Good morning colleagues, we'll end the last speaker in case you were wondering.
I want to share with you the idea that not only have we heard some great
stories about low points in teaching we've heard some wonderful stories as
well about some high points in teaching what I want to end on is the idea that
in fact the best is yet to come. I've always been very passionate, I don't
need it yet thanks, I've always been very passionate about the history of crime
and punishment and each year I take our students to England to France and now in
the future to Spain and I'm delighted to say that the first speaker this morning
Jessica Craig comes with me now and so it's passing on it's great it's what
I've been doing for years. She's a new young member of faculty and she's doing
it as well and so it's it's great to see that so it's nice that she started this
morning and I'm kind of finishing it off from the same Department. But this was a
year before Jessica joined us and I was with a group of our students in the
medieval city of the Rennes in France those of you that might have been they
know what a wonderful wonderful City again is and if you have not then then
please go there I have a house near there you're welcome to come out and
have dinner with me. We'd spent the week visiting sites where duels had
taken place where executions had occurred where church sanctuary had been
taken and abused. We stood at 14th century city gates where criminals have
been exiled and outlawed and we went to old prisons that had housed the
desperate prior to a sad and public death. Sunday was the rest day and it was
also the final day before departure back to the U.S. I planned a bicycle ride along
the canal path that surrounds the city and I invited any student who wished to
join me. Seven students did so and we set off after coffee and croissants
breakfast taking our bicycles from that wonderful system they have in France
that now exists in a number of other European cities where you can go and
rent a bike for up anything from 30 minutes for a full day for a very very
nominal price and return it to any station around city that exists it's a
great system and so that's what we did. About 20 minutes into our ride
the heavens opened it poured with rain as it can do in Brittany. I love cycling.
I'm an avid road and mountain biker and personally I was perfectly happy to
carry on but I recognized that it was best to check with the group and see
whether or not they wanted to do so because it was quite clear to me that
amongst this happy band of eight cyclists a couple of them hadn't been on
a bike for a very long time and in fact I'm not sure one of them had ever been
on a bike before, but it was okay, everybody wanted to press on great the
towpath that the side of the canal got muddy and we ended up looking bedraggled
rather than chic. After a good hour and a half we returned to the city centre, wet
dirty, happy, and smiling. The group was buzzing as we returned our bicycles and
parked them one student turned to me and she said, "That was wonderful
thank you." I've not been cycling since I was a child. I used to bike with my
grandfather and since he died have not been riding again before today. It
brought back wonderful memories for me. I will always remember this trip and I
think I will remember the materials we have covered so much better now because
I have such a strong memory to cherish. Rennes is where I went for a bike ride in
the rain. Of course I thought that was great and I thought as well that I
probably brought somebody into the fold of being a lifelong cyclist. On my return
I started to give thoughts as to how we at UNT can drive forward some innovation
some green innovation and fun coursework that would bring a group of
interconnected disciplines together and use my passion for cycling as a conduit
to achieve that. I started to dream of a mean green bicycles across Europe class
going to Europe with a group of students and cycling through the back roads
England perhaps, my native country, studying the environment, architecture,
anthropology, history, theology, crime and punishment, cooking. So had this been done?
Was I dreaming or had it been done? I was sure the answer was yes it must have
been done somewhere I'm not that innovative but is it doable? Well if it's
been done presumably it's doable. The answer was yes and yes and indeed there
is. There is a model one started by the University of Montana in association
with Trek bicycles. I don't have the time unfortunately this morning to go through
with you all of this amazing class that they run but I do have the website and
anybody that's interested, anybody who might want to collaborate, anybody who
might want to travel some of this rode the back roads with me I'd love to hear
from you but I do have the websites. But the publicity... okay now I need it. I'm
better with bicycles than computers.
Is this it? Yeah. Thanks. The publicity that Shrek now publish on their website as well as the
University of Montana says this, "Visit any college classroom across the country
and you'll find passionate students with inspirational stories and ambitions
finding a classroom setting as inspiring as the students who occupy it can be
more challenging." And so Montana an association with rec developed this the
Wild Rockies Field Institute their class runs out of Missoula and groups of
students with their professors go off and they explore a range of issues in
the Rocky Mountains. They do it both as semester long classes and as summer
classes and they literally get on bicycles and ride around they're going
to small villages and towns and interview people they look at the
Sociology they look at the history they look at the Anthropology they look at
the environment. The range of disciplines that are involved in this is
mind-blowing, incredibly exciting. I was so inspired by
hearing this morning before I started listening to any of the speakers we were
talking about cooking because of who was next to me at the table and my son wants
to be a chef and it was wonderful to have those conversations and at the time
that's going on in my mind and I'm learning about it my mind is buzzing
with the idea because I'm a legal historian. Wow
cooking! The Bishop of Rochester! He boiled his chef because his chef
accidentally poisoned 30 people in 1530! Great! That was Smithfield market.
Smithville market is where the they used to kill all the cattle before they went
out to the butchers in London, great, let's take her along. She'll come. She'll
come. I don't mind if she can cycle or not. That's okay. I'll get I'll do a tandem
with her but she's coming. And so look at what they're saying here all in the
great outdoors and this is the final part of this for me.
This summer a couple of years ago now Trek bicycle partnered with them and
we're always being encouraged I see that the Provost is no longer able to be with
us this morning but we're all being encouraged to partner with people to go
outside of the university. Who else can we work with; what else can we do? This
seems to me again a wonderful opportunity. Here they are up there in
Montana Park partnering with Trek Bicycles in order that they get them a 700 month
700 mile bike tour spanning the states wild array of landscapes and communities
spread over a number of days. Many of these students that participated and
there's a Youtube about it on the Trek website. They weren't advent cyclists.
They weren't people who get on a bike every day. They were people who
recognized that this was a wonderful way in which they could learn and have a lot
of fun through their learning. And so I would encourage you to perhaps, when we
leave here this morning and we've heard these wonderful tales of things we've
done wrong and times when we've had wonderful successes in their classrooms
as well is that what I'd like to leave is with the idea is that in fact what we
can do is look at what we've achieved so far and believe that the best is yet to
come. Thank you very much indeed. (Applause)
you