One of the things I really try to convey is just how interested I am
in this particular field and how much I enjoy it and I would say particularly the
possibilities for students who are coming out, who are going to work in this area.
There's so much happening with strategic communication, and
it's so central to so many different fields. In fact, that's one of the things our students,
I think both celebrate but also struggle with is they've got so many options.
And I see it as part of my job to help them understand what those options are
and help them start to think about where they might best fit in. I love being the first person
to talk to them about things that they've grown up with.
Certainly, especially advertising that they're used to.
But now they're coming at from the perspective
of a professional who really needs to understand the nuances of how it works.
And I love getting to have that chance and seeing them start to make some of those connections.
So the creative strategy then is the blueprint that will lay out what those ideas are.
I have loved the students here in Kentucky. Here we get such a great mix of students.
You know, the university as a whole, the first gen students,
I had some great first gen students, the kids who are coming from
both from rural Kentucky, but then also from the more urban areas in Kentucky.
It's just it's just such a great mix of kids, and
they love the university so much, which to me, I just I feel that more
strongly here than any of the other places that I have had the opportunity to teach.
And then the other thing is I've gotten to teach study abroad, and that's
just such a different relationship that you can then build with the students.
And so, to be recognized with this award that started with a student’s
nomination, but at a place where I've had so many fantastic students and I have so many just really
nice memories, both in the classrooms here on campus,
but particularly with study abroad - it means the world to me, it really does.
For me, the College of Law, like this school, UK in particular,
has meant so much to my family.
To be a lawyer in Kentucky, it can be such a special thing for the state.
But you know, even beyond that, I think we have that ability like the ability to work on
so many different things that are important to Kentucky because so many of Kentucky's lawyers
and judges and legislators and governors are coming through the school.
I mean, that's, you know, we get that because of what we're doing in the classroom and what
people who were at the college law before I was born have been doing in the classroom.
I think I'm probably the luckiest academic in the country. I really do.
I mean, there aren't that many people who have my job who get to come home
and still less to do it at a law school,
at a place like this, in a place that is as good as this, as good in every way as this.
That's forfeiture. It contemplates that the restraint might be broken.
It's not just this immovable wall, all right?
For our students who want to come to law school the way they talk about law school
and what a life as a lawyer could mean and what they have been through and thought about,
that is that is sort of always inspiring.
The best days teaching that is the most fun professionally that I've ever had,
and that part of it hasn't gotten old.
It is the greatest gift that you can get as a teacher; to know that
you have students who feel that way about your teaching.
The way the job works, you don't really know for sure what they think of you.
But this sort of thing, I mean, it's great. I don't know that the job gets better than that.
One of the things that I like to try and share with students, is the whole me,
not just me, that is teaching them or not just me that was an auditor,
was a CPA before I came but me who is invested in this community, the,
you know, service to the community that I do and try and inspire them to do that.
What I want them to understand is that
they have a lot of power to change lives of not just them and their families,
but of their communities. by having this skill set.
Knowing that information and helping them see the connection to how they can impact other people
is what I hope motivates them to kind of push through
the incredibly difficult or boring or whatever to kind of get to that outcome on the other side.
With our operating lease, we're going to credit
lease liability for that interest amount we calculated.
I don't believe that there is any one right answer, and I believe that there
isn't one right answer because everybody's different. So, my teaching philosophy is to be
there where the students are, understand,
get to know them so I can deliver what each of them needs.
I didn't know that that so many people who taught me had actually won this award.
And that, to me, I think, says a lot about the importance of this because I talked to
those colleagues, you know, those people who are my colleagues now,
about their teaching and their impact on me and how much
what I saw them do in the classroom really made me the teacher that I am today.
I think it's really cool that, I, you know, feel like this is kind of the validation of all of the
work that I put in trying to learn how to do it right to do the best by them. And it tells me
that to have a great future in teaching is that I need to keep doing it.
I come from a research background; my whole career has been research.
I'm relatively new to teaching, so what I try to do is actually incorporate my research into the
into the classroom.
And I think in doing so, I think it makes it more realistic, they can see
the opportunity for creativity and, participate side by side with the
generation of ideas to solve some of these major problems we have going forward.
Coal based capacity in electrical generation that's going to level off somewhere around a half
to a third of what it used to be, and the reason is because natural gas prices are going to be low.
The mining engineering profession has an overwhelming amount of opportunity,
and our students have a difficult time trying to negotiate and understand that. So,
working with them, getting to know them and helping them to uncover the
myriad of possibilities is actually gratifying. And I think it's a very worthwhile activity.
Having an attitude of service is actually critically important to
those of us that have been blessed with the opportunity to attend higher education and
be involved in a discipline where we can actually make a difference in the world.
So that stewardship component is something that I try and
live in my life, and I would rather them catch it than have me teach it.
So, by spending so much time with them
out of the classroom, I like to think that that's actually something that's been effective.
I'm doing what I feel like I'm called to do, and I'm doing it to the best of my ability.
And that's enough. It really is. But to have an organization or a student or whatever
go to this effort to actually recognize the contribution is just really
amazing. Thank you.
You know, I was a, had a career as a public defender representing people who are charged
with crimes and don't have money to pay for lawyers, and I care very deeply about what's
going on in the criminal legal system and the issues there.
And so, I view this in terms of the subject matter as an opportunity to introduce my students
to a different way of looking at the criminal legal system than they might have heard before
and to really become intimate with it with its successes and its failures.
I want my students to have a sense of how the law operates in practice, not just in theory
and so that's very important in terms of how I teach.
And I think the Seventh Circuit has pretty appealing arguments in this case,
right? But the reality is probably that the Supreme Court got this right.
I love the process of helping students learn and they help me learn. I mean,
it's an ongoing conversation. They helped me to think about
both the law and the world in ways that I might not. And watching them develop
into lawyers and develop into professionals and just develop as people that we all do.
You know, helping them again find their passion and find their path
to me is incredibly rewarding. I am hopeful that many of our students are going to go out there
and do amazing things that are going to change the world. And I
am not only hopeful, I feel fairly confident in saying that.
You know, I hear the things my students think about and the things that they care about, and I
have full expectation that many of them are going to go out and really shape the way the world is,
is going and shape the things that are going on.
The reason I do what I do is because of my students and to have a student
take the time to do that and even to feel that way, right?
To consider me in that light, I'm deeply touched and deeply moved by the honor.
First and foremost is for students to understand that, especially at the level I teach it's a
give and take process, and I learn as much from them as I hope they learn from me.
We are training our future colleagues.
We're training people who are going to sit beside us at the table
and do the kind of work that we do.
And so, we want them; we want to treat them like colleagues, and we want to have
these open conversations and that takes a little time for them to get out of the
habit of there's an instructor who's the expert and there's the student who's learning from that.
That's not the way we want things to work. What you're bringing in, what you're learning
through the presentation of this information is really going to help us.
They teach me every day to be number one, thankful that I have the opportunity to
do this job. They teach me what's happening in the real world
so that when I'm doing my own research and my own studying,
I have them in my ear telling me what the real world is like out there.
But the key is it has to be contextual bound. That's what you taught me today.
The heart of an educational organization is teaching. I mean, that's our goal, right?
Our goal is to prepare others. And so, the fact that the Alumni Association has
highlighted that critical component of what this university is about,
I guess, it can't be understated how important that is and how important it
is in helping us feel good about the energy and the time that we put into teaching.
I have to keep teaching because I grow. Every time I teach, I learn something new.