Mentors
John Coggin discusses various university employees that served as mentors to him throughout his education including Ed Funkhouser, Sandy Stallings, and University Scholars staff.
Interview on 2011-05-30 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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Ed Funkhouser has been an incredible mentor to me throughout my time at State and after.
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He has a really great
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grasp of the balance between
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theory and practice and I think that has been very helpful for me
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as I've gone through undergrad and through my graduate studies
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of wanting to delve deep into a subject
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but also wanting to make sure, like I keep on saying,
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that that subject pertains to work in the world.
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As someone who has worked a lot with production but also communication theory
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and history he's been a wonderful resource and guide to me
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as I navigated those waters.
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Sandy Stallings was my communication advisor.
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She's a public speaking teacher and she's a communication advisor and interdisciplinary studies.
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But she was the teacher of that Capstone course
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and helped me also think about how to coalesce what I'd been working on into a project,
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and has been just a great life coach too
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because at State I would do ten thousand different things at a time.
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I would come into her office for advising and rather than say, "What course do you want to take?"
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she'd say, "John, are you getting rest? [Laughs]
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"Are you taking time for yourself?" and that was also very valuable.
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Probably if I'm thinking about something that shaped me as a person at State,
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the University Scholars program and the staff there
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really opened my eyes to the world.
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I came from a small town in Sanford, I'd never been out of the country,
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never been west of the Mississippi River before college,
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and they opened my eyes to the world
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and different ways of looking at the world and respecting different ways of looking at the world.
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I didn't go to another country with Scholars program
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but they brought people from different countries to us and had film series and book clubs
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and conversations that really opened my mind,
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taught me to think for myself, and I would not be in the place I am if it weren't for the University Scholars program.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.