Founders Day 2024

18 October 2024:

I am really fond of this photo from an improtu decision by some Sigma Tau Delta students to march in the Founders Day parade. 

Commencement 2022

7 May 2022: Was too busy ambassador-ing most of the day to get too many pictures, but graduation was really joyful. Will really miss this group of students (something I say every year because it's always true).

15 years!

26 April 2022: Got my "15 years of service" pin and certificate today! Hard to believe it, but I will now officially stop thinking of myself as "new." 

How quickly the last five have gone by. And how slowly. Such is time...

"Shepherd Stars"

19 March 2022: One of the coolest things I've done this semester is record the very first "Shepherd Stars" video with one of the best students I've ever taught, Brianna. Just got to see the finished product yesterday. She is amazing and makes me so proud. Always has.

Accepted Students Day 2022

5 March 2022: How many programs can ask ten students to give up their Saturday mornings and have them ALL say yes without any hesitation? Wish I got a picture of all of them...

Walking on Sunshine

3 February 2022: It was cloudy and rainy all day, but I did something today that made me feel like I was walking on sunshine: a Zoom session with one of my favorite former students for this initiative University Marketing is working on. We were the first ones--the pilot, if you will--and it went so well. She was amazing (of course she was). It was just such a pleasure to talk with her, hear her speak so authentically and movingly about her time at Shepherd, and to see what a confident, professional, and decent person she is now. And we helped her do that. We got to help her do that. 

It's no secret that I've been really down lately. And this doesn't mean everything is better now. But what a reminder that I am blessed, blessed, blessed. 

Burst of progress...

3 January 2022: Had a huge burst of progress today with my Poe seminar syllabus. I last taught this class in 2010--and on a TR schedule--so I didn't want to just do what I did last time. Plus, I've grown and learned some things about teaching since then. Anyway, still some more pieces to hammer out, but if all goes as planned, I might finish that "Winter Break To-Do List" in the next couple of days. 

Started the day, by the way, with an on-campus rapid COVID test, a requirement of everyone when they return to campus. (I kind of never left. Ha.) Negative, thank goodness. (Also took one on the morning Hannah and I painted...) Something about seeing all these Shepherd folks (staff, mostly) coming together to run this big operation gets to me, just like it always does. I want to cry, it's so lovely. This is a very special place. 

Two parades in two days...

23 October 2021: Homecoming parade this morning!

Founders Day 2021

22 October 2021: So much fun to be able to have a real Founders Day again.

Tree planting

9 October 2021: Busy Saturday! Planted some trees with the Sigma Tau Delta students at Tabler Farm, which is starting a sustainable food forest. Spent the rest of the day cleaning, grading, moving furniture (long story!), seeing SU volleyball win again, and attending another concert at Dow and Annette's. Tired but in a mostly good way.

Orientation 2021!

9 July 2021: Excited to hand out swag to students on campus for orientation!

Add it to the list...

24 March 2021: Add to the list of things I never thought would be part of my job: posing with the mascot to raise money.

Testing...

 14 August 2020: Got my mandatory COVID test today. (It was fine--didn't have to use the long swab; my eyes watered a bit, but it was fine.) Shepherd had a smooth operation going--friendly volunteers, very little waiting, everything clear and pretty easy. The nursing student who administered my test was so kind and pleasant. Of course, I always have a soft spot for our nursing students--my heart kind of swells when I see them in their scrubs. 

As I was walking back to my office, I stopped for a moment, ostensibly to fix my mask, put my earbuds back in, etc. But really, I had to stop and collect myself because the whole experience moved me so. Here was our lovely little community in action and in person, something I haven't seen in person since March. Here they were, working hard on a complicated and long task because they love this place, they love this community, they want to keep people safe, and they want this re-opening to work. 

That last part seems the most tenuous, of course. But the other parts? So lovely and bittersweet to see. A reminder of how much I love Shepherd and all of these folks. 

Happy birthday, JC!

20 March 2019: I wish there was a video available/shareable online (not sure if this link will work for long), but today we celebrated the second birthday of JC the ram, Shepherd's mascot. Watching that ram tear into his granola-topped birthday cake delighted me.

Record Breaker...

4 January 2018: I've been to two Shepherd women's basketball games this season and at both games Morgan Arden, a senior, broke records. In the game I saw just before Christmas, not only did she win the game with a buzzer-beating three-pointer (one of the most thrilling live sports moments I've ever seen), but she also became the all-time leading scorer in Shepherd history. It was amazing.

Tonight, she scored 40 points and broke the Shepherd record for most points in a game. It, too, was amazing. My favorite part, though, was watching her face tonight as she realized how "on" she was, sinking basket after basket (so many from downtown, too!), hitting nothing but net. I leaned over to Amy and said, "Look how much fun she's having." But it was so charming because she was also trying to keep a game-face on. I am sure it's a night she'll remember for a long time. And I'll remember how much fun it was to watch her having fun.

Three quick good things...

It's been a long and sometimes stressful week. And we are just gearing up for the big, crazy, busy dash towards graduation. So deep breaths and all that... But in the midst of the not-so-great stuff, I want to share three pretty good things...

1) The redbud tree in the backyard, more beautiful this year than ever before. 

2) This pin, given in recognition of my TEN years at Shepherd. TEN YEARS? Wow. 

3) This card, given to me by the two students I took to Louisville last week. They are just terrific and boy, did this make me smile. 

Ram Tracks and Battering Ram...

3 September 2016: This post's title comes from the two flavors of Shepherd-centric ice-cream my friend Amy and I were scooping up as we helped sell concessions at Saturday's opening football game. Sigma Tau Delta stood to earn some money from helping sell concessions, but we needed eight volunteers--with almost no notice. And right now, we barely have eight student members. So I volunteered to help and, because she is just plain awesome, Amy joined me. She's also a Sigma Tau Delta alum, though she's now a professor of Sociology. Anyway, we had fun and did some good work for the organization.

Go Rams!

Despite my complicated feelings about football, I am so proud of these guys. GO RAMS!

Graduation

10 May 2014: Graduation is a day that makes it quite easy to feel thankful: for my job, my friends/colleagues, and for the students who have achieved so much. And, for the heck of it, I'll include this picture of some of my favorite colleagues.

Campus construction and Walden

Every time I teach Walden and we get to the conclusion, we spend some time talking about this passage:

"I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!" 

I explain to students that when I read this section, I always think of a certain path on Roanoke's campus, back when I was an undergrad. Roanoke has all of these really lovely brick paths, but this particular path wasn't paved--it was a shortcut students made to sort of bisect an angle made by pre-existing paths. Over the years I was there, the landscapers would reseed that section, but soon enough, the grass would get trampled and that brown, worn-down (and sometimes muddy) path would reemerge. By my senior year, they gave up and put down bricks over that path. It certainly looked nicer than dead grass and mud, but it did feel like a defeat of sorts.

You can be pretty sure that if not for the "ruts of conformity," so to speak, the landscapers would have won that battle. But once a path is already there--once the grass is pretty much dead--it's much easier for students in a hurry to take that shortcut. (Yeah, I get that one could also say that getting off the paved path is defying conformity, but in this case, it's really not true. Only the non-conformists (and sometimes people in really nice shoes) stayed on that paved path.)

Well, now I have an even better example for my students (just in time, as my summer class will get to Walden next week): another group of landscapers have surrendered, this time on a path at near Shepherd's library. From my first week on campus, I wondered how long it would take...