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

00:00:00.000 Ed Funkhouser has been an incredible mentor to me throughout my time at State and after.
00:00:05.815 He has a really great
00:00:10.481 grasp of the balance between
00:00:14.647 theory and practice and I think that has been very helpful for me
00:00:18.292 as I've gone through undergrad and through my graduate studies
00:00:23.060 of wanting to delve deep into a subject
00:00:25.735 but also wanting to make sure, like I keep on saying,
00:00:28.438 that that subject pertains to work in the world.
00:00:31.330 As someone who has worked a lot with production but also communication theory
00:00:37.068 and history he's been a wonderful resource and guide to me
00:00:41.574 as I navigated those waters.
00:00:44.267 Sandy Stallings was my communication advisor.
00:00:47.886 She's a public speaking teacher and she's a communication advisor and interdisciplinary studies.
00:00:52.465 But she was the teacher of that Capstone course
00:00:55.002 and helped me also think about how to coalesce what I'd been working on into a project,
00:00:59.059 and has been just a great life coach too
00:01:02.848 because at State I would do ten thousand different things at a time.
00:01:06.663 I would come into her office for advising and rather than say, "What course do you want to take?"
00:01:10.450 she'd say, "John, are you getting rest? [Laughs]
00:01:12.750 "Are you taking time for yourself?" and that was also very valuable.
00:01:16.148 Probably if I'm thinking about something that shaped me as a person at State,
00:01:23.771 the University Scholars program and the staff there
00:01:26.860 really opened my eyes to the world.
00:01:29.060 I came from a small town in Sanford, I'd never been out of the country,
00:01:31.486 never been west of the Mississippi River before college,
00:01:33.934 and they opened my eyes to the world
00:01:39.040 and different ways of looking at the world and respecting different ways of looking at the world.
00:01:42.940 I didn't go to another country with Scholars program
00:01:48.700 but they brought people from different countries to us and had film series and book clubs
00:01:53.864 and conversations that really opened my mind,
00:01:58.006 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.