LU Moment: Big Red Gratitude | S2 Ep. 46

Shelly Vitanza:

Welcome to the LU Moment and thank you for listening. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the Director of Public Affairs at Lamar University. Each week, we showcase the great events, activities, programs, projects, and people at Lamar University. And happy holidays! We’ve made it nearly to the end of the year. Many of us are thankful just for that. We have much to be thankful for this holiday season at Lamar University. First, our 17,000 students who have worked very hard along with our faculty and staff through this pandemic to just stay focused and finish this semester healthy and strong. Which we are going to do after Thanksgiving. The campus reopens tomorrow, November 30th after the short Thanksgiving break. And we will move into wrapping up classes and having our finals. In fact, the last day of the semester is tomorrow, November 30th and finals will run through December 1st- December 8th. The spring semester begins January 19th but the last day to register for classes is January 21st. Just in case you’re thinking of becoming a Lamar University cardinal and I highly recommend it, you can register for the Spring semester until January 21st, but do it before then. Do it now, don’t procrastinate, get it going on. What else are we thankful for? Well, let me get a little personal for a minute. I’ve been at Lamar; it’ll be two years in January and I just absolutely love the campus. It’s 300 acres, it has a Starbucks right in the center and I love a beautiful day when I can walk across our campus and get a Starbucks. I also love to walk over and get lunch at the Brooks-Shivers Dining Hall especially on Friday, if you wear red, lunch is five dollars and lunch is great at Brooks-Shivers. I really enjoy just having a lot of good healthy food there and seeing the students. It’s nice and I really enjoy the Quad and the trees, and the rocking chairs on the balcony of the Setzer Center. It’s really a beautiful campus and it’s just nice to have an office on the Lamar University campus and to be a part of the community. But I also love the mission of Lamar University. A large percentage of our students are first-generation students and I’m a first-generation student. No one in my family had attended or graduated from college until I did, and it was hard. It was hard to navigate college when no one in my family had attended or could help me and kind of mentor me through that and I kind of understand that. So, Lamar University really caters to the students who are first generation; holds their hands and helps them to navigate. If you’ve never had anyone in your family go to college, you don’t understand that one class is three hours, and you need to take so many hours to be a full-time student and so many hours to get a degree and those things are all new concepts and so we really cater to those students because the basic concepts of the college process can just be mind-blowing. So, I like that mission and I’m thankful for the faculty and staff who really work one on one with the students and our support staff to help them to navigate. Those are the things that make me really happy here to be at Lamar University and the things that I think really add value to our students as well, so those are my personal gratitude points. Let’s get personal with Juan Zabala. He’s here to talk to us on this Sunday after thanksgiving about what he’s thankful for. Now, Juan is vice president for University Advancement and Chief Executive Officer of the Lamar University Foundation. Welcome Juan, thanks for joining us.

Juan Zabala:
Thank you, Shelly. I appreciate the invitation. It’s good to be with you.

Shelly Vitanza:
So, we’ve got a lot to be thankful for especially this year. I think, you know more than years of plenty and years of scarcity and uncertainty and just struggles, it really helps us to focus on what we do have and to be thankful for what we do have, and I get a sense from you that you kind of experienced that this year.

Juan Zabala:
Yeah, you are exactly right. Every year, of course, we are grateful for the kinds of support we get for the students who are enrolled at Lamar, but you’re exactly right. 2020 has been uniquely important years for us to understand the level of support and the value of that support. When you were talking earlier about the number of our students who were first-generation students, the reality of what we know is that it takes a lot of involvement to make sure that one student succeeds. A lot of that involvement is from individuals who are not employed at Lamar. These are alumni of Lamar or people who support us financially or in other ways. The important thing to remember is when a student receives a scholarship, they’re getting the financial support which is critically important. They’re also getting another person in their corner. There’s somebody else who wants that student to succeed. You and I both being first-generation students, we understand how valuable it is to realize that you’re not in it alone. So, this year especially with the pandemic and with so many things going on, it’s really been valuable for our students to understand that they’re going through something difficult and complicated and they are not on this path by themselves. Again, this year more than ever that is extraordinarily meaningful and important for our students.

Shelly Vitanza:
It really is. I saw the information about a student, Martin and I’m probably not going to say his last name,?. He’s a first-generation student and he is going to major in Civil engineering, and he got to meet the family who established the Noah Rodriguez memorial scholarship and it seemed so profound for him to know that this family supported him and were putting money behind him and believed in him.

Juan Zabala:
The scholarships are critically important because of the financial support. So many of our students being first-generation students or students who may not have the resources to do this on their own, so the financial support is critically and vitally important. I think what you said is so important to remember the boost that it gives our students when we think about programs. We have a scholarship program at Lamar, the David J. Beck Fellowships and students get an opportunity to do something during the summer that’s related to the educational experience. And we have had students over the years who have done extraordinary research in cancer or in dementia research, a student went to France to translate philosophy text from French to English, students who did research in South Africa on oceanography. Every one of those students were students who had no such opportunity available to them through any other source. And you think about the way that that opportunity impacted their lives and then the lives of their colleagues here at Lamar who get to watch how this student’s research enhances their experience. The field in which they’re doing their research is greatly enhanced and these are undergraduate students from our region who without this kind of support might not have that opportunity and just think how that has changed their lives. We have example after example at Lamar on how our supporters, our alumni, our donors, our friends, our community leaders. When they step up to help the impact it has, not just on that one student, at the moment, but on their entire world for the rest of their lives. It’s almost impossible to measure the exponential value of that involvement, so our gratitude for those of you who are involved with Lamar is genuine and important because the life-long changes that we are able to make in people’s lives and the way those lives will impact other lives is just tremendous.

 

Shelly Vitanza:
Exactly. It’s not just the research at the time but then those students graduate, and they go out and do just amazing things. Those are great stories to tell. We’ve had people even through this pandemic, Juan really step up and support Lamar, our athletic programs, our academic programs, and it’s really been phenomenal through this hard time, has it not?

Juan Zabala:
It truly has been. It’s another really important point that you make. The 17,500 students who are enrolled at Lamar are each individuals. This is not just one bulk of humans; this is one student at a time and each student has their own unique expectations and interests and motivations. You bring up athletics, we have so many student athletes on this campus whose love for the sport that they’re involved in marries with their opportunity to go to college, so if they’re able to attend a national institution like Lamar, through their participation in the sport that they love. It’s not just the financial support, it’s the cardinal fans who come out and support our student athletes and give them the kind of backing that they need that keeps them on track, on the field and academically. You know, Shelly, the academic performance of our student athletes at Lamar University now today is in the top small percentage nationwide. We have student athletes succeeding academically. A lot of it is that they get so much support and they get so much backing from the community, they get the incentive to do well, on the field and in the classroom. It’s just dramatic. Again, you and I have seen the kinds of support we get for student entertainers. Every time there is a marching band performance or a choral performance or theatre or dance, the community support for our budding artists is just so important, it’s so valuable to their future careers. Every involvement by everyone of our supporters has such a dramatic impact on every one of our students.

Shelly Vitanza:
 It’s so true and it’s so heartwarming to see for the students. You can see the students’ recognition at the time that, “oh my gosh, this community really is behind me” and that’s just amazing to see. So, if someone want to get involved and support Lamar University, how would they do that, Juan? What is the best way? I mean, even a little support is good. I mean, I know we are starting basketball, basketball is going to be in full swing here which we are thankful for that and people can come to games and support that way, but what are some other ways? If they wanted to get in touch with you, to support Lamar University financially, how would they do that?

Juan Zabala:
Usually, the best way to get involved with Lamar is to visit our website lamar.edu. I’m bragging on an area in which you and I are involved on a daily basis, Shelly, but this website is so filled with information. Anything you want to be involved with; we have ways for you to do. Of course, the easiest way to get involved, you go to our website, we have a tab for alumni and donors. On that section, we have ways to get in touch with me and anybody in University advancement including our alumni affairs office. It’s about more than raising money, it’s about raising support, so if you call us and say, “I have an interest in native plants in Texas and I want to get involved somehow at Lamar,” we know the faculty member at Lamar who is doing research in that area and having you involved with him or her is critically important. Sometimes we have people call and say, I’m not sure how I want to get involved, but let me tell you what I like and what I’m interested in,” and I guarantee you, we have a way for you to get involved.

Shelly Vitanza:
I love it. That’s so true. We have professors who are experts on somethings that I have never heard of. Juan, thank you so much, happy holidays to you. I appreciate everything you do for Lamar University and I appreciate your time today. Let me share a few more things that I’m excited about and thankful for at Lamar University. Dr. James Henry has been awarded $141,000 for industry research. The Center for Operator Performance has awarded Dr. Henry, an assistant professor for chemical engineering $141,000! And the research, very relevant to Southeast Texas, will identify the optimal amount of workload for machine operators so that they either become bored or unresponsive or overwhelmed. Th research will speak to determine operator knowledge and skills are lost when companies implement an advanced process control which is an automated process machine. So, Dr. Henry hopes to discern how much skill atrophy occurs when automated systems are used and to establish best practices to help operators keep their skills intact. Great, great grants and research is going to take place. Our chemistry and biochemistry was just awarded a major grant for research, $200,000 and this is a grant for four years $50,000 each, just a phenomenal grant, just a general grant that will just really increase research at Lamar University in chemistry and biochemistry. We’re really thankful for that, the extra layer research exposure is critical in cultivating the next generation of chemists, so it’s a fantastic award for Lamar University. We are all so excited as I mentioned before that Lamar University basketball is starting and that feels a little like normalcy. Our spring is going to be very busy with basketball and football. And in closing, let me just let everybody know that our president, Dr. Ken Evans will be speaking at the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce education update luncheon on Tuesday, December 1st at the Holiday Inn and Suites on Walden Road. It is a hybrid event. You can attend in person as well as online. For more information, you’ll need to go to the Beaumont Chamber website, but it’s going to be a really good event where you can find out what we’ve done here at Lamar University to continue education and how we’ve supported education across the state of Texas. So, please plan to attend that either online or in person and enjoy your holiday season. Thank you for listening to the LU Moment. I’m Shelly Vitanza, the director of affairs at Lamar University, the pride of Southeast Texas.