Now that they have evidence that the thing was signed in case it's ever
lost.
Mm
What is today? Oh, I usually have my Fitbit on.
I'm gonna wait to check those until I hear if I say anything stupid.
Absolutely feel free.
It is, it's. OK.
So I know her major. What's your major, Shall? Um, I'm majoring in supply
chain management and business Spanish. Neat.
So You're Shale who Brenner.
Is your brother Sage? Yes, he's in my event class. Oh wow. And you are
Courtney. Spell your last name? Voltring. It's V as in Victor, O L M as in
Mary, E R I N G.
OK.
So please sit here and I'll find that other part afterwards. All right,
sounds good. All right, hello, this is Courtney Walming. I am with Shay
Brenner interviewing um Doctor Deluce Deluce,
I'm so sorry. On March 18th at it is what time? 1:40 p.m.? In um Doctor De
Luce's office on the Tempe campus. This interview is part of our Barrett
Oral History project. Our goal is to preserve a record of Barrett's
history in honor of the 30th anniversary. Thank you so much for taking the
time to sit down with us and share your experience. Um, so what brought
you to Arizona? I was born here. Oh, OK. Yeah, I think at your age and
older, there's a lot of people that were born here, but, but my age, there
weren't so many people that were. Yeah. So what kept you here then? Well,
initially family, and I am a first generation college student, so I wasn't
necessarily encouraged to go to school. So I came upon going to school
sort of by accident in my first job, somebody said. You're too smart and
interested in the world to not go to school and so I started taking a
couple classes and then wound up in this path so it just turns out that
this is a good school. I was lucky that I lived nearby enough to come here
and. Even when I went to graduate school, I did look at other places for
the programs that I was interested in, but they weren't ranked as highly
and they were gonna. Wind up costing out of state tuition and all these
other things, so it made more sense to stay put, so I had been exposed to
the campus as a child roller skating when I didn't know really what a
university was. It was just this nice big place that was empty on the
weekends, so you could roller skate here, but it was interesting years
later when I wound up coming back. As a student and starting to get an
appreciation of what higher education in a university was the role that it
played in the community. Yeah, do you mind me asking um what made you pick
Arizona State then you had other options? Yeah, I suppose I could have
gone south or north and stayed in the Arizona state system. But again,
it's hard to beat ASU in terms of the overall constellation of things that
it offers, and while I did move out when I was 17, I've been supporting
myself since then. I think that's part of why I stayed here is because.
My network was here. The jobs I was cobbling together in order to put
myself through school were here. The idea of um moving to another town and
having the novelty. Of all of that would come with that just didn't seem
at least at the undergraduate level, it didn't seem appealing because why
would I when this is in my backyard and I did start at the community
colleges because that was what was even closer to home and what was
affordable, but I didn't even never even occurred to me to come to the
university until again I was getting straight A's at the community college
and talking to a faculty member and and they said. Are you transferring to
ASU? And I'm like, huh, there's an idea. It hadn't even, you know, like I
said, it hadn't occurred to me, but I remember. There must have been some
linkage between the systems that I got an email. No, it wasn't an email
back then. Email didn't exist. It was a it was a printed letter and it's
probably still in my baby book at home somewhere, but it, it was at the
very beginning of the university Honors College at ASU. I graduated from
Mesa Community College, as the valedictorian in 1988, and that's when ASU
was starting. Their university honors college before it was called Barrett
, and they invited me to be in that first class of what we are in right
now but I was again working my way through school didn't have any role
models about going to school it didn't even make sense to me why I would.
Take on extra work or additional fees to be in an honors college. I, I
knew it appealed to me. I did take honors classes, AP kinds of things in
high school and at the community college, but. The The idea of trying to
adjust to a university with all that extra. I didn't realize what I would
get from it for what it would cost me in terms of time and money and
inconvenience. But now with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had. Found
a way to work it out because I do believe that there is value in the
experience that the students get here and I would have been interested in
getting that value myself earlier in my life. Well, thank you for sharing.
Um, so what led you to, uh, well, I guess we've already discussed that a
little bit, but what led you to desire to study at Arizona State? Well,
yeah, in addition to the things we've talked about, I think, uh, having
the world opened up to me in terms of all the different things that you
could study and The value of pursuing additional education, not just for
the job skills, but for the personal growth kinds of benefits that one
could experience. So these days, like we were just talking about online
stuff. There's a kind of, do you know what I mean when I say the word
catalog? Is that in your vocabulary? You know, you might think of a mail
order catalog it comes how you choose shoes or clothes from or gifts not
quite what you mean though, but back then we had a course catalog. It's
only available in paper and you could just sit there and sort of thumb
through it or you could fall down on the floor and open up to a page and
you'd go, I didn't even know there were classes on that. That sounds
interesting. you would at least I accidentally discovered. Just a whole
world of knowledge that I didn't even really think about before, and I
think it's harder for kids today to do that because unless you have the
right keyword or the right prefix, you're not going to run across it as
easily when you're scheduling classes. When we used to schedule classes,
you had the catalog and a paper schedule, and you had to do so much
tracking with your eyes that you you actually found unique things that you
might want to take as electives or. Uh, consider as a second major or
minor or something. So I was genuinely interested in learning for
learning's sake, and it did occur to me as I saw the world changing around
me that it, it couldn't hurt to. To be educated and to pursue these kind
of things again my dad wasn't in favor he he did show up at my graduation
from MCC because I was the commencement speaker and the deeper I got into
school and the more accolades I got for being a a star student, he started
to pay attention and think, well, I think she's really stuck on this path
maybe maybe there's something to it. I think he started to think about it
in a different way, um. And he's, he's, he turned from disinterest or
discouragement into neutral to at least, you know, proud by the time I got
my PhD, but
It's not that he wasn't educated. I mean, you see those books on the top
two shelves over there that looks like a nice set. Those are the great
books of the Western world. And he bought those, he saved his pennies and
bought those and read them himself. He educated himself, reading his way
through. The great books of the Western world, which a lot of people use
several of those in their human event classes, and it's formed the
foundation of a lot of uh educational systems. So I certainly don't think
one has to go to the university to become an educated person because I
know my dad was smart, but he thought I did it on my own, so why do you
need to go and do it. But later he he could see the value in it and I
certainly know that there are people that do spend their time and money
here and don't leave with as much education and wisdom as some people have
without pursuing an education, but I still wish everybody could and would.
Um, how has your major in communication prepared you for your career and
bear it? So yes, when I was an undergrad I majored in communication and we
had, I don't know if you still have to, but back then we had to pick a
track and I picked 3 tracks because I was an overachiever, so I did the
extra classes to do 3 tracks so I did interpersonal communication track,
intercultural communication track as well as the organizational
communication track so I. Think it prepared me on all those three fronts
on the interpersonal level when you're facilitating discussion slash
seminar based classes rather than giving lectures, you do need to use some
interpersonal communication skills in order to. Encourage people to
discuss, read body language. There's a number of students that raise their
hand with their face. What I mean is they, they don't like go like this.
They just kind of crook their head or raise their eyebrow a little bit or
there's something that tells you that that student wants to jump in right
then. So I, I definitely pay attention to nonverbals. I use a number of
the skills in terms of of. Using them myself, modeling them for my
students, as well as telling my students to paraphrase, to perception
check, to not assume, but to ask questions. I'm very big on pursuing a
spirit of inquiry as opposed to a spirit of judgment and how we approach
things. And of course that blends over in with the inner cultural. It's
easy to stereotype or come to assumptions based on. Quick cues about
people, but asking good questions and challenging your own assumptions is
useful, as is being open to incorporating multicultural texts in the class
and there was a long time in the history of the human event where it was
more like a Western intellectual tradition class, even though it was never
intended to be for some people it's still tilted that way a little bit
more because it was their comfort zone, but in the past. 10 years or more
we've we've made a more explicit effort at making sure that we bring in
non-western kinds of authors and underrepresented voices in different ways
so that people have that opportunity to experience a little bit, have
their awareness raised a little bit around different cultural backgrounds
without it necessarily um being an intercultural communication kind of
class and organizational studies wise also it connects because. A lot of
what we're looking at in the human event has to do with how institutions
have changed over time. If you're looking at that. That flow of important
ideas and how we've we've we've shifted to different kinds of justice
systems or or different attitudes towards gender or slavery or all of
these different things they they echo or are founded in major institutions
like religious institutions or political institutions and thinking how
organizations are structured. Just kind of folds into how I think about
things.
Of course I also minored in in psychology and business or the equivalent
thereof and so I, I have a constellation of things that kind of wrap up
into how I think about being prepared for Barrett as a teacher and as a
colleague.
How, oh Yeah. Um, why did you choose to teach at the same school that you
studied at? Well, it is sort of rare. I mean, there are a number of people
here who have done an undergraduate degree here, gone someplace else for a
graduate degree, and ultimately wanted to come back to the Southwest
through this institution for any number of reasons. It just happened to
work out for me that I got to stay here the whole time. I did get my PhD
in psychology here and again I, I could have gone other places, but the,
the expense and inconvenience of going other places didn't appeal to me
when ASU's psych program is one of the best in the country and I'm talking
like the year I was in the there were something like 400 applicants and
they only chose 4, you know, and there were other programs that were.
There that were even more competitive than the one I was in.
Competitiveness doesn't necessarily help define what goodness is, but once
you get into a program like that, if you think the fit is good, you're
crazy not to go if that's part of your your goals. So that's one of the
reasons I stayed here, but then I demonstrated my effectiveness and. Um,
responsibility, my commitment, my work ethic, etc. enough that when I was
finishing grad school there was a constellation of things that happened, a
confluence of events that that I was invited to stay in a position there
and then there were some, uh, but you grow and you change and I've always
tended towards interdisciplinary thinking. So there was a nationally
competed job posted they were getting applications from around the US and
around the world. That's how most faculty positions are hired, so I, I got
hired into interdisciplinary studies and spent many years there. I grew
and changed some more and then entered a competitive search and ultimately
found my way to bear it. Yeah, that that was gonna be my next question.
How did you, because you were in a variety of departments before you came
to I was in the psychology department and then I was in leadership and
interdisciplinary studies, which when I my undergrad, as we've discussed
was in communication with the the psychology and business aspects too, but
even within there there's interdisciplinarineness and at the time the
field of communication was pretty young. So a lot of the research that we
read in the upper division classes came out of psychology or social
psychology or organizational psychology. So I decided to pursue psychology
for graduate school, but um Yeah, it was an important in a university like
this you can recreate yourself without having to switch universities
because there's so many schools and colleges that. I then steeped myself
in interdisciplinary theory for a number of years and then decided how can
I take all of that and take it into a space that is working with extra
motivated and extra prepared students compared to to uh the mix that
you'll get out in the more general population and still pull from
different disciplines as we do in the human event. But uh honor the
history and wisdom of the past as we also look at how it's current to how
we live our lives now. Yeah. Um, in your clip on ASUhistory.com, where you
describe your book Arizona State University, um, you said when Denise and
I decided to study ASU's history, a large motivation was to expand our own
appreciation of the place and share it with others. How has your
appreciation of ASU changed with your findings? Well, you already know of
my humble innocent kind of beginnings in encountering this this physical
space and the people on it and sometimes we just move through our world
and we don't really even especially now you see students glued to their
phones, they're not even looking at the people around them, but uh it.
It's amazing if you're walking from here to the MU or you're walking from
here to wherever, you could be passing people that are working on curing
cancer or solving the world. Resource problems around 8 million tons of
plastic going into the ocean every year or how to help developing nations
have clean water. You you are passing by the faculty and the staff that
are changing the world, and we just tend to think of ASU as this a lot of
people I shouldn't overgeneralize, but you know it's just this institution
that sort of took over TEMP or helped grow TEMP, and it's the sun devils
and it's. Causing traffic or it's causing parking issues I think the focus
should be on what this institution does in developing the lives of each
individual person that's studying here as well as what they're doing in
terms of their community embeddedness and the ways that they're
contributing to. To research and practices that actually help the world,
so I already started to get a sense of that the more I was in psychology
and interdisciplinary studies and when I started researching that digging
into existing archival information as well as trying to find anybody under
the sun who I could talk to from. Different stages of the university's
growth and different disciplines.
It's humbling to see all of the different things that people are doing,
and I, I can't really remember the stem of your question, but what did I
learn? I learned that my My native sense that something important is going
on here. It's just really expanded in terms of every person I pass. Maybe
they're just doing this because their parents told them to go uh maybe
they just want a better job, but that can be part of it, but I think that
there's just as many or greater number that while of course we need jobs,
um, there's something more to it and. Yeah, that makes of, of respect and
humility because in the grand scheme compared to some of those people, I
feel like a drop in the bucket, but we all have our own different way of
of contributing and it usually does take a team effort. Expanding on that
, um, what was your most interesting discovery and what was the reaction
to it like? Oh, the most interesting discovery. I know you looked at the,
the book online, but I don't know if you've looked at it yet, but I mean
there's just so much of it in there. I It's hard to say. You should look
at it when you get a chance. It's just so fun and snippets that you know
you can absorb, and I wish I had time to look that over a couple things
that come to mind that here's a silly one that people.
Often relate to, but there was a, the Boy Scouts built a cabin in the
attic of Old Maine. I think that was a surprise to me. It was also a
surprise to me on a more like serious note that John S Armstrong.
Who Was basically the founder of ASU hardly ever was getting the credit
that my research indicated that he was due because of he moved away and
another important person in the history of the college is is Hayden so you
you would hear a lot about Hayden because Hayden's family was still here
and it's easy to find to interview and. And all of that and certainly he
he played a role but Janice Armstrong was the person that that went to the
legislature. He's the one that was the teacher. He and his wife that could
see that this this area would be a perfect place to do teacher training.
So as I said before, everything's a team effort, but I, I gained a new
respect for that founding father, if you will, and I don't know if you
know but one of his um. Would it be great grandsons, great great, um, I
think it's great grandson is WP Carey. So, you know, that that descendant
went on to honor his ancestors.
Uh, what he started, so there is a building named after Armstrong. It was
Armstrong Hall and he's connected to the law department, but I think they
should name a street after Armstrong, if not officially somehow put one of
those little signs and make it, you know, Armstrong Way or something
because I think he was really key. Other things just. It it didn't matter
what I was looking at. There was some interesting appreciation. That
developed. I'll think I'll try and think of anything. You came to mind.
Well, I don't know if you knew Barbara Barrett was a student at ASU. I did.
I actually got to interview her. Yes, and I did too, and that she's of
course an inspiration and I made sure to work a picture of her in there
because I think um she's such a positive role model and of course. An
important figure in the development of the university via their
contribution to Barrett. Yeah, I guess we should move on. I'll try and
think, think if there's something else that stood out to me. Oh you know
just have you, I don't know if you've noticed because people are glued to
their phones, but. There's so many beautiful plants and Palm Walk and
digging into the history of how Palm Walk started and finding those
pictures of when the palm trees were so little and look at them now, it's
it's interesting that we really are building on the shoulders of the
thoughtful work of people that came before us.
Have you ever thought of teaching a course about your findings from your
co-authored book, Arizona State University? Um, I had until just now, but
I think that that's not a bad idea. I could think that through because it
really does pull from multiple disciplines and whether a student was
interested in history or not, there could be an appreciation for, yes, the
history of how. The seeds of the. The aspirations and design imperatives
that we talk about now and how ASU is number one in innovation now. Part
of that is through the leadership of President Crow and the great
contributions of the faculty and our inclusive approach to how we um admit
students, but it also is partly due to the foundation that was put in
place by these others. The seeds of all of those things we brag about now
were already in place in the past, so I think there could be a segment in
a class that helps people understand the identity of a university and the
role in a community in the world that could look at it economically,
socially. Um, From all politically a number of different levels plus
students could dig into the specific disciplines or research areas that
they're interested in using some of this as a springboard I think it could
be possible. Do you have a sense that students are actually interested in
the institution or are they just kind of like this is where I go 5 days a
week and. I'm gonna graduate from there. I mean, I think especially in
Barrett, you could have a good number of students who are interested in
learning about the history of this college. I mean, we're doing a project
that's a course of people that are interested in how Barrett was formed,
so I think certainly there are people that are interested in how Arizona
State was formed and um just from the short clip that I watched, I tried
to find the book but the bookstore didn't have it. Oh, you probably find
it on Amazon or a bookstore. But um I mean I I I just think people would
be really interested in learning it. I'll keep that in mind. Let me know
if you make the course. Um, kind of seguing from that one, have you ever
thought of teaching a course about your findings from the book Legendary
Locals of Tempe? Well, similarly, I guess the same principles would apply
. I think there are people that are interested in local art scene, local
politics, local. I guess music could be part of the art scene. All of the
same things that I talked about in regard to ASU could be connected to
Tempe. In fact, one of the reasons that I wrote the Tepe book is because I
encountered so many interesting people that just weren't the right fit for
this book, but ASCU and Tempe grew up hand in hand and they they just
needed to be. Discussed or acknowledged in some way so that other book
needed to be written and I probably could have written volumes a separate
, in fact, I did consider doing multiple volumes, but I decided it'd be
better to have one accessible.
Volume than to have people having to choose between them or the like, so
maybe it could be a class that combines them. But that was my next
suggestion. I will be thinking on these things. I think it would be really
interesting. You could bring in some local uh speakers either from ASU or
other places and and have them may perhaps interview one person that
they're interested in. I appreciate the idea. I learned so much from my
students and other people's students. Well, thank you. I'm glad you like
it. Um, so in your paper there and back again, learning from the history
of a freshman seminar sequence, you described the evolution of this course
, the the human event. Um, in what ways do you see the course evolving
moving forward?
To some degree I'm not sure that it it needs to evolve. That's not to say
that it won't or that we won't experiment in some way or another going
forward, but I actually don't think, uh, what's the expression, if it's
not broken don't fix it and.
We've, we've done these tweaks at being much, much more conscious of, of
incorporating underrepresented voices or non-western. And we did that
experiment I talked about in there in terms of going deeper into some
specific domain or helping appreciate the perspective people would come
from differently and I'm, I'm glad that we tried that experiment and I'm
also glad that we moved away from it for the reasons I discussed. There
there's ideas thrown around somehow every uh sometimes now and then, for
instance. A number of people would like to reduce the amount of writing in
the class or when we're being really bold even talk about getting rid of
the writing component altogether but then that would put all of the
pressure on the public discourse side and there's always some students who
don't participate as much but their writing really is is good and you can
see their thinking and engagement there and there's other students who are
excellent. Discussant and they need to work on their writings. So what
we've we've learned is that to help you, the royal you of the Barrett
students be their best to have both components because just resting on the
laurels of what they think things should be like or what they did in high
school usually isn't going to be enough and if without a class like this,
they may not be as well prepared for doing their thesis or some of the
more rigorous honors contracts, etc. So we would in some way like to
emphasize the public discourse because we'd like the quieter people to
speak up in a day and age we're learning how to engage in polite
evidence-based discourse instead of just shouting each other down and
twisting evidence to use it however we want, but really having thoughtful
discourse we need to see that more in the media than we do and. So that's
an important contribution this class makes to the future citizenry and
leaders, but being able to do that in writing is important too, so it
would be easier for us to grade if we didn't have the writing component.
So you know people throw ideas around and maybe we'll experiment with some
of those sometime, but I kind of doubt it because uh it does work as a
cohesive thread to help prepare the students for more rigorous training.
And build cohesion, give them a chance to, in a relatively safe space of
the human event class, try on a lot of things, open their mind, learn to
take on different perspectives.
How do you think the evolution of the course has impacted um the student's
ability to think both critically and creatively? Oh, I, based on what the
students tell me, I'm sure you're gonna just, you know, the normal bell
curve, right? But there's most people are going to fall in this average
space and some are going to Be excellent and some are going to be below
average. I think you might get that kind of bell curve if you were to talk
to students about the human event. There's gonna be most of them are gonna
like it OK, know that they got some value of it. I think our our curve
skews to the higher end, even if they don't appreciate it in the moment
they're in it or right after they get out, when they look back at their 4
or 5 years in college, they realize that that was. A different sort of
class that helped them in meaningful ways they can't always recognize it
right away, so I think it would skew positive, but you're always gonna
have some that are are more of the cheerleaders and some that say I edit
it, I edit it, you know, whatever, but I tend to think people get out of
it what they put into it, which is a bit cliche, but I think it's true.
But even those that don't always put their best selves into it, um. I
don't know how they can't get a little bit better at their creative and
critical thinking through just being there and listening to the discussion
and taking whatever growth risks they took in their own participation or
writing. How do you think that that compares to the history of ideas,
courses, um, with consideration that transfer students have kind of
they've had life experience prior to coming to ASU. Yeah, uh, in an ideal
world I'd still love to even see the transfer students have a two semester
sequence. In an ideal ideal world, I'd like to see the human event be a 3
semester sequence because we, you know, we start with the most ancient
texts and move through about Renaissance in the fall or in the first class
and then around Renaissance to modern in the spring and there's usually in
any one person's arc of development there's something that gets. Slide it
a little bit either the deep ancients or the Middle Ages or something gets
slided, and I think there's so much more wealth of knowledge that we could
explore and the extra semester would give the students even more time to
develop as as readers and thinkers and writers. But so I would love to see
the the transfer students do too, but that's unlikely in the grand scheme
of the over busyness and speed that. That some of our educational
components require. I do think that they may be, it's hard to say,
Courtney. I think that the, the history of ideas students that I've
encountered. Have been comparable. It is true that they have more life
experience, so sometimes they can bring a little bit more wisdom to the
table, but the other side of that is sometimes the longer we've walked the
earth, the more set in our ways we can get, and it can be a little bit
harder to crack open the egg of of being more open minded, but I I can't
really report that I've had any problems on those fronts, but that's those
are possibilities, and it may just depend on. The group of students you
get, you know, 11 thing I'd actually like to add to that, I took um
history of ideas cause um cause I like transferred into Barrett as a
junior, um, and I was the only non-transfer student in my class, um. Yeah
, I actually don't have very much to say about it, um, but I, I get what
you're saying though. I was there. I do think that some of them are
because they're already more ensconced in their life, they're busier.
It's hard to believe because I know you're already we're all already so
busy, but they may be busy sometimes in different ways that makes the
class be a nice break, a place to sit and think about some of these
important interesting things, but for other people. The class is a lot of
work and it's it's something that they need to integrate in but if you're
going to an honors college it's not just that something's more work it's
not that we're just giving you more work because you're in an honors
college it's just organically more work to be a more um. More of a seeker
trying to get a better, more rigorous experience. I don't know. Did that
cover that enough? Yes, thank you so much. OK, yeah, um, what would you
say has been your proudest moment in your time at Barrett? Hm. Hm,
proudest moment.
Well, I haven't really thought about proudest. I can tell you some proud
moments. I mean, it was, I felt some pride in being selected to join
Barrett because these are a great group of colleagues that are. You know,
when I'm in my we we all probably have these moments where we're like, oh
, other people are smarter than I am, or am I gonna fit in and some of
these people speak Latin and Greek and all these other fancy fancy things
and and I don't, but we all have something that we bring to the table and
that's one of the things I like a lot about being in a. A department, a
college that's interdisciplinary at its core. We still probably skew
towards more history or literature people and they can all be very
different from each other as well. I'm not saying they're all cut from the
same. Uh, cookie cutter, but I do like it when we hire people from social
and natural sciences or from other kinds of things or when people have an
interdisciplinary background because it helps us realize you can just go
up and down this hall and if if there's a text you you're just not 100%
sure about or you're thinking about taking something new on, there's
somebody around here who knows stuff about that better than you do, so I,
I think. One can feel pride in standing in the place of what they bring to
the table and at the same time feeling humility when you look at all the
things you don't bring to the table and it helps you realize that we're
we're a good group, especially when we work together. Um, I felt pride
when students nominated me for that excellence and diversity award or the
Centennial professorship. These are since I've been to Barrett. I mean, I
was nominated for other things before. But um there's an Apple polisher
award that students that are those sun devil, the devil's advocates that
walk around backwards and give tours you know they pick somebody and I've
been chosen for that. I like it when I, I guess it's just like anybody
else you like a little pat on the back now and then or a little
recognition even if you don't win it. I know some of my students are
nominating me right now for a faculty Women's association mentoring award
and. I'm sorry to say that on tape because now if I don't get it, well I
guess I did say I didn't get all those other ones too, but what's
interesting is I used to work almost exclusively in interdisciplinary
studies I was working exclusively with juniors and seniors, and they, they
had a different understanding. I actually did win some of the awards they
put me up for, but as over here working mostly with freshmen. They're
they're not into the system quite yet, you know, and they're not and
they're still very much thinking about um their own survival as opposed to
who's really contributing to their development. I'm proud about all the
different things that my my students are trying to do or are doing which I
become aware of through when they ask me for advice or letters of
recommendation. I'm I'm proud of some of the things I think I've
contributed to our development as a as a faculty, however subtle they may
be, I try and be a good colleague and help us come up with policies or
perspectives that help us be collaborative instead of competitive, etc.
Yeah.
I guess, yeah, I'm proud when books come out and stuff. I'm proud when I
get my human event grading done. I'm also exhausted. Yeah, I bet slot
papers. Um, what legacy do you hope to leave from your time as a principal
faculty honors fellow at Barrett? Well, I guess building off of what I was
just saying, I think the, the most important legacy is, is my students,
and I know I'm not their only teacher. And I know some of them have a love
hate feeling for me or the class, but I do believe that whether they're
aware of it or not, or would admit it or not, I think I hope that they're
getting some value from every course they're taking at ASU, but I know
that I put everything I can into every course I teach and even though I've
been teaching a very long time. And I'm generally well regarded as a
teacher. I don't stop learning. I took that, um, I took a graduate level
course that ASU wanted some of the faculty to kind of pilot and see if
they thought it would, if we thought it would be a good course for new
teachers to take. And that took a ton of time and I knew a lot of what
they taught but I still got new ideas and I'm always asking for feedback I
get ideas from teaching assistants and process things with them. So legacy
wise I'm trying to model and. And show that Even inside one person we can
appreciate different disciplines that we can keep growing at. Any time of
our life, I am still a work in progress and I hope that. The body of my
work and my way of being helps students realize that they can be OK at
whatever stage they're at it we're we're not fully baked ever and that we
can keep um improving and that. If they carry with them some sort of
insider attitude or habit of mind into their other classes or how they
live their life or how they serve as a citizen, then I guess I'm playing
my role because I, I may not ever win some big gigantic prize, but each
student is a prize.
Well, thank you so much for your participation. If you have any more
thoughts to share later, please feel free to reach out, and if you have
any questions about this interview or the 30th anniversary oral history
project, please contact my Steamoo. I will, and also we didn't do that
thing where you got the room noise, so do we want to just be quiet for a
couple of minutes? We should use your recording. OK, yeah, um.
It didn't work. I, I did the recording, but it, it ended up using my
laptop speaker. I couldn't get it. I didn't know. That's OK. That's why we
have backups. OK.
All right. All right, well it was nice to meet you ladies. It was so nice
meeting you, Doctor Lewis. Thank you so much. I am so sorry. That's right.
That's what my students.