could see math how mathematicians see it, 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:33.000 the questions like this and these thoughts might not be so pervasive. 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:38.000 I tried to think of other subjects where people said things like this, that I'm not just very good at that. 00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:41.000 What I came up with was spelling. 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:46.000 I've heard people say I'm just not a good speller. But that's okay we have spell-check. 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:49.000 I'm not a good mathematician. That's okay I have calculators. 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:56.000 If you think about how we learn spelling and how we often learn math, we're being asked to answer questions 00:09:56.000 --> 00:09:60.000 under pressure and we're deemed successful if we got it right. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:05.000 You know, is it right? Is it wrong? There's a little bit of pressure there and so forth. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:12.000 Jo Boaler in her book, Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:15.000 Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching, 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:21.000 comments that there's highly successful people who feel confident and smart in every aspect of their life 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:25.000 but they'll still state that the one thing they can't do is mathematics. 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:32.000 The good news is, she also says that studies show that if people can have a growth mathematical mindset, 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.000 if they can believe that through hard work, they too can become 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:44.000 more mathematically literate, then with some creative math, some inspiring messages, and innovative teaching, everyone can do math. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:49.000 I believe that everyone can do math and that's an attitude that we take in our math department. 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:53.000 We want to help them see that they too can do math. 00:10:53.000 --> 00:10:58.000 So how do we go about making people see math as a mathematician? 00:10:58.000 --> 00:10:62.000 I'm going to talk a little bit about what's going in K-12 math. 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:09.000 K-12 math is important to us here at the university because we educate so many teachers. 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:14.000 You've probably all heard about the Common Core state standards in mathematics. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:21.000 Even politicians will say things like the first thing I'm going to do when I get in office is get rid of these Common Core standards. 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:28.000 I think there's a lot of good in them and whether you like them or not, there's one thing that I think we can see that they've done. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:33.000 They focus the conversation about what math is relevant to students. 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:39.000 It used to be the case that you'd go to a conference and someone from North Carolina told you about a great thing they did in their class, 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:44.000 but to everybody else, it was completely irrelevant because they didn't have that standard. 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:46.000 Now we're all talking about the same thing. 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:52.000 You can Google any of the Common Core standard and you will get lists and lists of activities and lessons 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:56.000 and creative assessments and games and apps and so forth. 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:61.000 It's allowed us more space to talk about how we teach mathematics. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:07.000 In 2014, the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics came out with a book called Principles to Actions. 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:13.000 If we believe these things, if we believe this to be true about math, how do we teach it to our students? 00:12:13.000 --> 00:12:18.000 These are 8 teaching practices that they found highly affective. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:23.000 Here's 3 of them I want to talk about and there might not be things that you normally associate with math. 00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:31.000 One is productive struggle. It's the idea that instead of just getting the right answer, we can make mistakes and learn from them 00:12:31.000 --> 00:12:34.000 and that that might be a productive thing to do. 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:41.000 Facilitating meaningful discourse. Let's let students know that they're way of thinking matters 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:45.000 and that there isn't just one path to the right solution. 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:50.000 Conceptual understanding before procedural fluency. 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:59.000 What I mean by that is really understanding what a concept is before you learn all the rules that go with it. 00:12:59.000 --> 00:12:62.000 Let me give you a quick example. 00:13:02.000 --> 00:13:08.000 What if I asked you to count how many stars are up there? 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:15.000 Some of you might be counting and that's great and others of you might have just tuned me out and said why do I need to know that? 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:22.000 This is the fundamental problem with math. They ask us questions that no one cares about the answers to right? 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:29.000 I will never in my life again see a configuration of stars like that and need to know how many there are. 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:33.000 And if that's the view people take, we can see why they don't think math is relevant. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:36.000 But let me change the question just a little bit. 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:40.000 How many stars to you see up here now? 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:45.000 Has anybody counted? 00:13:58.000 --> 00:13:59.000 That's how you did it? 00:13:59.000 --> 00:13:66.000 Okay, well you might notice that there's 3 stars here and that might clue you in that there's 5 there cause there's 2 more. 00:14:06.000 --> 00:14:11.000 We can easily see that there's a couple groups of 5 and there's a couple groups of 3. 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:15.000 You might notice that there's 2 sets of 8. The 5 and 3 make 8. 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:21.000 You might notice the 2 sets of 5 and combine that with the 2 sets of 3. 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:24.000 You might notice there's a block in the middle. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:29.000 That there's a 3 by 4 block, that's 12 plus 4 more, that gives us 16. 00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:37.000 You might notice this. There's a large block with 4 missing. 5 times 4 is 20 minus 4 is 16. 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:44.000 If we think about this as math, you can see the answer really isn't very important. 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:48.000 What's more important are the things that we're noticing. 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:53.000 Maybe you can start to see that math is about patterns and about thinking. 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:59.000 In schools these days, they are incorporating some of these ideas. They do things called routines. 00:14:59.000 --> 00:14:62.000 It's about 3 to 5 minutes of things they do everyday. 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:05.000 This is an example of what might be a routine. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:09.000 You might walk into your classroom and see a bunch of stars and be asked to count them. 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:13.000 Teachers who do this have told me that their kids are really excited about this. 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:22.000 They want to share their ideas, they want to see what other people are doing, they get to explain their thoughts and it's all valued. 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:29.000 They don't really think they're doing math so that's kind of fun. 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:35.000 If you have elementary school children, you might notice that the homework that they're getting these days is a little bit different. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:41.000 Instead of asking kids to do 50 problems that are exactly the same and repeating what they're doing, 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:45.000 they might be asked to do 1 problem but do it 4 different ways. 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:49.000 I've heard parents say things like why do they need to do it 4 different ways? 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:56.000 Isn't the point to get the answer? I'm going to show them the shortcut and then they'll know how to do it right? 00:15:56.000 --> 00:15:59.000 So they do that and their kid doesn't learn it. 00:15:59.000 --> 00:15:63.000 What we're trying to teach them is conceptual understanding. 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:07.000 With that, they can do these procedures but they can also do a lot more. 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:11.000 Consider this problem, 20 times 19. 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:16.000 There may be some of you doing that and there might be others of you sweating a little bit. 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:23.000 If I asked this to a student in my office, I'll often hear I don't know, I didn't memorize my time tables up to 20, 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:27.000 I need my calculator and they'll want to get that calculator. 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:31.000 But I asked my kids this question and both of them thought for a minute. 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:37.000 They didn't bock at it, you know they had 2 mathematicians for parents but still. 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:40.000 Both of them came up with 380 for their answer. 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:49.000 I asked my son, he's 10, Evan, how he did the problem and here's what he told me. He say I did 20 times 2 times 10 minus 20. 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:55.000 It took me a second to realize that what he was doing, he was thinking about this problem as 19 groups of 20. 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:58.000 Which shows me he really understands what multiplication is. 00:16:58.000 --> 00:16:69.000 Further more, he thought I don't want to do 19 times 20, that's kind of hard. Instead I'm going to do 20 times 20 and then subtract off that extra group. 00:17:09.000 --> 00:17:16.000 Further more, 20 times 20 is kind of hard, but I know that 20 times 20 is the same as 20 times 2 times 10. 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:22.000 He didn't say all that but he kind of had to know it in order to be able to do it that way. I think that's pretty cool. 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:27.000 My daughter told me, and she's 13, that it was 20 times 10 plus 20 times 9. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:31.000 She thought about this as breaking the 19 up into a 10 and a 9, 00:17:31.000 --> 00:17:35.000 again, 2 easier problems and doing it that way. 00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:44.000 I claim these kids have some tools that they can use to solve a lot of different problems than just those that we think of as quick math facts. 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:55.000 I want to talk a little bit about some other things we do at Western and some specific examples where I see students having a lot of fun. 00:17:56.000 --> 00:17:60.000 The whole math department is really involved in this. My colleagues are amazing and inspiring. 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:07.000 In particular, Laurie Burton back there has had a lot to do with our math education here and why we're as good at it as we are. 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:15.000 Math 391 is an elementary problem solving class so all of our K-8 teachers have to take this. 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:20.000 If you don't like math, and even if you do like math, you really don't like story problems, right? 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.000 What's the worse thing that can happen in a math class is you can get a story problem. 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:33.000 We have a whole term full of story problems so on the first day of class, I have a lot of students who really don't want to be there very much. 00:18:33.000 --> 00:18:35.000 What we're trying to do in the class and I think we do it pretty well, 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:42.000 is show them what we value in math is their thinking and their strategies and that there's multiple ways to do the problem. 00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:46.000 We want that to come into play when they become teachers. 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:53.000 The math buddy program pairs our WOU pre-service teachers with 5th graders at the local schools. 00:18:53.000 --> 00:18:58.000 There's 3 schools in the area and each term we have a different school that we work with. 00:18:58.000 --> 00:18:61.000 We send the 5th graders word problems. 00:19:01.000 --> 00:19:04.000 There's an example of what we get back. 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:11.000 They'll do the word problems in their classroom and then the problems come back to Western and our students take a look at them. 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:20.000 This is definitely a way to engage the students because now they're interested in what their kid is doing. There's some personal things going on there. 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:27.000 We look at it and we write a letter to the 5th graders and we praise them for things that they've done well, 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:31.000 and we prompt them on ways they can move forward in their own thinking. 00:19:31.000 --> 00:19:34.000 Then they get a chance to do the problem again. 00:19:34.000 --> 00:19:43.000 And we get it back. So I think hopefully it shows both sets of students that there's value in making mistakes and correcting them and there's more chances in math. 00:19:43.000 --> 00:19:47.000 You can see this person literally did the problem 6 different ways. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:53.000 They get into it after a while and the teachers say they want to please their math buddy so they do a really good job. 00:19:53.000 --> 00:19:60.000 They also write letters to each other. You can see this person said I'm really proud about my work. 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:03.000 At the end of the term, they come to campus. 00:20:03.000 --> 00:20:06.000 So the 5th graders, they get on the bus, you can see they're running 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:10.000 maybe because it's raining but I think they're excited. 00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:18.000 Our math majors make signs and they hold them up and they come and they find each other and they're all excited to meet each other. 00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:25.000 Then we have them do games so the WOU students spend 2 hours being a teacher to these students. 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:35.000 They make their own games, they do a fabulous job, and everybody just has a lot of fun. Look how excited that kid is. There's my daughter. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:39.000 Another thing we do that you may already know about is our Sonia Kovalevsky Day. 00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:45.000 That's for high school girls and we invite them to campus for a day of math fun. 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.000 This was our 12th year. We had 110 girls this year. 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:52.000 This is up about 40 from when I started. 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:59.000 This is exciting. What you see here: have you ever taken a bottle that had some water in it and blown in it and it made a noise? 00:20:59.000 --> 00:20:66.000 You know just for fun. If you change the level of the water it will change the noise, the sound, the note that comes out if we're lucky. 00:21:06.000 --> 00:21:11.000 So what you're seeing here is the students are blowing in the bottle and there's a sensor 00:21:11.000 --> 00:21:17.000 and it's going to graph the sound wave that is made from that effort. 00:21:17.000 --> 00:21:24.000 We tell them what frequency they're shooting for and then they just make that note using water and the sensors. It's pretty fun. 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:29.000 Then at the end, you see somebody's conducting and they're playing Happy Birthday. 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:35.000 We do fun stuff like that. I think that gives them enjoyment and they're sure learning something about math whether they know it or not. 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:41.000 We do a game fair at the end. One of the things that's important is that the math majors, you see some of our math majors here, 00:21:41.000 --> 00:21:44.000 run these sessions and really help out with it. 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:47.000 Some of the math majors have now gone on to become teachers. 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:55.000 You can see here, Tabatha, you might now, Tabatha Mcafee and Anne Sanders one year as our helpers and here they are with their students 00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.000 this year coming back to enjoy Sonia Kovalevsky Day. 00:21:59.000 --> 00:21:63.000 We have a new program in math for elementary math instructional leaders. 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:09.000 In order to affect this change where we want people to understand math the way mathematicians do, 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:14.000 there's a necessity for a deep understanding of the concepts and some training. 00:22:14.000 --> 00:22:21.000 There's been push in the past 10 years for states to adopt standards to train math specialists just like we have reading specialists in the schools. 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:25.000 So in 2013, Oregon adopted such standards. 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:33.000 Laurie Burton and Rachel Harrington and I developed a program at Western to train in-service teachers to be leaders in their building. 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:38.000 We got a grant with TRI to educate people in our program over 3 years. 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:44.000 We're about half way through that grant now and we have about 53 teachers in our program 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:49.000 and it's been amazing to see them grow and see their attitudes change in what they're doing. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:53.000 I asked our teachers that are in the program what they thought math was. 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:58.000 The good new is their answers were just like the mathematicians answers. 00:22:58.000 --> 00:22:64.000 In fact, they really went way out when they told me what they thought math was. I think this is a poem someone wrote. 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:13.000 Fun, interesting, beautiful, frustrating and mind blowing, we'll admit that, but it's also fun. You see diverse and creative. 00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:21.000 One person wrote a long thing where she explained how math is a verb and a noun and an adjective and an adverb. 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:29.000 I would be so bold to say mathematics is life. I want that teacher in front of my kid. I think that's exciting. 00:23:29.000 --> 00:23:36.000 I'm really excited to get these teacher leaders into the classroom and see what they're going to be able to do with our students. 00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:40.000 Now let's not forget the math majors. There are people who come to campus 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:46.000 who already like math. They don't need a lot of convincing and we still need to nurture and push them forward. 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:49.000 Here's some picture of math majors over the past few years. 00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:54.000 One thing that they do that I'm really proud of is in their last year, they do a senior project. 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:63.000 They pick a problem that's important to them and they get to interact with it and make conjectures and give proofs and solve it and become mathematicians. 00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:08.000 Then they go to a conference if we're lucky. We have a regional conference where they get to present what they've done. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:14.000 And showcase what they've done and feel I think I hope really proud about their work. 00:24:14.000 --> 00:24:20.000 Kryptos, for the past 6 years I've been co-authoring a code breaking contest. 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:27.000 You're looking at a code right there, and maybe you can break it, there's a bunch of clocks set out. 00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:36.000 How it works is it's online and every year, at 4 o'clock one Thursday afternoon, we post 3 challenges. 00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:43.000 Students sign up and they log in at 4 and they download the challenges and they try to break them. 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:50.000 Even though I've been saying it should be who's first and who's right, that's how we determine the winner. 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.000 The first people to submit correct solutions, get the honor. 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:59.000 This year we had about 200 students participate and a lot of solutions come in. 00:24:59.000 --> 00:24:62.000 The team that you're looking at here is from France actually. 00:25:02.000 --> 00:25:10.000 They started submitting solutions a couple hours after we posted and if you think about it, that's the middle of the night in France. 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.000 Their advisors told us that they had a lot of fun. 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:20.000 They're holding their certificates of completion and they sent us this picture and they can't wait to do it again next year. 00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.000 It's fun to be able to give opportunities for students like that too. 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:30.000 That's just a few of the fun things that I think that we do here at WOU. There's more. 00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:37.000 In closing, I'll say I think for all of us, part of the fun of our job is sharing what we love with other people. 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:40.000 But students come to WOU with a goal usually. 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:46.000 They want to be leaders, they want to be teachers, they want to be mathematicians, they want to be dancers and artists and writers. 00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:54.000 So the most fulfilling part of my job is when we can create and witness some of those moments happening for them. 00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:56.000 Thank you. 00:25:56.000 --> 00:25:62.000 I do think we're changing. I think that Cheryl and the math department are part of changing how we actually teach math. 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:06.000 Which is maybe we'll change how we think about math. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:18.000 I want to now introduce to you Scott Grim. He is the chair of creative arts and he is going to introduce the Pastega recipient for scholarship. 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:21.000 I met Darryl about 20 years ago. 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:32.000 He was on the search committee that was searching for the new technical director, technical theater instructor, design position that I was interviewing for. 00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:41.000 I don't remember anything else that happened except Darryl's question which I got in advance 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:45.000 and that was how I would fly a dancer above the stage, 00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:50.000 what rigging techniques I would use, how I would get the dancer up off the stage floor. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:60.000 I was in a particularly honest mood at the point in my life and I said I wouldn't because I'm not qualified to. I don't fly people. 00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:06.000 But it's an interview so I brought this other technique where I was going to lift people up on 00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:13.000 some sort of device off the floor that didn't involve picking them up and flying around and they hired me anyway. 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:18.000 And then I was responsible for Rice Auditorium. 00:27:18.000 --> 00:27:27.000 Darryl was the terror of my life for years because he would get into Rice Auditorium and he'd start drilling holes into it. 00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:35.000 He would start stringing cables and he would start doing things to this building I was responsible for. It's like what are you doing? 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:38.000 Why are you doing this to this perfectly lovely building? 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:43.000 Well why he was doing it is because Darryl is driven. 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:46.000 I don't know what he would say about his dance, maybe we'll find out. 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:53.000 What I would say about Darryl and dance is that he innovates hard. 00:27:53.000 --> 00:27:58.000 He pushes the envelope hard to find new ways to do things. 00:27:58.000 --> 00:27:63.000 He's looking, in my own point of view, he probably describes what he does differently, 00:28:04.000 --> 00:28:13.000 I think Darryl is always looking for new ways to get the dance movements, the dancers bodies to integrate in a larger environment. 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:20.000 We're all fairly used to flat dance floor, dancers moving in 2 dimensions, 3 if they do lifts. 00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.000 Darryl's looking for something outside of that. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:29.000 And he's always asking what it? 00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:33.000 So once I got over my terror of what he was going to do to the building, 00:28:33.000 --> 00:28:42.000 and the equipment and what not, once I started really paying attention to what was being produced on stage, I saw 00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:49.000 a really amazing process and eventually I saw something I could take part in which once I got over myself and 00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:54.000 dove into working with him, it's some of the most fun I've ever had in theater. 00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:62.000 Darryl will find ways to move in different ways. When I first got here it was this how do I fly people? 00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:09.000 Learned another thing about Darryl: if the people on hand can't do the thing he wants done, he'll find them elsewhere. 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:14.000 He'll find them in Portland or in China or he'll go as far as it takes to bring somebody in. 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:18.000 Luckily he found somebody in Portland that could rig fly systems and fly dancers. 00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:27.000 Within not too long after I got here, there were people spinning through the air on wires on the Rice Auditorium stage and it was cool. 00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:32.000 It was interesting and different and he did that and then he moved onto some other thing to do. 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:38.000 His first what if that I experienced was what if the dancers could move on the z-axis. 00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:45.000 Alright so he did the fly thing, did that, moved on. Then we had a giant net, suspended. 00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:52.000 If you've been here long enough, you remember the giant net that swooped down out of the flies and curved up toward the front of the stage. 00:29:52.000 --> 00:29:59.000 People could dance on the floor, people could be crawling around on the net, they could be hanging from the net, they could be moving back and forth. 00:29:59.000 --> 00:29:65.000 It was really cool and it tied into the building in all kinds of places and he explored that for a while. 00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:12.000 Then he moved onto his next thing and it's been 20 years, I don't know how long you've been here Darryl, I don't actually remember. 00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:16.000 But for me it's been 20 years of Darryl saying what if. 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:20.000 What if the dancers had wheels on their feet? 00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.000 In line skates. What if the wheels were powered? Segway. 00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:29.000 What if we could cut off the pole on the Segway so you could just stand on it? Well that didn't work. 00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:37.000 But eventually technology will catch up with Darryl. I keep seeing that happening. So eventually you get these what are they called, hover boards. 00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:46.000 Which if you saw the dance concert, that was really cool. I want a hover board in spite of the fact I know I would die on a hover board. 00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:53.000 But they're moving. What if dancers can move under some sort of motorized thing on their feet? 00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:57.000 What if dancers can interact with a projection? 00:30:57.000 --> 00:30:65.000 Some sort of projected technology that dancers can interact with, that's been a theme for a number of years as he's exploring it. 00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.000 The earliest one I remember is what if the dancers can get into a video game. 00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:15.000 That was a video projection thing. What if they can move back and forth between stage and in this video game. 00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:22.000 Then this was about the time somebody else became responsible for the building and I could leave that alone and become a designer. 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:25.000 That's when I really started enjoying Darryl cause I didn't have to worry about the building anymore. 00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:32.000 We collaborated on Melt. That was amazingly fun. I love Melt. 00:31:32.000 --> 00:31:41.000 That had to do with how can the projections and the bodies work together. There's that moment where it's just stars 00:31:41.000 --> 00:31:46.000 and dancers moving through stars and the form is revealed by stars. 00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:53.000 What if they can interact? Now he's moving into how can the video interact with the dancers instead of just the dancers following the video? 00:31:53.000 --> 00:31:58.000 Motion capture, motion tracking. 00:31:58.000 --> 00:31:66.000 I saw Darryl take a 4000 dollar computer and crash it hard because the technology wasn't quite keeping up with everything he was trying to do on stage. 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:10.000 Another thing I learned about Darryl, he doesn't let that stop him. 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:17.000 If the technology fails him, he'll come back with different technology and hit it from one angle after another. 00:32:17.000 --> 00:32:22.000 And explore that cutting edge until he can make something that works. 00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:30.000 So he's in the middle of that now with projection I think. I don't think you're done with projection yet. I think there's more to explore there. 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:38.000 He will relentlessly hit these problems from different angles until he discovers something that works. 00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:41.000 Interacting with the audience. 00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:45.000 What if the dance and the audience can interact? 00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:52.000 I'm not sure where that's going yet but does it have to do with cameras pointing at the audience and capturing stuff? 00:32:52.000 --> 00:32:57.000 Does it have to do with, I've seen him work with phones. Selfie, the dance number Selfie if you've seen it, 00:32:57.000 --> 00:32:66.000 is kind of a trip into this interactive. What if the dance and the audience interact in some way? I'm not sure where that's going. 00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:16.000 I would guess that as more interactive digital technology's come about, Darryl will grab a hold of those and run with them. 00:33:16.000 --> 00:33:25.000 About once a term, Darryl will stop by the office and I've come to really count on these as part of my own just enjoying my year and 00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:30.000 I'll save up all of these what ifs because yet another thing I know about Darryl, 00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:36.000 he collaborates really well and he loves to take other people's what ifs. 00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:40.000 He loves to take inspiration from wherever he can find it. 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:47.000 I will save up all the weird ideas I can until Darryl has time to talk about them and I'll pitch what ifs at him. 00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:50.000 I usually try to have 3 or 4 or 5 or 6. 00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:55.000 I would guess maybe 1 out of 100 doesn't get discarded out of hand. 00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:63.000 As impractical or not leading to something that he's trying to do with his dancers, it's fine, but every great once in a while Darryl will take one of my what ifs 00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:08.000 and then all of a sudden, we can play with it and we can see what it does. 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:13.000 Hey Darryl what if we hang white ropes on the stage and use them as projection surfaces? 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:20.000 If Fantasy for Strings is a dance piece you've seen, you've seen the answer to what if 00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:26.000 it's a jungle of ropes on stage and each rope is a projection screen. Well the answer to what if is well that's a real pain. 00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:31.000 Every time the rope moves, the projection doesn't fall on it anymore. But it's beautiful. 00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:44.000 It's an amazing thing so having tasted that now and being able to work with Darryl on a what if is such an amazing experience, I want to keep doing that. 00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:47.000 I'm guessing as a dancer, you want to keep doing that. 00:34:47.000 --> 00:34:52.000 It's got to be an amazing experience, working through these ideas, developing them. 00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:63.000 If you watch Rainbow Dance year after year, what you'll see is ideas forming, getting tried out, going back to the drawing board, turning into a new thing, 00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:09.000 and you'll get it to really really worse and he throws that sucker away and goes onto his next what if. 00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:16.000 He brings them out every now and then because they're cool and they're a wonderful thing to take on tour. 00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:21.000 As a designer and fellow faculty, this is what I see when I see Darryl. 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:29.000 Someone that's really pushing technology, pushing the dancers, finding answers to these what if questions. 00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:32.000 There's a whole lot of other wonderful things he's doing. 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:41.000 Rainbow Dance in it's very foundation has to do with ethnicity, multiple ethnicities. 00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:50.000 Some really deep themes that he also explores bringing in music and dance styles from a lot of different places. 00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:55.000 He weaves a lot into what he does and this is research. 00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:63.000 Creative arts is a place where research doesn't end up looking like a book. It ends up looking like a performance. 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:06.000 That's a really wonderful place to be. 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:14.000 One final note, one last thing I know about Darryl, is in spite of all of this drive 00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:20.000 and in spite of the fact that he pushes hard, he pushes technology hard, he pushes people hard, 00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.000 he does it with an amazing amount of caring and compassion. 00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:35.000 He is one of the kindest human beings I know which also makes working with him on these sometimes really stressful, getting it all to work, 00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.000 things to work, he makes it a real joy. 00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:47.000 I look forward to whatever he's going to show us today and please help me welcome Darryl Thomas. 00:36:47.000 --> 00:36:52.000 I mean Scott's really given my whole spiel so I can probably just keep it very short. 00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:56.000 I feel very fortunate to be in a place where there is that feeling of collaboration 00:36:56.000 --> 00:36:61.000 where I can work with other faculty and I can learn from other faculty and I can learn from students. 00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:08.000 I feel again, that's my place to really take all the different information from different things that are unrelated 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.000 and sort of weave them together and find out how they can express themselves through dance. 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:18.000 Again, that's my idea of serendipity is this idea that these chance occurrences that are fortuitous. 00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:22.000 Fortuitous in the sense that when I look back on them, they're fortuitous. 00:37:22.000 --> 00:37:24.000 In many cases they're sort of disruptive 00:37:24.000 --> 00:37:28.000 meaning it's uncomfortable, something happened that I didn't plan for, 00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:31.000 that I didn't want to happen, that I wanted to go in a different way 00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:38.000 but working through it caused me to kind of innovate and to find a new way and to find something exciting out of that. 00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:45.000 Out of that, I look back and say wow I'm so glad that that happened because it really took me in a good place. 00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:47.000 I want to show you one of the examples: 00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:54.000 A commercial I worked on years ago with Pilobolus and talk about collaboration. They're really into collaboration. 00:37:54.000 --> 00:37:56.000 But it's sort of chaotic. 00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:60.000 Everybody is doing everything and everybody's got thousands of ideas 00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:02.000 and there's all these things happening and it's really crazy. 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:05.000 For those of you that have been in rehearsal with me you know what it's sort of like, 00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:08.000 how all these ideas are happening and it's crazy and it's wild. 00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:16.000 But again out of that cacophony comes something really amazing. So I just want to show you just a little bit of that right now. 00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:28.000 music 00:38:28.000 --> 00:38:40.000 music 00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:52.000 music 00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:64.000 music 00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:06.000 music 00:39:06.000 --> 00:39:14.000 The all new Hundai Santa Fe. Flexable, agile and for whatever shape life takes. 00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:20.000 So it was one of those situations where people were offering ideas and concepts and saying let's try this, let's do this. 00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.000 All of a sudden out of that, we came up with this. 00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:27.000 I feel every fortunate that that happened. 00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:32.000 There are kinds of disruptions that you can see, that are planned or are sort of planned 00:39:32.000 --> 00:39:36.000 and I try to create those sort of interactions with Scott or interactions with faculty. 00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:41.000 And then there's sort of the unforeseen kinds of disruptions that happen. 00:39:41.000 --> 00:39:44.000 Those are the ones you can't plan for. They just sort of happen 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:46.000 and they force you to go in a different direction. 00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:55.000 For example, when we were creating Selfie, I'd been working with a motion tracking artist who is a pioneer in the field. 00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:58.000 He and I had been working for more than a year on this project. 00:40:04.000 --> 00:40:08.000 he calls me up and says I can't do this anymore because I'm sick. 00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:12.000 I have an intestinal problem and his doctor wouldn't allow him to travel. 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:20.000 So I'm left all of a sudden without any way to do this very complex, computerized idea of the computer tracking the dancers movement. 00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:25.000 We'd been working on this for months, like I said, over a year, and now he's bowing out. 00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:30.000 I'm in a situation where now I have to find someone and see if we can put this together. 00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:35.000 I searched the internet and I called people and I eventually find somebody in Hungary. 00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:44.000 Gabor Papp. He and I, we connect, I think ok this can possibly work but we're going to have to scale back the amount of 00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:48.000 interactions or effects that we can do because of the time limitations. 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:52.000 I said I don't really want to scale back. How can we push it? I need more. I need something more. 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:56.000 Because I have a dance that has to be about an hour long eventually 00:40:56.000 --> 00:40:60.000 and I just can't have 1 or 2 effects because we don't have the time. 00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.000 So we keep exploring and we go back and forth and eventually we come up with the idea of 00:41:04.000 --> 00:41:08.000 what's called operator based tracking. 00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:14.000 One kind of tracking, the computer simply looks out and sees the dancer and puts the effect behind the dancer's body 00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:17.000 and as the dancer moves, the effect shifts with the dancer's body. 00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:22.000 The other kind of effect is where there's an operator in the back of the house or back of the stage 00:41:22.000 --> 00:41:27.000 looking at the dancer and making the effect track their movement and track their body movement. 00:41:27.000 --> 00:41:35.000 It was a pretty brilliant idea that we came up with because what it allows is much more complexity in terms of the interaction. 00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:37.000 Let me show you a little bit of that now. 00:41:37.000 --> 00:41:48.000 music 00:41:48.000 --> 00:41:60.000 music 00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:12.000 music 00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:24.000 music 00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:36.000 music 00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:48.000 music 00:42:48.000 --> 00:42:60.000 music 00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:08.000 music 00:43:08.000 --> 00:43:12.000 So all of those effects, I'm controlling in the back of the house. 00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:17.000 Looking at them, looking at the dancer moving and then shifting those effects around. 00:43:17.000 --> 00:43:22.000 Again it's a very different kind of effect than if you have just a computer algorithm that simply just automatically 00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:28.000 just doing whatever the program is and following the dancer's movement. 00:43:28.000 --> 00:43:31.000 Again it really offers this idea of disruption. 00:43:31.000 --> 00:43:36.000 We wound up coming up with things that are much more interesting than had I stayed with the original guy that I worked with. 00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:43.000 So I feel very fortunate in that way. Again as I look back at that experience, at the time I was very very upset and very stressed out 00:43:43.000 --> 00:43:46.000 feeling like how are we going to make this happen in two months 00:43:46.000 --> 00:43:52.000 but then in the end it worked out much better. As I look back, I say it was one of those fortuitous things that happens. 00:43:52.000 --> 00:43:56.000 Now there are other things that are sort of planned for. 00:43:56.000 --> 00:43:61.000 It's the idea that how do you create these occurrences, these sort of serendipities that happen. 00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:08.000 One of the ways in which we do that, or at least I do that, is I like to talk to faculty. I like to grab Scott's ear and say hey what do you see happening here 00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:12.000 in the related fields or in other fields that are unrelated. 00:44:12.000 --> 00:44:17.000 I might talk to someone in physics and say you know what's happening in this or this is interesting me, what do you think about this? 00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:23.000 Just to get an idea, I've been talking to Karen for the last couple years. We've been talking about ants. 00:44:23.000 --> 00:44:27.000 So eventually there'll be some kind of ant dance that we'll do at some point. 00:44:27.000 --> 00:44:35.000 So it's always sort of looking for these ideas and looking at faculty for these ideas of where can we go from there, what can I learn from you, 00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:42.000 what do you have that you can share with me that I can then take and then put together into a form of a dance. 00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:49.000 One of the things that happens: I went to a concert years ago with Michael Phillips and I saw something onstage, they were doing a theater production 00:44:49.000 --> 00:44:52.000 and I saw they had these costumes on, I thought it was interesting. 00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:57.000 The wire was wrapped around the costume, they were all one color and they had big hands and they stood in one place 00:44:57.000 --> 00:44:63.000 and they moved around and they did some shapes and I thought oh that's interesting right there. I can use that. 00:45:03.000 --> 00:45:09.000 Because they stood in place and I thought oh I'm a dancer, I can really make this move and do a lot more things with that. 00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:14.000 What can I do with that? Let me just show you what the costume looked like and then I'll tell you and show you what I eventually did with it. 00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:27.000 This is the costume or sort of an idea. Sort of a mock-up of the costume. 00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:32.000 They had simply one color. The wire was sort of wrapped around the body in this way. 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:39.000 And then there was some way that they turned it on but I can actually turn them on here. Oops wrong one. There we go. 00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:45.000 So you can see here there's two colors. So I added a second color. 00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.000 I added a switch so we could turn off one side, we could turn off the bottom 00:45:49.000 --> 00:45:52.000 and to create these different effects using this costume. 00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:57.000 I sort of copied what she did in terms of the costume, in terms of the basic outline 00:45:57.000 --> 00:45:63.000 because I had to learn, I'd never sautered anything, never put together anything like this, so it was the idea of how do I learn how to do this myself. 00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:09.000 I simply copied it and then began to sort of innovate and create and make changes about that. 00:46:09.000 --> 00:46:11.000 So we added puppets to it. 00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:15.000 We said okay we have this, what can we do? I had one of the art students, I said can you make something for me? 00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:22.000 You know we had this idea of evolution or metamorphosis. She said oh yes we can make a caterpillar so she made a caterpillar out of the same material. 00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:26.000 I said lets go a little further. Can we go from there? She make a butterfly. 00:46:26.000 --> 00:46:29.000 So we had a huge butterly that we wore, that the person wore. 00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:35.000 So we had this sort of evolution that all come out of this idea of just this light wire wrapped around the costuming. 00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:38.000 And then the fact that we could then turn it on and turn it off. 00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:47.000 I could have people dressed in black, carrying somebody or flying somebody using this costume here so it looks like they're floating in the air. 00:46:47.000 --> 00:46:50.000 Again all just sort of playing around, innovating, finding out. 00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:57.000 And I use the dancers. We work together and we play together and we find out vocabulary, things that we can do all using this material. 00:46:57.000 --> 00:46:65.000 So it really is a collaborative effort. I'm really relying on the strengths of the people I work with to help to do this work. 00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:10.000 So from there we went on, let this go for a couple years. 00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:17.000 An actually before I did that, I got a call from America's Got Talent. They said hey we like what you do. We've seen what you do on the internet. 00:47:17.000 --> 00:47:20.000 Come and be on our show. And I thought hmm. 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:28.000 That's kind of scary because theatrical dance and entertainment dance are really 2 different animals and they look for 2 different things. 00:47:28.000 --> 00:47:34.000 The audience is very different for 1. You can take a 20 minute piece and do it in the theater and that's fine. 00:47:34.000 --> 00:47:39.000 On television, they want 35 seconds, they might want a minute. 00:47:39.000 --> 00:47:42.000 It's very very quick and it has to be very to the point and it's flash and dash. 00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:48.000 I thought okay, I'm really skeptical about this but I'm going to give this a shot and see what it finds out. 00:47:48.000 --> 00:47:52.000 So I thought this is interesting. I haven't seen anyone herein Oregon or here Monmouth doing this. 00:47:52.000 --> 00:47:56.000 So let's see. We'll try this on stage and see what happens. 00:47:56.000 --> 00:47:64.000 I got on stage and oh what's his name. Oh Sharon Osbourne and Howie and all the people were there and they were like ah we hate it. 00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:07.000 What was this? What were you doing? We didn't understand your metaphor, what you're trying to do. 00:48:07.000 --> 00:48:10.000 And they were like really trashing it. 00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:19.000 So on 1 level I expected. I was hurt you know I was like oh. But I sort of expected that they would not, it was not the kind of thing that they'd interested in. 00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:24.000 But I wanted to find out what they were interested in, what was really interesting to them. 00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:32.000 So I started searching back and I think it was Scott that showed me on of the places where someone had done something similar to this. 00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:41.000 I looked on there and I found out what they were doing was that they were actually turning the lights on and off in a way that we couldn't do manually. 00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:44.000 Everything here on this suit is manual. 00:48:44.000 --> 00:48:52.000 Someone was using a computer to turn the suits on and off and so that gave them a lot more complexity in terms of the kinds of images and things they could create. 00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:55.000 So that became my search for how to do this by computer. 00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:63.000 Eventually I contacted a guy, Ben Peoples, and actually I think it was through Scott as well for a contact, who eventually made this for me. 00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:08.000 And it's a little wireless device that allows me to plug the wires into this. 00:49:08.000 --> 00:49:12.000 So it has 6 sections and each section I can turn on and turn off. 00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:21.000 We created this dance using sort of the Adam and Eve theme of the Garden of Eden and created what's called the Owl and Serpent using this. 00:49:21.000 --> 00:49:25.000 Each suit is actually 2 different costumes. 00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:32.000 Because once the wire's turned off, you don't see the wire so we actually made a serpent and an owl and I'll show you that right now. 00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:42.000 I'm sure if you look at it's hard to tell what's what. It looks like just a conglomeration of wires but actually there is sort of a serpent face here. 00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:48.000 And the serpent skin and the serpent arms and there's actually an owl in this. 00:49:48.000 --> 00:49:52.000 And depending on which lights you turn on and which turn off determines what you see. 00:49:52.000 --> 00:49:55.000 Let me show you a little video and it will make more sense. 00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:63.000 music 00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:07.000 So those are our original suits what we started with. 00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:20.000 music 00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:25.000 An this is our evolution, added puppets. 00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:36.000 music 00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:40.000 music 00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:43.000 We added a backdrop that changes. 00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:56.000 music 00:50:56.000 --> 00:50:68.000 music 00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:20.000 music 00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:32.000 music 00:51:32.000 --> 00:51:44.000 music 00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:56.000 music 00:51:56.000 --> 00:51:58.000 music 00:51:58.000 --> 00:51:62.000 Again it just gives you an idea of what's possible and sort of the evolution that things have taken for me. 00:52:02.000 --> 00:52:06.000 It's all this idea, and I think that Scott really said it best, is really what it? 00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:13.000 What if we can do this? What if we can try this? I feel fortunate that I'm in a place where I get a chance to do that. 00:52:13.000 --> 00:52:19.000 Where I get a chance to explore, to try these different things and unbelievably so get paid for which is really amazing. 00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:23.000 I know I'm not supposed to say that. 00:52:23.000 --> 00:52:26.000 But actually it's a really enjoyable thing. 00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:32.000 Sometimes fortuitous things happen and you look back on them and you say they're fortuitous and that sense on retrospection, 00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:37.000 but in some cases when they're actually happening, they're very disruptive and very uncomfortable. 00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:45.000 The last dance that I'm going to show you is actually a dance, that Valerie and I are going to perform for you, that came out of that situation. 00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:50.000 Before I do that, I should talk a little bit about Rainbow. So what is Rainbow Dance Theater? 00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:59.000 It's our professional dance company that we use to sort of do this work, to refine it, to take it out into the real world. Real world meaning beyond the university. 00:52:59.000 --> 00:52:65.000 Because in the university we have weeks in the theater. We can sit there, we can try this and tweak that and tweak this. 00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:11.000 But when you go out into the real world in the theater, they say you have 1 or 2 days and you have to get that thing up 00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:14.000 and you have to get it running and it has to run perfectly the first time. 00:53:14.000 --> 00:53:22.000 So it really forces us to refine it and to get it cleaned up and to streamline it so that everything works really well. 00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:28.000 It gives me that opportunity to really crystallize and to work on the work in terms of the artistic work. 00:53:28.000 --> 00:53:33.000 On the other side, it's an opportunity for our dancers, for the alumni. 00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:37.000 We actually hire our alumni. There are dancers that are workers, they get paid. 00:53:37.000 --> 00:53:41.000 We hire student workers as student dancers. They also get paid as well. 00:53:41.000 --> 00:53:46.000 It's a chance for them to explore the dance world, to try it out, to see is this really what I want to do? 00:53:46.000 --> 00:53:54.000 Or for those that have graduated, to say this is their first job, their real dancing job for them to start at and in some cases to stay. 00:53:54.000 --> 00:53:57.000 We have some that have been with us for about 6 years now, to stay with us. 00:53:57.000 --> 00:53:63.000 So it's really an opportunity to do both things, work on the work but also give opportunity for our dancers. 00:54:03.000 --> 00:54:09.000 The last dance that we're going to show you is a dance that's called Plantation Lullaby. 00:54:09.000 --> 00:54:13.000 It's a dance that I created back when I was at the University of Florida many years ago. 00:54:13.000 --> 00:54:20.000 I had just left Pilobolus and I just started dancing. This was my first guest artist position. 00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:25.000 And the woman who hired me was actually my old undergraduate teacher. 00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:35.000 She said to me, she called me into her office one day and she said "You know what. You should be in my office everyday asking me what you can do for me." 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:40.000 I thought "Hmm okay I'm in the South, I know." 00:54:43.000 --> 00:54:46.000 So I thought okay. 00:54:46.000 --> 00:54:55.000 So she called me and she said, "I want you to come to my house. We're going to have a meeting at 8 o'clock in the evening and leave your wife at home." 00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:61.000 It was really clear. It had this real icky kind of feeling about what was going on. 00:55:01.000 --> 00:55:09.000 Here I am in a university nonetheless but it feeling like a sort of academic plantation as it were. 00:55:09.000 --> 00:55:16.000 And here she is, the mistress there, wanting me to sing this sort of lullaby as it were. 00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:22.000 So the dance I call Plantation Lullaby for that very reason, that it came out of that sort of experience. 00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:29.000 That sort of experience of control and sexual tension and all of that kind of stuff that was there. 00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:38.000 The interesting thing about it was that I do the dance and I realize this is really not the place for me. 00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:44.000 I'd really like to be here and it was my first job and I was like they're going to have a position here that's going to open up 00:55:44.000 --> 00:55:48.000 that's going to go tenure track and I really would love to be here since I'm already here and I know the people. 00:55:48.000 --> 00:55:53.000 But you know it really wasn't the right place for me and that really made it clear that it wasn't the right place for me. 00:55:53.000 --> 00:55:59.000 It was because of that that I wound up here at Western which is sort of the irony of it all. 00:55:59.000 --> 00:55:63.000 Of course I look back on that and I say "Wow, how fortuitous." 00:56:03.000 --> 00:56:07.000 So I'll do this last dance for you that's called Plantation Lullaby. 00:56:07.000 --> 00:57:35.000 music 00:57:36.000 --> 00:57:64.000 music 00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:48.000 music 00:58:48.000 --> 00:58:60.000 music 00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:28.000 music 00:59:28.000 --> 00:60:28.000 music 01:00:28.000 --> 01:00:51.000 music 01:00:51.000 --> 01:00:60.000 applause 01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:12.000 Call forward president Fuller and president Fuller will also invite our guest from the Pastega family, Ken, to come up to say some words too. 01:01:12.000 --> 01:01:16.000 Ken if you'd like to join me for a quick comment or two, it'd be great to have you do that. 01:01:16.000 --> 01:01:21.000 Your family has been so supportive of the university all these years and while you're coming up, 01:01:21.000 --> 01:01:28.000 one of the most recent gifts is to support the College of Education Woodcock Center to add to our ability to have that open on time in Fall. 01:01:28.000 --> 01:01:34.000 The Pastega family added a gift to help us with that effort as well just recently as last year. 01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:40.000 So their gifts continue to the university beyond the work they've done here recognizing our faculty. 01:01:41.000 --> 01:01:48.000 applause 01:01:48.000 --> 01:01:54.000 This is really a fun event today, the dancing and your all about mathematics. 01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:60.000 It's always nice to drive back up to this campus. I had a son that graduated here and I went to school here. 01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:06.000 The family's had a real connection here and my dad just loved the energy coming from here. 01:02:06.000 --> 01:02:12.000 All the passion and for the teachers and the faculty was here was just amazing. 01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:19.000 He always loved educators because he spoke Italian in the first grade. 01:02:19.000 --> 01:02:25.000 So they took him under their wing and helped him through his life. 01:02:25.000 --> 01:02:29.000 He graduated high school at 16 and went on to college. 01:02:29.000 --> 01:02:32.000 My mother's family had a different philosophy. 01:02:32.000 --> 01:02:39.000 My grandfather, he goes, his name is Louise, he was a baker, a banker and a butcher. 01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:47.000 He said we're an American family now. Italian will no longer be spoken in our house. 01:02:47.000 --> 01:02:55.000 So you had 2 different flavors of how they approached being American citizens. 01:02:55.000 --> 01:02:64.000 Especially with dad, the teachers nurtured him and he just respected them all of his life. 01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:09.000 Coming here was just a feel good situation that brought him back to his past. 01:03:09.000 --> 01:03:17.000 Anyway it was a very enjoyable day today to come up here and see everything that's going on on the campus. 01:03:17.000 --> 01:03:23.000 It's a beautiful campus, all the new buildings and energy here. It's excellent. 01:03:23.000 --> 01:03:36.000 Rex being here the first year is just, he's probably overwhelmed sometimes, but with all of you working with him it's going to be successful into the future. 01:03:36.000 --> 01:03:37.000 Thanks for having us. 01:03:37.000 --> 01:03:44.000 applause 01:03:44.000 --> 01:03:49.000 Well as Ken just mentioned, this is my first opportunity to be here for this wonderful event. 01:03:49.000 --> 01:03:54.000 It's also my first time following a dance to have a chance to speak. It's never happened to me before either. 01:03:54.000 --> 01:03:58.000 He added another first and a good example of what makes Western so great. 01:03:58.000 --> 01:03:64.000 One of the quotes that often times is spoken at this event is one that we should go back to. 01:04:04.000 --> 01:04:09.000 Which is a quote from the Pastega family. 01:04:09.000 --> 01:04:16.000 Especially Mario has said "One hundred years from now, it won't matter how much wealth we had 01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:21.000 or how much prestige, but if along our path of life 01:04:21.000 --> 01:04:25.000 we gave a helping hand to fellow human beings, it will make a difference." 01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:30.000 It is that notion of making a difference that makes Western so great in terms of the students we serve today. 01:04:30.000 --> 01:04:36.000 I can tell you that the gifts that the Pastega family have given to the university make a difference in helping our faculty 01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:40.000 aspire to great things and you've seen 2 great examples of that today. 01:04:40.000 --> 01:04:45.000 What's great about that is it translates into the work our students do. 01:04:45.000 --> 01:04:51.000 I had a chance to go to the first dance performance this last weekend and see that work, 40 years strong. 01:04:51.000 --> 01:04:59.000 And see the performing arts at their best here on campus as well as the work we saw Cheryl Beaver talk about in terms of all the events 01:04:59.000 --> 01:04:64.000 really turn around STEM education in math in particular, to have women 01:05:04.000 --> 01:05:11.000 lead the way for other women to then not be afraid of math the way earlier generations had that stigma attached to it. 01:05:11.000 --> 01:05:19.000 That's really path breaking work that matters and it's exciting to be at a place where the faculty lead the way on both those issues in terms of 01:05:19.000 --> 01:05:24.000 what happens in the classroom but also what happens with their creative works and their scholarly activities. 01:05:24.000 --> 01:05:28.000 The donations that the Pastega have made have made a difference in this university. 01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:33.000 In really our mark of distinction that will, I think, take us years into the future. 01:05:33.000 --> 01:05:39.000 At the beginning, Provost Scheck said we're 30 plus years into honoring this tradition. 01:05:39.000 --> 01:05:42.000 It's my pleasure to be here and be part of this going forward. 01:05:42.000 --> 01:05:48.000 I add my congratulations to Dr. Beaver and Dr. Thomas for their contributions and their recognition 01:05:48.000 --> 01:05:58.000 and look forward to opportunities to meet with them and share more refreshments as we have a chance to talk about what might be next. 01:05:58.000 --> 01:05:61.000 I think we should take the challenge that Scott and Darryl gave us is "What if?" 01:06:01.000 --> 01:06:07.000 What if we were to begin to think about what's next in terms of our respective roles at Western? 01:06:07.000 --> 01:06:10.000 Should we be a place where people say how did Western do that? 01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:18.000 I wonder what they did and how they accomplished such great things going forward for a university serving the great state of Oregon. 01:06:18.000 --> 01:06:22.000 So again it's a great pleasure to be here for my first time. 01:06:22.000 --> 01:06:29.000 To the Pastega family, thank you so much for your continuity of purpose and your gifts of generosity to the university. 01:06:29.000 --> 01:06:36.000 They pay great dividends and they make a true difference in who we are as educators here at Western. Thank you. 01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:43.000 applause