Peggy Daniels Lee

Description of the video:

It's like class. You really hate to interrupt the good conversations that are going on, but I guess I have to be formal now. Good afternoon. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the 15th annual, last lecture at IUPUI. The Senior Academy is an independent association of retired faculty and staff whose members continue to contribute their expertise and experience to support educational research and service missions of IUPUI. The last lecture series is inspired by the idea of having distinguished senior colleagues share wisdom gleaned from their long and productive careers. Speaking from their hearts and their heads as if this truly were their last lecture, which of course we hope it is not. This lecture series was initiated in 2009 by Dr. James as Professor of Communication Studies, Associate Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, and former President of the Senior Academy. Since its inception, the Academy has taken the leadership in selecting and inviting the last lecturer. Last lectures are supported by the Office of Academic Affairs and the IU Foundation. It now gives me great pleasure to introduce Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Jay Gladden of the Office of Academic Affairs. Thank you, Becky. Good afternoon and welcome to the 15th Annual last lecture. My name is Jay Gladden and for the last month is I've been serving in the role of Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer. But for those in the audience that know me, know that I've been on campus for a while, 14, 14 plus years actually. And now they're running joke a question that I'm getting is how many offices have you had on this campus? The answer is serving in this role. I'm also professor in the School of Health and Human Sciences on the campus. It's an honor to serve in this role. Honestly, a pleasure to be asked, so excited about this campus and continuing to move this campus forward. I've loved my 14 years here. In those 14 years, I've also had the pleasure of attending some last lectures and listening and enjoying learning and taking the time to just sit down and reflect. It's been great. I also greatly appreciate the longstanding partnership between the Senior Academy IUPUI, Office of Academic Affairs, and the IU Foundation. Thank you, Mark. Very much appreciated. It's so nice to see everybody gathered here today. One of the great things about the last lectures, it brings our community together, Faculty staff, students, retired faculty, staff, members of the community, particularly to all those folks that I haven't seen in a while. It's great to see you today and I look forward to talking to you after the lecture. I'm grateful to the IUPUI Senior Academy for their leadership, their enthusiasm, and their advocacy for the campus for creating and sustaining this event. I know we had a little bit of a pause earlier this decade, rightfully so, But we're back in action and it's great to see everybody today. It provides such a wonderful opportunity to honor the outstanding legacies of our retiring or recently retired faculty. Personally. I can't wait to hear what Peggy has to say about the lessons she has learned. In fact, I'm really, really excited that Peggy Daniels Lee has been selected to deliver the 2023 last lecture. Peggy and I have worked closely together over the years and this is really, really cool to see her about, to talk with us today. Most notably, while she led the undergraduate programs in the Kelley School of Business, I served Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate education at Dean of University College. And we served on what I've always termed the most functional, no offense to any other committee, I've ever served on the most functional committee at IUPUI, the undergraduate affairs committee, which is essentially the curriculum committee, Anything related undergraduate strategy. It's just a fantastic group of people. Peggy contributed mightily and if I recall correctly chairing our curriculum group, yes, everything all the curriculum proposals went through Peggy and which was a lot of work. In addition to spending the time with us 2 hours every month, Peggy also spent a lot of time outside of those meetings. I'm so glad she's here today fulfilling that promise she made to me that I'm not leaving forever. I'll be back. And I also look forward to meeting the son I've heard so much about from Peggy. Let me close once again by thanking the members of the IUPUI Senior Academy for their efforts in translating what a great idea into a lasting legacy for our campus. To formally introduce Peggy, please welcome my colleague. Julie Manning Magid, Vice Dean of the Kelley School in Indianapolis, an executive and Academic Director of the Randall L. Tobias Center and Professor of Business Law and Kelley Venture Fellow. Wow, her tile is longer than mine. Julie, come on up. Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be with you today. And my Honor to introduce this year's IUPUI last lecture speaker, Peggy Daniels Lee. I am excited to have you all meet my colleague and friend through her own words today. But let me first tell you something that I know she will not. Peggy is remarkable. Let's start with a high level overview of her path to Kelley, a first generation college student. Peggy earned a bachelor's degree in English literature at the University of Michigan, Go blue and an MBA with a concentration in marketing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She worked for 25 years in telecommunications and banking before returning to school at the age of 50 and ultimately earning a Phd from George Washington University. She taught in the Penn State University system before joining the faculty at the Kelley School of Business Indianapolis in 2009. Becoming a clinical Associate Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management and later the faculty chair for the Kelley Indianapolis undergraduate program. Our offices were next to each others. For the entire time that Peggy was a member of the Kelley faculty, I had a front row seat to Peggy's interaction with a steady stream of students, faculty, staff, and administrators, Peggy knew everyone and spent her time with whoever needed it, whenever they needed it. She advised and guided all her office visitors with compassion and conviction, insight, ingenuity, and most importantly, Joy. Peggy has a great laugh and finds the funny, ironic, and positive side of most things because she devoted so much time to the many office visitors. Peggy and I also shared a lot of weekends in the office. Darryl Brown was there too, just down the hall. We respected the need to work during those weekend times, but also had a chance for conversations about everything from philosophical questions to the most practical. But a lot of it was about our families and raising sons. It is her centeredness on what matters that made her successful as a businesswoman, student, teacher, and administrator. Peggy is well known for her expertise in undergraduate program development, assurance of learning goals, and professionally in her specialty areas of gaming, online instruction, and solving supply chain issues. As faculty chair of the Kelley Indianapolis undergraduate program, she revamped the curriculum to better align with industry needs. And she led a number of innovations, including introduction of team dynamics and leadership course for core real world consulting projects for core, the expansion of study abroad experiences. The program prospered under Peggy's leadership and vision. With increases in the overall student body, the number of directed mits, the number of underrepresented students, the number of honors students, and the number of full time students. We continue to benefit from Peggy's leadership as a campus leader. As you just heard from Jay, made important contributions to the honors college. And she helped to create the General Education Corps for all undergraduate students, ensuring they received a well rounded education. She helped IUPUI develop a scholarship in the name of Madam CJ. Walker. She staunchly supported the Boss summer entrepreneurship camps, which introduces Indianapolis high School students to the foundations of business. She also was actively involved in the Spirit and Place festival and other community organizations. Peggy's contribution to Kelley Indianapolis Iupui and the community are extraordinary. Her influence on students and colleagues is lasting, as one former student said, Professor Peggy Daniels. Lee is truly one of the best educators. I've had the privilege of learning from her exceptional teaching skills. Kindness and compassion make her one of the most remarkable human beings I've ever met. As one colleague summarize, she seemingly devotes all her waking hours to our students and to helping IUPUI and Kelley Indianapolis realize their full potential. Another colleague said about Peggy. I cannot imagine a faculty member who has done more service above and beyond the call of duty than Peggy Daniels Lee. You can always count on her to get the job done, to do it better than you could've imagined, and to involve others so that everyone is supportive of the solution. She epitomizes the role of servant leader. In June 2020, Peggy retired from the Kelly School faculty, but as she told Jay, she did not leave us. But continues to make an impact returning from the summer boss camps and staying connected in critical ways At her heart, Peggy is an educator. She cares deeply about students and empowers everyone who impacts student learning to be their best. We remain grateful for her dedication. Please help me. Welcome Peggy Daniels, Lee. I don't think I know that person and I think it's just given the first half of my speech. But she stand here or move over here. Move over here. Okay. So first I want to thank you for that wonderful introduction. I didn't know I did all of that. Maybe that explains why I'm so tired. Thank you very much. Yeah. We did have many conversations on the weekend about raising sons. She has three. I have one. I also want to thank Becky and Jay for your kindness and Jay for his kind words. We used to have interesting conversations in his office about everything you could think of. That's been great. But overall, as I told, where's humbled, a little bit shaky, and totally overwhelmed. You know that you have a lot of friends, you know that you know a lot of people on campus. But to have them all in the same room at one time is a different experience. I want to thank you all before I start for coming, I know everybody in here has something else they could be doing. The fact that you decided to come here, I'm very grateful for. I also want to thank the selection committee for your selecting for to Jean Robertson who could not be here. She was very helpful in giving me all the ins and outs and what to do and where to send things, and how to submit stuff. And she's been very helpful in guiding me through this process. And also to Russell, of course. And primarily because Russell was very sure that I would be selected and I wasn't. He was like, I'm sure you're going to do really great and I'm like, uh, no, no, no. But he did convince me to write a synopsis and apparently the selection committee liked it. I also want to thank the black faculty and staff counsel because I understand that they're hosting the reception afterwards. That was a really great surprise and for that, I'm very grateful. Let me go ahead and get started. Last spring in May, I get this e mail and it says, congratulations, I want, oh, this is for somebody else. I read it once, It can't be right, so I put it away and I read it again. Sure enough, it was mine. It was from an saying, you've been selected. The things that went through my head. Well, okay, where do you start? What do you talk about? Lessons did you really learn? What do you say from then until now? All of that's changed. The one thing I can tell you that is a life lesson that I have is that there will be change. No matter what happens, there will be change. We can either resist it or we can accept it, adjust to it, and adapt. You're going to see me and adapt today. After many drafts, including one that I created this morning. I'm serious. I went through that document, started looking at things and finding finding stuff. I finally got a got it done this morning, and I think I'm supposed to be right here. But I do have some things that I would like to share with you. So this is one person's journey from where she was to where she is right now. And I first wanted to take a page from Dr. Paul. Dr. Pauley was the person who did the very first, last lecture. And if you know anything about him, he did it as a way of leaving something for his children because he knew he would not be able to see them grow up. I have been fortunate to see mine grow up, but I'm still going to say this anyway. Okay. So I thought I'd take a page from his book and tell you what I'm not going to talk about. That's the way he started his lectiI'm. Tell you what, I'm not going to talk about. I'm not going to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. It's not my area. I'm not going to talk about what it's like to be a black woman in the United States except me. I can't talk about everybody else, but I can talk about me. And I'm not going to talk about a woman being a woman of a certain age because I haven't figured out what that certain age is. Except they tell me that I'm there and I'm like, no, I'm not. So that's what I'm not going to talk about. What I am going to talk about is my life before Kelley and Julie sorry, alluded to a little bit of that, that transition from being a secretary. What I've learned over the years, but more important than what I've learned over the years I think is the people from which I learned it. And I think they make the difference in what I'm doing is I have a disco to make to my friends, my family, two of whom are over there in my other family. Make a joke about. I don't remember anything about our childhood. They are right. They will talk about she's shaking her head. They'll talk about you remember when you were a child? We were kids and you used to do so. I'm like, no, don't remember that I'm telling them right away, This is from my memory. We'll talk about the specifics later. Okay? Okay. So bear with me, that's where I'm going, that's the break of it. My life has been immeasurably enriched by experiences I've had through associations with so many people, many of whom are in this room. One person that I wish was here, who is not, is my best friend from the fourth grade, Marcia Humphries Evans, and she couldn't come because she had cataract surgery. So I guess we're both of that certain age, right? But and then my friend who is here, Diana Cloud, who rode with me from Philadelphia. These two ladies never lost touch with me. Whenever I would sort of disappear and not talk, they'd either send me a text, where have you been? What are you doing? When we did talk, we just pick up where we left off and talk for hours, which is part of the reason why we didn't talk often because we would use up so much of each other's time. So I've been influenced them and other members of all the communities I've lived in. But there are some people that are in your life that are the foundation by which you begin. Those are mine, that's my dad, and my mom. And me, when I had dark hair, they taught us to always leave the community. The place or the situation better off when you leave, then when you first came to always be a good guest or as the Commander of the Naval Academy said, always make up your bed. You start the day making up your bed. That's my foundation, they taught me that. They also taught me some really cool stuff like use your brain. Do what you think you can do. Do whatever your mind tells you, can tell you you can do. But you figure it out. You may want to do something, but don't let somebody else figure it out for you. You do it. The value of education, neither of my parents finished high school, but they were adamant that we would go to college. It wasn't will you go to college, it was where are you going to go to college and when? Which was after four years of high school. It wasn't hang around at high school for six years and then go to college, it was your going right for them. It once you have it, they can't take it. Keep learning. You can have degrees. But that doesn't mean you know everything. It just means, you know that thing. Just keep learning. Always, be curious, be adventurous and dream. My mom loved going places. She would not get on a plane. She would not fly no matter what happens when we travel places. We'd bring her stuff from the places that we went so she could feel like she went to practical thing. My dad taught me how to make the best barbecue ribs you ever seen. And if you ever come to Philly, I'll make some point. My mom taught me how to take store bought barbecue sauce list of cheapy brand from Dollar General and those kind of places. And make it taste like it was cooked all day. But she really did that. She just doctored us. She taught me how to sew. Now, for some people that would be oh, you mean she taught you how to? No, my mother taught us how to sew, how to make what we needed to wear. So we never, you know, if you really need something, you can figure out how to wear it, how to make it. And that's what my mom taught us. It's significant for me because when I went away to college and I was the first person to go to college in my family, I had a suitcase full of clothes my mom made to me, that's significant that she was able to do that. The other thing I learned from her, which she's laughing, is to set somebody straight very quietly and firmly without cursing. I never heard my mother curse, but she could either look at you or say the right thing and you would just crawl under the rock. As I got older, I learned how to do that and if I ever do it, you'll know. I have three sisters, one of which is here. My sister, the one who isn't here from Orlando, lives in Orlando. Used to borrow my clothes and it used to make me so angry and then I thought, you have them okay. She was I was 2.5 when she was born. And I didn't really want to be a big sister. But I had her. So therefore, I had to learn how to be a big sister. I later had to learn how to be a big sister to all of them because they were always getting in trouble. And I was the one who had to get them out of trouble. The good thing about having sisters is that, you know, you have somebody who's going to be there for you no matter what they will. And I know they may not be here physically, but they're here. And like I said, they remember stuff that I don't remember. And so if I ever want to know what happened when we went to so and so I've got three people I can ask. The bottom picture is a montage of some pictures we took for Sibling Day. The top one, make sure I get this way. Those are my two sisters. This lady here is my other sister because she's my sister's best friend. And we went to Gulf Shores for the beach this summer and that was a cool picture. Okay. Then there's this guy here. You guys can probably figure out who that is. That's the other day I picked this picture because one, there is no way that I could even walk on that mountain. Much less ski on that mountain, but he skis on these mountains. And I'm like, how do you do that? He does it to me, epitomized his personality, which is quiet and he's reserved. And he's rather courageous, if I would say so myself. Okay. And the one thing I can tell you is he taught me that I never saw being a mom, but I grew into grew into being his friend. And I hope he grew into being my friend. Now we're like this, although I'm still right about that. Okay, so these are the people. Let's talk about my journey. It looks like this, my journey was not a straight line here. We want to do that? Yeah, go there, not want to do that. Come back over here. It was a series of intersection, a series of movements from point A to point B. That's what it looks like. I'm going to go over some things quickly that Julie's already told you from my perspective. I was born in Alabama, but I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where I that's my high school. It doesn't exist anymore. They blended it with a junior high. The cool thing about high school for me was where I learned how to be a member of a team. Many young women do not learn how to be members of teams. That was part of the reason why we put that team dynamics course in the court. Because we were asking them to be on a team, but not teaching them how to be on a team. I learned how to be, that was the tennis team. The lady on the right, all the way over is Sylvia Mccann, and she was the tennis coach, and she was a field hockey coach. And I played field hockey in tennis. She was a little firecracker, and her attitude was you can be competitive, you can be athletic, you can be guitar out of somebody and still be a lady. Okay. That's the way she felt. You're going to comport yourself with grace while you were on my team. The other thing she taught us, which we learned a lot because we did it a lot, we learned how to gracefully lose. We worked the best team in the city. We had a lot of heart. Okay, That was the Tennessee, we had a lot of fun. One thing that I remember from my mother was that my mother wanted a girly girl. I am not that, but she used to tell me, I remember I was sitting in the kitchen with her, helping her cook, of course, And she was telling me, you know, you're never going to have a boyfriend as long as you keep beating them in tennis, Mom, I'm good. My dad was in the living room and I heard this voice. They need to learn how to play better. That was my father. He felt I got four girls. They need to do the same thing that the boys do, and do it better if you didn't. You heard about it too. Okay. That was high school in 1966? Yes, I'm that old. My mother and my sister, my youngest sister drove me to University of Michigan Angel Hall, if you're familiar with the campus. And it's up on the hill. And they put all my stuff in the room and within 15 minutes they were gone. Okay. But that was the beginning of my career, now that I've had a chance to look back on it. Going to the University of Michigan, being an orientation leader, being a tour guide, working work study jobs that were behind the scenes kinds of jobs, like working at the dorm, handing out sheets and all that stuff, working in the admissions office, processing applications, working in the placement office. Did I see the orientation leader? I was my senior year, that's resident advisor for the non academic people. Okay. All of those jobs helped me to chart a career that I didn't even know I was looking for. I went to school to become an English teacher, which I never have been. But that's where I went. Fast forward to 1970. You can guess which one I am. I've worn glasses since I was in eighth grade. That's my friend, and I found myself married with a child. Very few job prospects in 1970. If you were around in 1970, you know, the economy wasn't real great, especially people with people with liberal arts degrees. Okay. So what did I do? Okay. First job I had was as a secretary in Baltimore, Maryland. My husband had an extern chip in, at an architecture firm in Baltimore. So I was like, okay, somebody has to work. And I went to a temp agency, picked up this job. I sat there typing all day from things that they were tapes that they would give you. That ended, and I got a job working for this guy, Isn't me, but the guy I worked for was he had to have been the meanest man I've ever met. I thought, okay, can you do this? Yeah, you can do this. I sat and typed the same letter day a day at the day. The only difference was who it went to. He was an import export person and he was pushing out letters, jobs, and stuff. He was really interesting. But the upside, there's always a upside. One, I decided I could do anything for the summer, It was a summer job. Stay there, do it, go home. Okay. Delayed gratification. You knew that the gratification was coming. It just wasn't coming soon. It was okay because it was a summer, three months of working for this person. Making enough money to where my family could eat and pay rent and it worked. The other thing that happened, my father told me once that if you can type, you can always find a job and he is correct, was correct because that job caused me to increase my typing speed and accuracy. I can now at least I could type as fast as somebody can talk. And it's because practice, practice, practice. And he made me practice practice. I didn't realize that was what was happening, but that was what was happening. My next job, my secretarial job, was at Tuskegee Institute, because that's where my went in a five year architecture program. I had already graduated, so I had to find something to do. And I was the secretary to the director of placement. Now the man who was the director of placement, which is now called Career Services for Students, was a gentleman named Mr. Kraus. Mr. Kraus was a co guy with a gravelly voice and he would, he did something that students didn't think he could do. He convinced them that they could get jobs that they didn't think they could get. And he convinced them to write resumes that would help them get those jobs. And he convinced them that they could go to grad school that they didn't think they could get into because he prepared them to present themselves. Well, that's what he did, and he helped me do the same thing because I had just gotten out of undergrad school. I remember him telling me one time I was it was about a year later. My husband was about to graduate and I was growing about, I don't want to be a secretary for the rest of my life, what am I going to do? And he says, Miss, you've already been to the best school that you can. You can go to one of the best in the world. Any place else you want to go was fine, just you ought to get into any other place you want to go. Already Been to the best place. And I looked at him, I said, okay. That's what you think. As it turned out, he was right. Because I did get into some good places I had been interested in. Let see if that's the last one. No, that's not the last one. My last secretarial job was at Duke University. There is a pattern here, right, Working at universities. I love universities. They are the best places you can learn a lot. You can meet a lot of people. You can do a lot. You can just blossom if you're at the university. The guy I worked for was the Dean of Student Affairs. Back then, university administrations were fairly small, and the Dean of Student Affairs had one secretary me, that sat outside of his office. And he handled everything. Great appeals, academic dishonesty, the food service, the bookstore, whatever was on campus student that was affected by students. Bill Griffith took care of the. One thing he taught me, talked about me dealing with people in whatever way you describe it, which I like he taught me that I used to watch him and listen to him. Whatever people would come and they were doing angry. They would be upset because the food in the cafeteria stuck. They didn't use that word, but that's what they said. They'd say this classroom needs, the parents would come and say, my student needs to take this class and they can't take it, all kinds of stuff. I really didn't cheat on that exam. He would quietly and gracefully and professionally handle. Every single issue that came into his office. And I thought I could be like that, I could be pretty nice. He just was one of those people who could talk to anybody about anything and help them see that either. Yeah, you're right, No, you're wrong. But I never saw anybody walk out of there. Angry when they left, When they came in, I learned a lot from being a secretary. And we call it UNC Chapel Hill, now it's called Ken Flager. I was interested in a Master of Arts in college teaching. I'm still trying to teach, and we were in Chapel Hill because North Carolina because my ex husband was getting an undergraduate degree. I mean, graduate degree in urban and regional planning. And it was okay. You're getting to the end of your program. What are we going to do? We're going to have two careers, one in urban and regional planning. If I did that, Master of arts in college. Teaching, learning how to teach college to very limited focus, right? How are you going to find a place where the two of you can both have a career? Very difficult. And I knew he had invested five years of his life getting an undergraduate degree in architecture, and he was really committed to urban and regional planning and still does it, I think. And I said, you know what, let me look at this NBA thing. And it turned out to be the best thing I've done. Not done one of the best things. So I applied, got in, we stayed there until I got done. And I was one of 12 students who received a fellowship from the Consortium for Graduate Study and Management. And it was fun, that's the other thing. Things have to be fun when you stop having fun at your work. Find more work, find different work. Because if it's not fun, it's not worth doing. Where if you don't get some kind of internal satisfaction from it, it's not worth doing. Now, what did I do after my sojourn for two years? Getting an MBA back then, you could not get a part time MBA. It was either go full time or go home. Okay. There are two people that stand out for me at Chapel Hill, and I think Jim Flynn knows both of them. Jim I later found out, and I were there at the same time, only he was a year ahead of me. And the first the second years didn't talk to the first years, so I didn't find out until after we were at DSI and all that. Right. And Jim says, weren't you at Chapel Hill? I'm like, Yeah, I was present in my class. James Oh, oh, you were? Anyway, so the first job I had was at First Union National Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a interesting thing because I worked in the Marketing Research department, which basically meant we took all of the reports that the Banking Commission made us create and turn them into things that allowed the upper managers to make decisions there. Lots and lots of data that banks create about deposits and what they do and what they don't do. We had to use that data, those data rather for making decisions. The primary decision that we worked on was where will you put branches? There were branches in banks, now I'll try to find one, okay? A lot of branches nowadays is a kiosk with a ATM. And we also looked at where should we put ATM? This was back in 1976 when we were talking about where do our ATM something we want to have, No, we have to have branches with a branch manager and a bunch of tellers who can talk to our clients. Now try to find one that has more than a branch manager and a few other people in it, like one teller and two ATM's outside. That was my first job. Now the VP that hired me decided he wanted to go to Bank of America. And this was when Bank of America was not a consumer bank, it was a 100% commercial bank. He went to start the Consumer bank part. Now mind you, I have a husband who's working in urban and regional planning in the state of North South Carolina and I have a kid. Do you think I'm going to be able to move to California now to remind you, this is 1976, 76. It was a lot of Women, men. You followed your husband where he went, stuff like that, Okay? So I went to Southern Belle and I said to myself, I don't work here but it was a good job. They hired me as an Account executive. And when I accepted the job, the hiring manager said, you know, this is a big company. If you don't like this, you can go someplace else within the company he met, not just someplace else. So I took the job and now now get, get ready because this is going to be a long story. And it's a long story because it has some things in it that happened, that happens to us. All right? That happens to ladies in the bell system. Back then there was such a thing as being hired as a manager by what they call off the street. Right off the street from the street, but it was called it was off the street. That meant that I came in to a company that sorry, where I had not worked there before nor had I, how should I put it? Worked at an hourly job before. Bottom line is I had to work myself up. I came in at a level that people didn't come in at mind. You, I had an MBA from one of the top business schools in the country. But that didn't matter. People didn't do that, and I did not know this, nor did I know that the people who wanted that job were really upset that I got it. So I walked into the situation not knowing any history, not understanding what's going on. And the very first class you have to take is a six week class that if you don't pass it, you're terminated. And I thought that is not going to be me. It may be somebody else, but it's not going to be me. So I was an account executive, which is basically a sales job. My manager sent me said, you got to take the six week class, go to Atlanta, take the class. I said, okay, fine. I get there first day. I am in a class of about 30 people. I am the only account executive in that class. Now, the CSR class or customer service direct class is for people who are going to be technical people. They're going to learn about the telecommunications infrastructure, they're going to learn about how to configure the switches because they are the people who go with the account executives to explain the technical parts of what the account executive is going to sell. I was going to be a tall person and I was supposed to take the CSR with me. But I'm sitting there in a class with all the CSR's learning what they're learning. I'm thinking this is awfully curious. The instructor said, well, do you want me to find you in the class now? This is another lesson. My intuition said to me, there's something fishy about this. It doesn't make sense to me but take the class. It was, I listened to that little voice that said, don't react to what you can think is a negative until it truly becomes a negative. I said, okay, I'll take the class six weeks later. Well, I went home. They let you go home after three, just so your family knows you're still around. And then you go back and finish. I finished the class, went back to work, and my manager says, well, how is the class? And I said, it was really good. When's the next one? And he proceeded to sign me up for every single CSR class. Now, mind you, I was an Account executive. I was supposed to be learning about sales. I was not supposed to be learning about technical stuff. And I thought, that's awful, curious, see what we're going to do with this. And that little voice said to me, you take these classes because remember that hiring manager who said if you don't like this, you can work someplace else? My other self said, yes, I remember that. Okay. Now you can either make a big plus, take the AE classes, and all you know how to do is to be a salesperson. Anybody who knows me knows I am not a salesperson. You can put me in front of people. I can't sell anything. Look at J. Rays going here. She is a salesperson. I knew that. I knew that. I thought, no, go ahead, take the CSR classes. There's a couple of perks to that. One, I learned everything the CSRs new, which means I didn't need to take anybody with me when I went to my sales call. Two, if I decided I did not want to be AE any longer, I could apply for technical jobs. Three, I learned what I am good at and I was really good at technical stuff. English, major good at technical stuff. Imagine that sometimes your intuition will tell you to do something. Please listen. One of the things I definitely know for sure is that honing your intuition, taking care of your spiritual side, as much as you take care of your physical side, is what will make you better. I also know that many times when I was a project manager, I absolutely, positively knew what the right answer was intuitively. And I would make intellectual reasons why I was right, okay. And I come up with, I'd come up with an analysis to prove that I was right and I was right when I used my intuitive perception to need, we don't use it enough and if you do, I think you'll be more valuable to wherever you are, Let's probably off script. So you signed me up for all those classes and I came back and during what I like to call the demise of my marriage, decided that it would not be a good idea for me to be in a Pinto driving around all over the western half of Pennsylvania. Anybody remember Pinto? I had a charge to one that they used to give me because the telephone company had pool cars. You couldn't drive your own car, you had to drive the cars that they had, Pinto and you're driving along and gas is slashing underneath it. And I'm thinking, you know, this is not a good idea, I'm about to get divorced And so I go to the department head and I said, look, they told me when I came here that if I no longer wanted to be AE I could find another job is that true He said sure. And I said, would you mind helping me He said sure. And he did. And I ended up working as an equipment engineer in operator services, which is all of the things that around when you dial zero, when you hit zero, there's all kinds of things that happened now, Not so many as there used to be, but now lots of things like a person picked up. Remember when a person picked up? When you hit, okay, Back then you hit zero and you got generally a lady. I see somebody out there, he doesn't recognize that. I see you don't look that way. Former. Anyway, so that whole operating services area is where I spent my career. It's funny because when I took the AE job, I said, you know what? I was in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm just going to do this until something better comes along. I was there for 16 years because again, you make decisions that cause you to make changes in where you are, what you're doing. But that experience at Southern Belle really helped me see how to maneuver and how to manage my career. Although I don't think I managed it very well. But we'll see, I went to work for this person and I was at the headquarters before I could get settled. Really settled along comes the Department of Justice that says, guess what? We're going to break up AT and T into seven little pieces, and your job is going to go to AT and T, but you are not. Okay? So we worked under something called functional separation. This was Southern Bell. And those of us who were going to go to AT and T were on one side of the room and those that were not were on the other side of the room. And they put a piece of tape on the middle so we know who were the AT and T people who were the bell saw people. We worked like that. But I still had to find a job because within a year or so I was going to be jobless again. And so I talked to my manager and he says, you know, we'll work on it. He learned of a task force that was going to be in Atlanta and was going to be doing something called implementing Tops. And what is it she said, I don't know. He didn't know what it was. I didn't know what it was. He said, Are you interested Now, mind you, I don't think I was fully totally divorced at that point, but I got responsible for that one over there. So you have to have a job. Sure. I'm interested. So I go home and I said, J, how do you feel about leaving your friends Yes. See, he doesn't remember. I told you I remember. I said, How do you feel about leaving your friends and moving to Atlanta And he looked at me, he goes, and this is what I knew. He was really smart. Is it more money? I said yes. He said, okay. I can always make more friends. And I was like, okay, one down. So I called the hiring manager and I said, okay, this thing has to last until my kid is out of high school. I'm not going to be moving around while he's in high school. He has to finish high school. He said it's going to last at least five years. I said, okay. So off I go. And I moved to Atlanta in the spring of 83, I think. Yeah. And left my son with some friends of mine so he could finish off the school year. And then proceeded to work for Southern Bell, including a strike, 13 days of strike. As a management person, I had to work 13 straight days, 13 hours a day, and do my regular job. It wasn't just me, We all had to do that. All right. So working, there was a series of very interesting circumstances. One of the people that I want to tell you about that I worked with, okay, excuse me, I'm going to need some of this is a person named Red Montague. Red Montague was the AVP Over Operator Services in Atlanta. Really nice man. He had been a naval officer, which meant he was kind of strict, but he was tough but fair and he was the person who managed all of us at headquarters in Atlanta. And he had this habit that habit would come to my little cubicle guys remember cubicles? He come to my cubicle and he sit down in a chair and he go on the way home. On the way to work this morning, I was thinking that we might want to do, we might want to change this system to where it did fill in the blanks. Or we might want to implement a new system that helps operators to do. We might want to send some people to this place to implement. So and so we might want to look at vendor versus vendor y. What do you think? Now here I am. I'm sitting in a cubicle. And this man very rarely would call and say, would you come to my office, just he was a walk to talk people. Remember the walk to talk people? I'm one I'm a walk to talk person. Although lately I didn't get a chance to walk to talk. They all walked to talk to me, But that's the way I am. I would much rather come see you rather than to send you an e mail or come see you, rather than to talk to you on the phone. If I see you, I can see your face. That was the bad thing about covid. The good thing is we could still keep doing things. The bad thing for me was I could not see your facial expression. And if you if you teach, it's hard when you can't see students facial expression. But anyway, we used to come Mr. Montague, we did not call him. He used to come to my office and ask me questions. I knew for sure that either one day or the rest of the week would be totally shot working on that. But the things he asked me to think about, the things he asked me to work on, were fun. I was always researching something new. I was always learning something new. He trusted that if I found something and I found out it was a bad idea. I would say, no, you don't really want to do that. He was also one of those people who knew his people. He knew our families. He would see me in the cafeteria and he'd go, How is that son of yours doing now? Everybody knows I have a son because I talk about him all the time, but he really cared that I had a son. He would take a person that he find, for example, that if you were working in Back Rue Louisiana and you were excelling, he would figure out a way to get that person to the headquarters, find a job for them so that they could learn more, so that they could take more classes, so that they could grow in their careers. And he did that often, and it pissed the rest of us off, because every time he finds somebody he wants to train, we have this fruit basket turnover, which meant he would rearrange all of the cheers on the Titanic. Right? But he always, that person always was better off because they came to headquarters, learned something, and either went back to where they were or stayed at headquarters. He took care of people, he took care of their learning, he took care of their training, and he made sure he helped us to grow in our careers. One of the ways he helped me was by asking me all those questions. But the other way was one day when he came and sat down in my office, he says, I was thinking, oh my God, it's not again He said, would you be interested at this point, my son was already in college, so I was empty nesting at the time. He said, would you be willing are you interested in going to Bellcore on a rotational assignment? Bel Bell Communications research. Bell Communications research is what was the Bell Labs for? The regional bell operating company. They created this AT and T and Bell Labs one with them. And then they created all these seven telephone companies. And they had their own research arm too. And I had been spending a lot of time with Bellcore committees doing things, helping them to see our point of view when it came to what kind of features we needed in switches, what kind of products we wanted to sell. Everybody takes 800 service for granted. We wrote the specs for 800 service and it didn't exist back then. We wrote the specs for the signaling system that rides along with the voice system that we have. We still have voice systems, whether we believe it or not, a fun anticdote. I'll share with you this, I'll share it later. But anyway, they used us to help them understand what the real regional bell operating companies did because they did applied research. They weren't telephone people, they were researchers. Most of them were Phds from Mit in places like that. They really had never worked in telecom. So that's why we would have, I said, sure, I'll do that I did. I moved to New Jersey. I said, yeah, it would be great because I can go watch my kids play football on weekends and that's what I did. Okay. And I want to tell you this antidote slipping by. We were in a meeting after I went to Belcourt with the cellular people. Cell phones we take for granted, right? If you had the original cell phone, you could kill somebody with it. It was big, you know, and it fit into this case. That was about that big like that. I have one. And so the cellular people we were talking to talk to them about how you combine voice with cellular, with the signaling system that managed both of them. Right? This guy said, well, we'll just turn it off at 02:00 in the morning. Maintain it. So we're talking about maintenance and how to keep things up and running. And all the systems had to be redundant. Redundant means you need two of everything he says. We'll just turn it off at 02:00 in the morning. And all the telephone people started laughing. And he said, what's so funny? I said, somebody said people make calls at 02:00 in the morning. Even cellular calls, right? You can't shut it down at 02:00 in the morning. Your system has to be so robust that it will only break down 10 minutes over a 30 year period. And they went ballistic because that was going to be expensive. Right? So we had to figure out other ways to maintain things to keep from shutting them down. And that's what we did. That was one of the best jobs I have ever had. We were always doing something. Always we were looking at all kinds of ways to do things. I managed a ton of project teams, so many that I can't tell you. Okay, So it was a fun job. So I went back to, I wasn't supposed to do that yet, went back to Atlanta and I'm trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I decided to do a Project Management certificate because I've been doing Project Management. This was before the Project Management Institute, Before PMP and all that other stuff. But you needed certifications and it kept me busy. That was the other thing. I don't like not being busy. I thought, okay, what am I going to do? Bell South was in the midst of downsizing in the mid '80s. I went back, it was 1993. In the mid '90s they were still downsizing because when they combined the two companies that made Bell South, they ended up with 90,000 employees. They said. The president said to us, in ten years there will be half of you will be employees because it's just not tenable to have that many. They had this program that if you went back to school, they pay part of your salary and your benefits for four years. Now I'll do that. I took that program and decided I go back and get my Phd. People always ask me, why did you decide to get a Phd? That's why, because every time I would get to a point in my career, I go read that book and there's some exercises in it that help you to determine where you want to go. I realized that all of the things that I have been doing were how things how do you hook up the best telecommunication system can. How do you respond to the DOJ in a timely manner? How do you write the best specs you can? How do you tell the vendors what you want? All of my jobs have been how do you do things and why do you do things? They weren't What questions? I found that out from me. Book. I thought, well, George Washington University has really cool program in logistics operations and materials management. I ought to go there. I did. Luckily, I got admitted. I was the only student in that program that year. It was great fun. It really was. I tell people I enjoyed being a student more than joy teacher because I could go in the library any time, want hang out and it was a lot of fun. I went to GW, see if I can move to move along. There were two people that I met that I learned a lot from. Now, I'm going to say this because you're probably wondering, you met a whole lot of people. Did you learned something from all of them? Probably. But when I started to think about who I did learn things from and what I did with it, these people fell up. Okay. There are some others, I guarantee one was Laura Baro. Laura Baro, you will not forget Laura Baruth, about six people. And she's got long blond hair and she talks and she moves. She's on constant movement. She was on the faculty at George Washington. 1996 was the first year I went to the Decision Sciences Institute conference. And I'm thinking, okay, all these people smarter than me, why am I here? She led me around for three days, introducing me to people, and she knew everybody. I'm thinking, is there anybody you don't know? And she's like, yeah, some people I don't know. I said, well, I haven't met him yet She would say, this is Pegylee, she's our Dr. student, you better take care of her. And they did. They literally did. Two of them are sitting in a room today that really took care of me. She taught me how you mentor younger faculty. I tried to follow her lead. And how you helped younger faculty to succeed because she helped a lot of people be successful. One of these days, I fear of where she is now. The other thing she went to Michigan State was I, I love her. Anyway. The other person was Diane Parenti. Diane Parenti is a second year academic, like me, she was doing a presentation at the Academy of Management on competency based education. I was fascinated by what she talked about because she was actually doing it in her teaching. We became really good friends. We've written papers together, we've done presentations together. She was responsible for getting me my first academic position at Penn State in Erie. Pennsylvania. Erie is a beautiful place, even in the winter if you don't have to go out. It's cold and it's dark. I liked it in the spring, in the summer, and the fall, but in the winter, it was brutal. But I was there with her. One of the things I learned from her and Laura was that the best teachers are those that put the students learning first. They're willing to take risks on all kinds of new technology, on learning things like cahoot and voice thread and all those other things. And cases, doing cases and simulations and all that. In order for students to learn why we taught operations, most students don't think they need it. They're like, why do I need to know how they make things? Because you're going to be working in a place where they make things. They taught me a lot about how to craft a curriculum that made it engaging for students and they would learn at the same time. One of the things that Laura did that we tried to do when I was at Penn State was she'd have a competition among the students and teams. Or developing new products and showcase it on campus in the School of Business. And the faculty would come and vote on the best one. We tried some of that stuff we did, right? Those two ladies helped me to become a better professor. They really did. They taught me how it's done properly. Oftentimes we would take risks and do things that would not endear the students to you because they weren't getting the grades that they thought they should have. Like Diane had a competency exam after her class because if they weren't competent, they couldn't do the simulation as a senior and hated it. But you can't be afraid of the evaluation. You just got to do what's best for the kids. It's just at my next stop was Penn State Grade Valley. Penn State Grade Valley is in Malvern, Pennsylvania, right outside of Philly. How do you think I got there? It was two things. Seasonal affective disorder, I'm serious, it was seasonal affective disorder. And Ellen Foster Curtis, I'll tackle a second. First, Len Foster Curtis was the director of the MBA program at Penn State Grade Valley. Penn State G Valley only had graduate programs in education, engineering, and business and she managed it. She and I were on a committee that was develop a joint MBA program from the for Penn State campuses. You've probably heard of it. And we were sitting there at dinner and I was joking with her. I said, do you need anybody to teach outs And I'm thinking she's going to say no, we got as many people as we need it. She said, sure, do it I'm like, that's interesting. I have seasonal affective disorder and I live in Erie. It's dark when I get up and it's dark when I go go home. They had to change all my lights in my office to full spectrum lights so I could function. My son sent me full spectrum lights for my house. You know, I'm thinking it's you don't have to go to either Cleveland, Buffalo, or what's the other place? Pittsburgh. To take a plane someplace. Right. Erie is way up there near Buffalo. Cleveland. Pittsburgh. All right. And my dad my mom had passed in 1999. My dad was in in Georgia by himself, and I thought if anything happens to him, I do not want to take three planes to get there. So that was my incentive aside from the sad. All right. Okay. So, I moved in 2003. To Penn State Gray Valley. I was there for three years, and unfortunately, I did not get tenure. Now, for those of you for whom this is your only career, that would be a deal breaker. But for me, it was like, okay, time, find another job. It really was devastating because I really liked that campus very much. But you roll with the punches as far as I'm concerned. I figured if I didn't get it and I wasn't supposed to have it, so that means do something else. Just so happened that bar plan found out that I was looking for a job and she sent me an e mail and she said, Would you be interested in coming to Indianapolis and talking to us about a clinical position? M is clinical, and we don't treat him like a second class citizen. And I went yes, and I had known the two of them. I knew some of the other people like Mark Frolich, I knew Mohan, and I knew who else. I think that was it at the time, wasn't it? That was pretty much. Oh, Roger. Oh, I forgot about Roger. I read everything Roger Schmier wrote because he wrote on service operations and that was my area. I came on an informal interview and I loved that campus. I like the people, I like the students. I like the fact that everybody was valued for what they brought. It didn't matter where you came from, it was what you were doing then. Everybody's goal was success for students. At least that's the way I felt. The vibe was there. Like I said, I'm a person who really believed in paying attention to how things feel. I met Kim and I met Mark it, Kim Donahue and I met Jim Smith. They were the core people. They were so enthusiastic about core. For those of you don't know, is Integrated Core? Integrated Core. At that time, they took three courses, Operations, Marketing, and Finance. And together as a cohort, and created a business plan for a company. At the end, like Julie said, we just took it and ran with it. I did not do all of that bill. Thank you for giving me credit for it. I had a lot of help from these people, so it was a no brainer. Phil Cochran guys remember Phil Bill, He and I went back and forth because I already had another offer at a school I didn't want to go to. But it was like, okay, you got to hold on to it and this thing doesn't work. And as it turned out, it worked fine. That's how I got here. From there. Sit here. Okay. Come on. Oh, it does. That's how I got there. Okay. So let's see. There we go. That's how I got there. All right. If you don't recognize that, if you're in the Kelly School, you got to pass that those orange benches every single day. But that's that's where I lived for a very, very long time. I'm working at Kelly. I'm in my office and, you know, I'm teaching more than I ever had because the classes at Penn State Great Valley were no more than 30 M B as right. And I'm teaching 6-9 twice a week, eight to five on Saturday for seven weeks, easy gig. I'm leaving my house in Philly at 02:00 instead of eight at 06:00 in the morning going to work, opposite the flow of rush hour. It really was fun, okay? And I had adults as faculty, as students, so you could walk in the class, have a lecture prepared, and then start talking to them about how they did what we were talking about in their class in their companies. And have fun. Right now, I got to teach 60 undergraduate students who really don't want to take my class and figure out a way to do it. Thanks to Laura, and Diane, and Kim, and Barb, and Jim, and Mark and other Mark, I learned how to do that. Okay. These people taught me a lot. Just from being around them. And so I'm sitting there, it must have been after six. And Ken Caro, where are you back there? Ken Caro was then the associate. No. Where you associate? I can't remember. Yeah, it was they were in tresses. Yeah. So he would he stopped in my office and if you know Ken Ken will poke his head and he'll go, You got a minute And I I would go, yeah, I have a minute and I stop and we talk. You go, well, he sit down in a chair and it goes well, real quiet. We think that you would be really good as Chair of the Undergraduate Policy Committee. Now, this was the spring of 200910, the spring of 2010. Now mind you remember I didn't get tenure in 2008, which meant I started it at Kelly in the fall of 2009. This was the spring of 20106 months. And I go, no, I'm not doing it, but we think you'll be good at it. I went, nope, not doing it. I have first, I've only been here six months. Second, I don't just enough about the business curriculum to be dangerous to tell the student the wrong thing. That's why I send them to the advisors. I don't tell them about the curriculum. And he said, I think about it, said no, I talked to my sisters and I talked to my friends and I talked to my son And he says, well, they wouldn't ask you if they didn't think could do it My sister said, oh, go for it, be fine. Somebody else. And I don't I do not remember who told me this, but they said, and I think this might have been what did it they said if you were a man, you wouldn't be having this conversation And I, you know, wait, you're right. If I were a man, I said, yeah, right off the bat, whether I knew how to do it or not, John, I had to do one. I I couldn't resist doing one. I'm sorry. It just slipped out. It just slipped out. I'll put it back. That's my other But John, I'm going to pause and talk about. See, that's what you get is one of those people that is the backbone of things. John is there when you don't know, he's there. He helps people when they don't know, he's helping them and help them when you do know. The one thing he did for me, we have this system where you have to put in the points for accreditation. And I'm sitting, what do I put in here? This is my first year there. I said, I don't know what to put in here. I don't have any of this stuff. And he stands there and I'm sitting in the chair. And he puts his hands on the back of my chair. And that's the first thing. John does not respect personal space. If you care about your personal space, John doesn't care. And it's okay because he does it and he doesn't realize he's doing it. After a while, you just say okay. And he says okay. Click right there. That's five points. Click right there. That's three points. Click right there. There's your 15 said that's all of his tools. Yeah. Do it like that every time we All right. That man has been helping me ever since he wrote my rewrote my candidate statement. So many times I went through it, looked at all of the different ones, like, okay, I was a really bad writer. Okay. Back to Ken. Ken kept at it and it took him three weeks and he finally came in and he said, got a minute. Can I sit He says, Wow, I was thinking, are you still thinking about it? Wanted to say no But I said yes actually, I was still thinking about it. And he said, We think, and I think that you can make a difference. And that was it. Because one of the things I've always wanted to do is to make a difference in the lives of the people that I'm around. I like to think that over the last ten years or so, I have made a difference. So my sister Georgia over there is the Toastmaster Queen. She. Says, when you do a talk, you tell them what you are going to tell them and then you tell them, and then you tell them what you told them. This is the tell them but you told them part. Okay. Life lessons. When the door of opportunity opens, walk through, knock it over to keep going. It'll be fine when you get a chance to do something outside of your comfort zone, which is just about everything I've ever done. Do it because you will surprise yourself at how marvelous you are. If you get a chance to go to a place where they don't speak your language, go. I did not talk very much about the places I have been. One of the places I went was with Kim and Eric Grader, and we took students to Spain to learn about the business of sport. That, thanks to Jay, that was one of the best trips I've ever been off. I have been to counted them before I came over here, nine countries. I've been to Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Swaziland, Tanzania, Liberia, Canada of course, lived across across the river from it. Well, maybe it wasn't N, South Africa. I'm sure there's another one. Okay. Us. I went to New York once. That's a foreign country. Going to another country is an enriching experience. You learn a lot about yourself, actually, I oftentimes learn more about myself than I learned about the people. Because you how adaptable you are, you really, do you learn how to focus? When we went to Tanzania, we went over to the Spiced Ferry. The truck broke down that we were on when we were visiting the spice plantations. And we missed the nice ferry going back. And we got on the regular ferry that everybody else got on, not the ice ferry. Talk about an experience. There were no cushy seats. There were just these metal benches and you just lived with it because you had to get back. Going to another country can be fine, be willing to work with something for which you cannot see the benefit at first. Why? Because instant gratification does not last instinct. Gratification isn't always best for you. Sometimes it's best to wait, be a good death, be a good team member. We call it team player. You want to be a good team member because anybody can be a player, you want to be a member of a team that people want you to be on their team. Okay. Last but not least, trust, nurture that inner voice, that feeling that something easier, right or something is wrong. I tell my students, if you drive around in a part of town and the hair on the back of your neck, stand up. That means you need to leave. Okay. Trust that. Don't think oh, I just got pre hair. No. Okay. That is given to us as human beings for a reason. We think it was just cave men and knew how to do that. We need to know how to do it too, because there are a lot of dangerous places no matter where you go. Okay. So those are my life lessons. However, I'm not done. This is something that I have liked for as long as I can remember. This opportunity to talk to you reminded me of how much I love this poem and how embodies what I've just talked to you about. I'll read it. Two roads diverged In a yellow wood, I could not travel both. One traveler long. I stood and looked down one as far as I could to wear a bit in the undergrowth, then took the other as just as fair and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear though asked for that. The passing there had warned them really about the same. Both that morning equally lay and leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere. Ages and ages, hence two roads diverged in a wood. And I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. This has been marvelous. I was so scared and you made you feel so comfortable. Thank you. Oh, that's right, Can't go yet. I have been asked if I minded you asking me questions and I do not mind. You can ask you can ask anybody can ask any question they want. I have reserved reserve the right not to answer it. I'm serious. Yes, sir. Ad a wait for the mat, Mike, as you advanced your career career. Oh, that's a good question. I really don't know, and that's an honest answer. I really don't know. I think oftentimes being female is worse and there are other times such as when I was in the South, being black was worse. It just depends. It depends on the situation. It is what it is. I was born this way. I can't change it. All I can do, and I'm going to tell you, this is what my father told me. My mom too. You can change how you react to it. I could say, yeah, that's what it was. They didn't hire me because I was back. I didn't get tenure because I was female. I didn't know figure out something else to do. Now, there are times when you will fight because it's worth it. But for me, there were times when I did like the time when one of my managers at Bellcore wrote on my evaluation, she tends to take on more than she could chew. All right. I had eight project teams running simultaneously. There was nobody else to do it, and I was good at it. So he wrote that and I wrote underneath it. If I were a man, I would be called a team player and sign my name. That's how you handle it. Didn't make sense to kiss him off. Just tell him he was wrong. Okay. Other questions? Come on. You got to give me I want to know you're going to give my son a chance to ask the question now. I want to be I want to know how you take the store bought barbecue sauce. Me, I'll show you. I will show you. It's called onions and lots of other spices. Yeah, go ahead. I hear you learn in retirement. Oh my goodness, that's hard, did it? Let me answer that question. It really depends on how you define retire. If you define retire is one of the primer. Rock and cheer and sit in and watch everybody go by. No, I failed at that because I don't like being idle. I don't like not being busy. I don't like using this brain. It is getting feebler and feebler by a minute. But I really like getting involved with things. I'm going to tell me I need to get paid most of them, and oftentimes I do. Most of the time I don't. But I'm going to change that, I promise. Okay? But it's hard because you no longer have to be someplace at the same time, every day. Which is freeing when you really think about it. I can wake up when I want, I can go to sleep when I want. I can stay up all night if I want, which I sometimes do. Reading a book. I'll stay up all night reading a book. I have read more books that are not related to work in the last three years than I have ever. I must have read about 50 books because I can pick and choose what I read. I read everything from mysteries to trashy novels to books about. That I learned about from my friend Diane who tells me about interesting books. Yeah, it is not an easy thing because you don't have the structure you had before, but you develop your own structure. I've been able to exercise, I've been able to walk more. I feel like I'm healthier in a lot of ways. Physically, certainly mentally I am, because I'm not trying to think of so much. Yeah, it's fun. It is fun. It really is fun if you do it right. I'm not sure I'm doing it right when I'm working on it. Okay. Anything else? Oh, you worked in telecommunication when there was so much change happening currently as a campus, we're experiencing a huge amount of change and we're seeing it also in academia. I just really want to know how did you really center yourself while basically had to write out the change, but also be a positive force as helping craft that change in your career. Okay. Having a task, I had a role to play in it. It wasn't a big one. At least I didn't think it was. But if you look at the fact that I had to design and economically justify the operator services systems that Southern Bell would be using in its four states, and how many people they needed to hire, how many switches they needed to buy, how much they were going to cost, how long they were going to last. What was the return on investment? You had a task, right, in the change. For me, having to make a contribution to the change is what helped me to get through it and embracing it. Okay, It was coming. The Department of Justice said, so the Department of Justice say it and we do it right? And so you knew that it was coming. You knew downsizing was coming. You could either sit there and wait till it hit you or you could be part of it is that thing. I don't know who it was who said you can either be either change you want or you can change you. I like the former rather than the latter. I'd much rather be involved in change than to have it happen to me because I'm not happy with things when they just happened to me. I like the control, which I can't always do. I I hate to bring this to a closure, but we got to go, but you got to sit right here. But if you have questions, you'll have a chance at the reception after we do a little bit more here. At this time, I'd like to ask Mark Gaines to come to the podium. Mark serves as the Vice President for Development for UPI at the U Foundation. Please help me welcome Mark to the stage for a special presentation. Good afternoon. My name is Mark Gaines and I get to do the fun part. Some will appreciate this. Pay you for the last lecture to give you honorarium. I also want to share, I did learn two things that you didn't put on there. One is that raising sons is very easy. The other is that Grand Lakes and Penn State loss with Arcade. Very glad that you're here with us today. On behalf of the foundation, I give it to your son. All right. Well, thank you very much. You thank no, you can't sit down quite yet. The UPI Senior Academy would like to award you with a plaque with our sincere thanks for presenting the last lecture. And additionally, the Senior Academy presents you with this certificate verifying the award of a lifetime membership to the Senior Academy. And now, yeah, you may sit down before we close the lecture and move to the reception outside the theater. I'm pleased to share that we've confirmed the date for next year's event, the 2024 last lecture will be held on Friday, November 8. It is the Friday after the election, so we can all put all of that other stuff behind us and come and listen. A wonderful last lecture. The call for nominations just went out to the campus, along with all the other calls for campus awards. We would encourage you to think about colleagues that you have that should be nominated. We always are looking for people that can give us the same kind of inspiring message that we heard today. I want to thank the Office of Academic Affairs and the IU Foundation for their support and participation in this gathering. As most of you know, organizing such an event time and effort by those who work behind the scenes. Members of the last lecture selection committee chaired by Gene Robertson have the challenging task of selecting the last lecture. As you heard Peggy indicate, Gene provides tremendous support for the last lecture. Nominees. We appreciate the staff in the Office of the Academic Affairs who handled all of the details that made this event possible. Please join me in recognizing and thanking all of those who contributed to making this a success. Furthermore, I want to thank all of you, members of the Senior Academy, retirees, active faculty members, and staff students, and guests who've come and been such an attentive and gracious audience. I hope that all of you can join us in greeting Peggy at the reception. That's just outside. Thank you for being here and we'll see you here next year.