My Favorite Week

Last week was one of my favorite weeks of the year. All WGU faculty came to Salt Lake City from all over the country for our semi-annual faculty meetings and graduation. Even though it’s always a hectic week, I love being able to see all of my friends! President Bob Mendenhall told us that there are now 98 Teachers College faculty mentors, and 191 total faculty mentors! Considering that when I joined WGU, the Teachers College faculty numbered in the 20s, we’ve obviously grown!

Scarlette, Debra, Blake and I enjoyed hanging out together, but we missed Cindy! We can hardly wait for July! And we were good. Tom only said, “Don’t stir the pot” a couple of times. (Tom used to refer to Scarlette, Debra, and me as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. I'm not sure if he thought we knew everything, or if he thought we thought we knew everything.) Here we are at the Provost’s Welcome Dinner on Wednesday night.

And here we are in our sombreros at the fiesta lunch on Thursday.
Scarlette and Debra both presented on Friday, and did great. We were proud of Scarlette for being nice. ;) She didn’t even need Ryan’s Darth Vader mask! (But definitely keep the avatar.)

As we were sitting in our meetings on Friday (during Debra’s session, actually), several deer were foraging for food in the open area just outside the window. Two deer came right up to the window. All 50 people in the session grabbed their cameras and ran over to the windows to take pictures. Debra and her co-presenters lost all control! I had just had 7 deer in my backyard that morning, which is a regular occurrence (there are six in my yard right now as I write this). But it was hilarious to see so many faculty members so distracted from the presentation by the deer. Debra and her co-facilitators were great to let everyone take their pictures, and then get us all back on track.
Graduation on Saturday was held at the Salt Palace. I think we all agreed that we like Abravanel Hall better. Hopefully we’ll be back there next time. There were a total of 611 graduates from 48 states, but only a fraction of them made the trip to SLC to attend. The rest were able to watch the live feed on the WGU website. I had a total of 8 graduates, but only one attended. Jaton (and her mom) came from Cincinnati, Ohio. It’s always fun to meet my students for the first time as they graduate!And, always my favorite of the week's pictures - me, Scarlette, Debra, and Blake in our "full academic regalia." :)