Tag: alumni

Thursday, Jan. 17, 2019 marked the 30th anniversary of Spalding University President Tori Murden McClure completing a 50-day, 750-mile skiing expedition in Antarctica that ended with her becoming one of the first two women and first Americans to reach the geographic South Pole overland. She was part of an 11-member travel party who all agreed to reach the pole at the exact same time. At the time, McClure was a 25-year-old graduate student at Harvard University. Ten years later, she became the first woman and first American to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. On Thursday, McClure, who is also a Spalding MFA in Writing alumna, reflected on the South Pole expedition.

Now 30 years later, which are your most salient memories and the first things that come to mind?

One thing that’s sort of weighing on me is that the oldest members of the expedition team were about my age now. I was the youngest member of the expedition team by about 10 years, maybe even more, and the oldest member of the expedition team was 58 and another was 56. I was like, ‘Man, they are so old!’ (Laughing.) Now I’m 55 and going, ‘Would I ski to the South Pole today?’ The average temperature was minus-25, the terrain was really rough, and you’d ski 20 miles and go to bed in a place that looks just like the place you started in the morning. But it was amazing. It was an amazing expedition.

Summarize the details of the trek – how far you went, where you started, etc.

We started at the edge of the Ronne Ice Shelf and were the first expedition to fly in – most expeditions sail into Antarctica – and we flew into a blue ice runway at latitude-longitude 80° S, 80° W, and then we had to fly out to the edge of the continent to the ice shelf. And then we began our ski in. We skied kind of through our base camp where we’d landed and kind of realized in our first couple days of skiing past back toward base camp that we had way too much stuff that we were hauling. So when we got to base camp, there were lots of big fights – that I wasn’t a part of because I didn’t have enough chutzpah to really be a part of them – about what we were going to bring. We jettisoned all the ropes, jettisoned all the ice axes, jettisoned all the stuff we would need really to get out of a crevasse if anyone fell deeply into a crevasse. So we just dumped a lot of gear and began to ski proper all the way to the South Pole. We did have one crevasse fall, Jerry Corr, but he only went in about shoulder-deep, so we just pulled him out. When we flew out, we sort of flew out over our route, and we crossed over crevasse after crevasse after crevasse and didn’t know what to think. We were lucky.

Describe some of the party you were with.

There were nine men and two women. Joe Murphy was the oldest gentleman and wrote a book about it (called, South to The Pole by Ski: Nine Men and Two Women Pioneer a New Route to the South Pole). Joe Murphy had climbed Everest and done a bunch of other stuff. We teased him and called him, “Three-toe Joe” because he’d lost some toes on Everest. Jerry Corr was 56 and was sort of the next-oldest. He was a businessman and a good skier. We had a gentleman from Chile, Alejandro Contreras-Steading, who was probably the best skier in the group and we called him Directo Alejo because there was all this sastrugi that you had to negotiate, and most of us would find a route skiing around these big hummocks and stuff, but Alejo, even if he was skiing over a book case, he would go straight, up and over, and because he was such a good skier he could pull it off. The rest of us had to go around. We had Col. J.K. Bajaj from the Indian Army who was a great mountaineer in India. He was always complaining about our pace. ‘Slowly and steadily,’ he would say. ‘We will get there, but we most go slowly and steadily. If we come to a stone, we’ll put our heads down and keep walking, but we absolutely must go slowly and steadily.’ The leader of the expedition was Martyn Williams from Canada. He was pretty extraordinary. It was a pretty good group.

How long did it take?

It took 50 days to cross Antarctica.

Describe what a day of skiing in Antarctica feels like or what you would see.

We skied nine hours a day, seven days a week. Skied on Christmas, skied on New Year’s, and there was just a couple days when we couldn’t move because the winds were too strong. So we averaged about 20 miles a day. There were seven days when we traveled in whiteout conditions, and whiteouts would come down on the surface of the snow and you couldn’t see anything. We’d build these cairns to help folks navigate. I took great pride in that I led the first hour and a half each morning. Everybody else did one-hour stints, so we had an extra half-hour in the day for a five- or 10-minute break. Each time we changed a leader, we would take time to gather up and put wax on our skis or eat a little something. I discerned the great advantage of having a bra because I could put my Snickers bar or whatever it was I wanted to eat the next hour in my bra and let it thaw. The guys had to put stuff in their underwear, which I’m sure was much less comfortable. (Laughing.)

(STORY CONTINUES AFTER TWITTER VIDEO)

30 years ago today, @toriposu became the first woman and first American to ski to the geographic South Pole. Our @SteveJones_SU caught up with her as she reflected on the 750-mile expedition. #SpaldingU pic.twitter.com/4LU1hGwlbr

— Spalding University (@SpaldingU) January 17, 2019

How long could your skin ever be exposed before it would freeze?

It would freeze pretty quickly. As I recall, true cold begins at minus-40, and there were a couple days that got that cold, and we couldn’t ski because your skis stop at minus-40. Nothing slides. There’s not enough moisture left to let any skis slide, so it didn’t get that cold very much, but there were a couple days. That’s also about where our thermometers stopped. That’s also the place where if you have spit or have any liquid leaving your body, it freezes before it leaves the ground.

Did you ever try that?

In terms of relieving myself, you would end up with a stalagmite when you were peeing, which was pretty funny. (Laughing.)

So going back to the very start, what made you want to do this? How did you even get hooked up with this trip?

It’s one of those shaggy-dog tales where I had been climbing a mountain in Bolivia, and a French woman told me about this expedition where they were looking for a few good women. Obviously men had skied to the South Pole, but no women had skied to the South Pole. I thought, ‘That’s crazy. That’s going to be really cold, and I’d never want to do that.’ But it was one of those ideas that got ahold of me once I heard about it. So I heard that they didn’t want anyone on the expedition under 30. I was 24 at the time. I’d done a bunch of stuff. (But for an expedition like this one), the physical hardship is one thing, but the sort of wear and tear psychologically is even more challenging; hence, they didn’t want any kids on the trip. So I wrote to the expedition leader sort of thinking I’d be set aside just on my age. But they were going to be doing a training exercise on Mount Rainier and invited me to come out. He didn’t make any promises, said, ‘I think you’re too young, but come meet the folks who might be on the expedition.’ So I went out, and I was bigger and stronger than anybody else. We climbed Rainier and did a bunch of skiing around Rainier. It was pretty early in the season – there was still about 10 feet of snow at Paradise Inn. And I got in a snowball fight with Martyn Williams, the expedition leader, and at one point, kind of picked him up and threw him over a car. (Laughing.) We were just tussling. I didn’t really think too much about it. The other thing was it was storming pretty badly on Mount Rainier, and we crested a sort of a ridge. And I remember standing on this hummock and spouting a passage from King Lear: “Blow wind and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!” So that sense of being comfortable in adversity and then throwing him over the car are what got me on the expedition. (Laughing.)

What was your skiing background?

Oh, virtually none. So I trained on roller skis, skiing the bike paths along the Charles River while I was a student at Harvard. I had to get permission from Harvard to take off 2 ½ months in the middle of the academic year to ski to the South Pole. I said, ‘I think if you let me do this I’ll be able to get a thesis out of it.’ So I wrote thesis at Harvard called, “The Theology of Adventure,’ where I juxtaposed the backcountry adventure with what I consider the vastly important more urban adventure. It’s sort of like where Spalding is. Spalding is the urban adventure, and the backcountry adventure is where you can practice the persistence, the resourcefulness, the endurance to make a difference in this world.

So back to the actual skiing, what did it feel like as you started to get close to the South Pole?

When you’re starting the journey, 750 miles seems daunting. I remember that we had to change our route a little bit because when I was heading into the expedition, I had it in my head that it was going to be 600 or 650 miles. There was something – I forget if it was a political thing or something else – that made us change our route, and it added another 100 miles. I remember thinking that I couldn’t conceive how far that was on foot. I’d been on an expedition that covered about 300 miles on foot, so I knew it was just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, but that extra distance was like, ‘Wow, I hope we can make it.’ When we started, as soon as we got off the ice shelf, we were in really gnarly sastrugi, and you always had the sense, ‘Over the next hill, this is going to go away. Over the next hill, this is going to go away.’ And it didn’t for, hmm, 700 miles. There were better patches and worse patches. But then you got on the Polar Plateau, and the Polar Plateau was flat, and it was like, ‘Wow, this is awesome.’ So you’re skiing along the Polar Plateau and you hear this (imitates loud rumbling, whooshing, shaking sound). And what was happening was that as we were skiing along the Polar Plateau, we were breaking off huge sheets of frozen snow that were settling down into softer layers of snow. And to anyone who has spent time in avalanche country, the sound of that ice breaking and the sound of the ice settling or really hard snow settling into a softer layer, just makes you think, ‘I’m going to die,’ because it’s just the sound of an avalanche kicking off. We were starting to kick off these big, probably miles-long, these ice cracks. If you’re leading and you’re the one who kicks it off and can kind of feel the ice settle a couple inches down, you’re like, ‘I hope this stops dropping!’ and looking at each other. Then when we realized what was happening and that we were probably just fine, you settled into it. But being on the Polar Plateau was just awesome. As you approach the pole, the wind gets less because the wind blows north off the Polar Plateau toward the ocean, so it doesn’t matter what direction you’re skiing to the South Pole from, you’re going into a headwind and it picks up speed as it approaches near the coast. So in the start of the journey, you’re in the worst snow and the hardest winds. So on the Polar Plateau, the winds started to drop a little bit, the snow settled down and you had a sense, ‘It’s just another 100 miles. I can do that.’ And there is a photograph of that last day of, ‘We’ve done it,’ with the looks on our faces as we’re approaching the pole. There were thoughts of home, thoughts of all sorts of other things in that introspection in that one photograph.

There’s a research station at the South Pole. They have a snow runway for ski planes, and the scientists aren’t allowed out past the runway. There were sort of rules of where they can go and can’t go. So here we are skiing in from across the continent, and there’s this group of people lined up along this line of runway that they’re not allowed to cross. And we come skiing in. There were lots of congratulations. They took us into the South Pole station, which is geodesic dome. And inside the dome are refrigerator trucks that are heated, instead of refrigerated. They took us into a cantina. I don’t really remember what they gave us. (What was memorable) was the heat and the smell of both of the researchers and mostly us, because if your clothes aren’t thawed out, they don’t smell all that badly. But once we started to thaw out, we smelled pretty badly. It had been 50 days since I’d had a shower. And I’d wear two pairs of socks that I’d alternate back and forth, and by the end of the expedition they really could stand up by themselves. (Laughing.)

I don’t remember if we spent the night or not, but as I recall, there was a Twin Otter (airplane) that came out to get us from our base camp, and we packed the airplane and left. As we were flying back, we had dropped the fuel cache for the airplane because it didn’t have the fuel capacity to get back from the South Pole to base camp without that fuel camp. But it was storming and we couldn’t land where the fuel was. So we had to land elsewhere, and the pilot brought us down between two huge crevasses, and we spent a couple days waiting for the weather to break to get back to the fuel cache to get back to our base camp. There was a little bit of radio communication from there but not much, and when we got back to base camp, there was a good communication system. So there were all sorts of folks who wanted to talk to us. I remember feeling kind of ticked off that they were paying all this attention to me (as one of the women on the trip) and none to the men and not paying any attention to the men on the expedition and just feeling the unfairness of that. When we got back to Chile and there was a press conference or something, they’d say, ‘What was it like to be a woman skiing to the South Pole?’ I answered the question as politely as I could and as often as I could, ‘Look, it was just like being a man skiing to the South Pole. I did everything they did. They did everything I did.’ Finally, something in me snapped and said, ‘The only difference is when nature called, I had to drop my trousers and they didn’t.’ (Laughing.)

You all arranged it to where you all would reach and touch the pole at the exact same time. What was that moment like?

There was something really sweet about it. There are sort of two South Poles. There’s the ceremonial South Pole, which is like a barber pole with a globe on top. The actual South Pole is more of a giant nail or a spike, and it says, ‘Geographic South Pole,’ and every year on the first of January, they relocate it and it moves 15 or 20 feet because the ice shifts. So they had just moved it the first of January, and we were there on Jan. 17, so I’m pretty sure we were right over the actual pole. We all circled it and stopped and touched it. Then it was the letdown of going home and making sense of it all.

Which was harder between skiing to the South Pole and rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean?

Physically, the ski was more difficult. Psychologically, the row was more difficult because of the solitude. You really couldn’t talk much while you were skiing because it was really hard to ski side by side and the wind was always blowing and you had to shout to be heard just a few feet away, but there at least in the evenings and the cook tent, you could converse a little bit.

Now, 30 years later, as this comes up in your speeches and conversations with students, which lessons or themes do you try to impart when you talk about the journey to the South Pole?

(McClure summarized that one story she tells frequently is of the time when, while wearing her glacier glasses, she was skiing toward what she thought was an ice landmark in the distance. She kept trying to ski toward it even as a member of her expedition kept telling her that she was veering off course. And as it turned out, what she was seeing was a piece of ice that was stuck to her glasses.)

The one I tell most often is the glacier glasses story, which is to say we get to choose the path we follow. I don’t know how many times I’ve told that story, but it’s always a little bit different lesson for every audience. For young people in particular, though, it’s we get to choose the landmarks that we follow, the people with which we align ourselves, the organizations we choose to serve. We get to choose those things, and choose with care, because it does matter.

NAZARETH, Kentucky – As Spalding University celebrates its founding body – the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth – and all Spalding alumni the next two days during Founders’ Weekend, the university will welcome the new leaders of that founding body to campus, and, appropriately, they’re all Spalding alumni.

The new SCN Central Leadership Team was installed on Aug. 25 with three Spalding alumnae at the helm: Sister Sangeeta Ayithamattam as president and Sisters Jackulin Jesu and Adeline Fehribach as vice presidents. Sisters Sangeeta and Jackulin are both from India, and it’s the first time that two India natives are on the Central Leadership Team.

All three are expected to attend the Spalding Founders’ Weekend reunion dinner on Saturday evening.

They’ll serve a five-year term leading an SCN congregation that includes hundreds of sisters participating in ministries in five countries: the United States, India, Nepal, Botswana and Belize.

“We keep searching for ways to reach out in compassion and justice and to speak our truth in the spirit of the gospel,” Sister Sangeeta said. “I believe Spalding is following in that path and tradition.”

As a 26-year-old, Sister Sangeeta came to Nazareth and Spalding in 1985, her first time ever in the United States. She majored in business administration with a minor in biology. The business program was a small one at the time, and she was its only international student. She knew that when she came to Spalding that she would eventually be headed back to India to pursue SCN ministries and to work in hospitals, and she said her college education prepared her well.

“There was such a friendly atmosphere, a welcoming atmosphere, which helped me a lot to get adjusted,” she said. “That time really stretched my world view about things, and I found the education system as very broadening. It really prepared me.”

Sister Sangeeta graduated in 1988 and went on to earn a master’s in hospital administration at Xavier University. She worked in administration at three hospitals in India and has served in various SCN leadership roles, including the term that just ended as vice president alongside President Susan Gatz, SCN, who’s also a Spalding alumna.

Sister Adeline, who is a Louisville native and alumna of Angela Marici High School, graduated from Spalding in 1974. She also served on the Spalding faculty from 1996 to 2007 as a religious studies professor.

“It was a good time for me,” she said of her undergraduate years. “I had some really good teachers, many of whom were our own sisters. My time there (as a student and a faculty member), especially my early days, were quite fulfilling. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the people in what was then the College of Arts and Sciences. We had a great group.”

Sister Adeline, who was the provincial of the SCN Western Province from 2012-17 and vice provincial from 2007-12, also holds a master’s in theological studies from Catholic Theological Union and a doctorate in scripture from Vanderbilt.

“I was the first college graduate in my family,” she said, “and I know many of the students at Spalding are first-generation college students. It’s important that Spalding continues to be that niche in Louisville.”

Sister Jackulin, whose work has also primarily been in hospital administration, studied nursing at Spalding from 1990 to ’94. Known as “Jackie from India” because she had three classmates and a dean who were also named Jackie, she was, like Sister Sangeeta, the only international student in her program.

“It was a great experience,” Sister Jackulin said. “My classmates were so good to me.”

She fondly recalls her commencement ceremony in which she won the nursing class’ humanitarian award as voted on by faculty and students.

Sister Jackulin passed her nursing boards and did a brief stint as a nurse in Lexington before returning to India to work in nursing, then administration at various hospitals.

By doing her clinical work in hospitals all around Louisville, “nursing at Spalding gave me a good foundation” for her work in India, she said.

Sister Jackulin said there are many Spalding SCN alumni serving outside the United States, spreading the spirit of service and compassion that Mother Catherine Spalding helped foster.

“But even if they have not studied at Spalding, the Spalding spirit is there – in ministries across India, Nepal, Botswana,” Sister Jackulin said. “Mother Catherine found that spirit, and we carry it everywhere we go. She responded to whatever the need was at that time, whether it be cholera, caring for orphans, whatever it was at that time, and her legacy is lived out today wherever the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth are.”

As part of Founders’ Weekend, Spalding University hopes alumni and the community at large will come get acquainted with its newest campus green space on Oct. 5-6 and take time to eat, drink and play some games.

Spalding welcomes the public to its inaugural free Founders’ Weekend Fall Festival at newly opened Trager Park from 4-9 p.m. that Friday and Saturday. There will be lawn games, including a nine-hole miniature golf course, inflatables, food trucks and beer served by Great Flood Brewing. AT&T Fiber is another sponsor.

The park is located at the corner of South Second and West Kentucky streets, and free parking will be available at the former Kroger building.

Bellissimo and Georgia Sweet Potato Pie Co. will offer food on Friday, and Street Food King will on both days.

“I think there will be a good variety of activities – food, games, music, the Spalding community and the nearby community, too, “ said Shaun McDonough, Spalding’s new director of student activities and recreation. “So I think it’ll be a great mixture for everyone.

“This being a big activity in Trager Park is really great, and I know in my role, I’m looking at what can we use that space for, whether it be intramurals or other things in the future.”

Trager Park is a 2.2-acre grassy park with 100 newly planted trees. It opened in November 2017 after the property was transformed from an unused asphalt lot. The fall festival will be one of the first official university events held at the park, and it’ll certain to be the biggest so far.

“We’re just seeing how things are growing at Spalding and how we’re just trying to do more,” McDonough said.

With alumni in town for reunion weekend and visiting prospects and their parents on campus, Spalding is hoping for a big festival crowd. The Spalding festival will also be the same weekend as the St. James Court Art Show, held up a short distance away in Old Louisville, and Spalding hopes St. James fans will stop by Trager Park afterward.

While dozens of graduates from Spalding University Auerbach School of Occupational Therapy work in and around Louisville, many other alumni have found jobs across the country that they said pay well and are personally fulfilling. Here, we highlight one of them, Clarissa Tenido Perry, who works at the Villa Pueblo Skilled Nursing and Rehab Center in Pueblo, Colorado.

Clarissa Tenido Perry, a native of Hawaii who attended high school in West Virginia, got job offers in Southern Indiana and in Colorado – where she wanted to be – shortly after graduation from ASOT in 2015.

“Anywhere on the West Coast, there are a lot of jobs,” she said. “Anywhere in the South and in any rural areas there are plenty of jobs.”

She said she felt eager and prepared to go work out west after Spalding placed her at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland for her Level II fieldwork.

Tenido also got her bachelor’s in health science from Spalding, participating in the bridge program in which senior undergraduates can begin working toward their graduate-level OT coursework and finish a year sooner. She said she enjoyed the small class size of the ASOT program.

“I felt like it was more of a family atmosphere, and that was really nice,” she said. “They promoted that feeling and culture. … I think Spalding helped me become a well-rounded therapist. I’m doing a little bit of outpatient and a little bit of skilled nursing. But if I wanted to go on into mental health, or community therapy, I would be able to do it with all the knowledge and all the education I received from Spalding. So I would highly recommend it. I think they did an excellent job in educating and getting me ready for whatever setting I chose to work in.”

Learn more about the Auerbach School of Occupational Therapy.

Watch a video about the Spalding Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD) program.

Register for a Aug. 28, 2018 Spalding OTD info session.

While dozens of graduates of Spalding Univesity’s Auerbach School of Occupational Therapy  work in and around Louisville, many other alumni have found jobs across the country that they said pay well and are personally fulfilling. Here, we highlight one of them – 2015 alumnus Tom Cox, who is a hand therapist in Florida. 

Tom Cox credits his Spalding Level II fieldwork under and current ASOT faculty member Dr. Greg Pitts for setting him on the path to success in hand therapy. He said that right after graduation, he earned a job in Washington, D.C., making $79,000 initially and that within the first year received a raise to six figures. As of the summer 2018, he works under a group of hand surgeons and orthopedic surgeons in South Florida.

Cox said Pitts instilled in him the “Four C’s” of a successful therapy practice – caring, communication, confidence and competence. “His big philosophy is that if you love patients, they recognize that, and you’ll never be slow at your clinic,” Cox said. “That’s how I’ve operated, based on his philosophy. If patients know you genuinely care about them, genuinely love them, and are genuinely invested in them getting better, they’ll bend over backwards for you with what you ask of them.”

From 2013-17, 95 percent of Spalding graduates passed the National Board Certification of Occupational Therapy (NBCOT) exam, which is required to become a registered and licensed occupational therapist. Cox said he was impressed by the way the Spalding faculty prioritizes board exam preparation.

“At Spalding, you’ve got some of the best professors in the nation, in my opinion,” Cox said. “You had really good professors who were passionate about the subjects, so they armed you with the information you need. And they prepare you for that NBCOT extremely well, and that’s what you want to be prepared for. If a program doesn’t prepare you for the boards, it’s not worth going to. … If anyone wants to be set up for success, Spalding would be the place to go.”

Learn more about the Auerbach School of Occupational Therapy and its new doctor of occupational therapy (OTD) program.

Spalding alumnus Tyler Glass is showing with every snap of his camera and every post on his Instagram account that he possesses what just about everyone covets on social media nowadays: influence.

He’s also finding adventure and professional success along the way.

Glass, a former Spalding natural science major and soccer player, has spent the first two years since his graduation traveling to amazing outdoor spaces, learning photography and showcasing dramatic pictures of mountains, waterfalls, glaciers and cliffs on Instagram.

People like his pictures a lot. As in likes and likes by the thousands, and he’s built a following of more than 800,000 on his @tylerwayneglass Instagram account.

“I’m someone who’s gotten extremely lucky,” Glass said. “There’s a lot of hard work with it, too.”

Companies that sell outdoor clothing and equipment have taken notice of his work and hired him as a freelance contractor to take photos that feature their products – the kind of cool nature shots you’d expect to see in a catalog.

The brands he’s worked with include Moosejaw, Naturewise and Kelty Built, plus hotel, car rental and camper van companies.

“Their mission is brand awareness, and I’m a tool to get that done,” said Glass, who has made recent trips to Iceland, Oregon and Colorado. Trips to Canada and Switzerland are planned. “It’s probably one of those things in a couple years I’m going to look back and think, ‘This was pretty cool.'”

He and a travel/business partner make a list of destinations at the beginning of the year and contact brands that they like to let them know where they are going and are available to provide content or to perform Instagram takeovers.

“A lot of it has to do with, you spend so much time on Instagram and follow other Instagram influencers who are going places,” he said. “You see where they’re going, and you say, ‘Wow, that’s a pretty cool shot, but maybe I can do better, get a different shot, get a different angle.'”

Glass, who once thought he’d go to law school after getting his bachelor’s, started photography after his Spalding graduation in 2016. He hoped it would be an activity that might fill the time void left after the completion of his four-year college soccer career.

He and friends took a three-week drive out west after graduation, and he brought along an inexpensive camera and lens.

“From there, it just became a passion,” Glass said. “It definitely wasn’t me thinking, in two years I’ll have over 50,000 followers and getting paid to travel to these places. I kind of thought that (trip) would be me like my last hurrah before entering the workforce, and instead, it jump-started all this stuff.”

During 2017, Glass said, he improved his skills and developed a personal style of photography and editing, and his Instagram pictures were getting shared more and more. He’s worked to keep his Instagram page and Instagram stories fresh and unique, and his pictures made their way onto Instagram Search and Explore pages. He gained more attention when Tamron USA, the lens company, featured a story on its website about Glass proposing to his girlfriend during the trip to Iceland last year and highlighting some of the photos he took.

The increased following has led to increased business.

“I spent a lot of last year reaching out to brands, and the last few months, I’ve had a lot of brands reach out to me,” he said. “It was just finding the best way to put myself out there so that a lot of people could see me. Obviously Instagram has helped me out a lot with that.”

Glass has a pretty sweet gig, and he knows it. He said he tries on his trips to live in the moment and appreciate the cool places he’s getting to see. Instead of concerning himself only on getting the perfect picture of an amazing sunset in Oregon, for instance, Glass said, he tries to make sure to take time and enjoy getting to witness the sunset.

Before he left for a recent trip, his father told him goodbye and reminded him, “Realize what you’re doing right now because you’re doing something that a lot of people your age aren’t getting to do and would die to get to do,” Glass recalled.

Glass also looks back fondly on his time at Spalding.

The graduate of Louisville’s Academy for Individual Excellence had originally planned to attend Georgetown College and play soccer there but changed his mind right before the start of his freshman year and came to play at Spalding instead.

“It’s the best decision I ever made,” he said. “I made the absolute best friends I’ll ever have in my entire life. It’s one of the most important things that’s happened in my life. It’s kind of taught me with these trips and with life in general, that life is not going to go exactly how you planned no matter how hard you try or how well you think you’ve got it planned out. Life is going to change up a little bit, but usually it’s going to be for the better.”

Katie Goben ’18 graduates from Spalding’s Master of Science in Business Communication (MSBC) on June 2 with a 4.0 GPA. Goben, who earned her master’s degree while working full time, discusses her experience as well as her favorite memory at Spalding.

What is your favorite Spalding memory?

Goben: My favorite memory of the MSBC program is simply all of the people I have met throughout the program. Dr. Hinkle has quickly become a mentor to me and my peers never stop amazing me with their determination to reach their goals. I know I have met lifelong friends and created a network that will help me reach my goals in the future.

What accomplishments are you most proud of during your time at Spalding?

Goben: I am most proud to be graduating from the MSBC program with a 4.0. This is not something I have done before, so it feels good to see all my hard work pay off. It is especially nice since I completed the program in one year while working full time.

What is your favorite spot on campus?

My favorite spot on campus is the patio off the second floor of the ELC. It is a great spot to hideaway in, relax, eat and take naps in the hammocks! It has even helped me get a few unintentional sunburns this spring.

Is there anything else that you would like to share?

Spalding will forever hold a special place in my heart. The last year has been full of ups and downs but the support that this school gives is second to none. I was very nervous coming into the Master of Science in Business Communication, but I realized early on I was going to be okay. I would encourage anyone who is considering furthering their education to not only consider Spalding but especially the MSBC program.

Jeff Maxey, an alumnus of the Spalding University College of Education master’s program, was named the South Carolina Teacher of the Year on May 2. In a phone interview this week during Teacher Appreciation Week, Maxey said he credits the program at Spalding for setting him on a path to success in teaching.

“Not a day has gone by in teaching classes that I don’t think back to something I learned in my experience at Spalding,” said Maxey, a special education teacher at Starr Elementary School in Anderson, South Carolina.

He won the award during a gala event last week. He’ll receive $25,000 and the use of a new BMW for the next year, during which he’ll serve as an ambassador and the spokesman for more than 50,000 educators in the state. He’ll travel the state to speak, conduct mentoring and work with teacher cadets and teaching fellows. The South Carolina Department of Education touts its Teacher of the Year program as one of the strongest in the country.

“Jeff exhibits the qualities and characteristics that we want to see in every current and future South Carolina educator,” State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman said.

Maxey didn’t begin his professional life as a teacher. The Louisville native and Seneca High School graduate got his bachelor’s degree in religious studies and communication from Western Kentucky University in 1992, then served as a minister at Eastwood Baptist Church in Bowling Green.

Several years later, he made the career move into teaching, and he said the programs offered in the Spalding College of Education made it possible. Maxey was able to earn certification to teach special education during the day at Lassiter Middle School in the Jefferson County Public Schools system while taking his graduate-school courses in the evenings and on weekends.

Maxey spent about 18 months at Spalding, earning a Master of Arts in Teaching with a concentration on learning and behavior disorders.

“To be able to do it hand in hand – the learning (at Spalding) while being a practitioner during the day – really solidified and made the teaching in the classroom come to life and made me that much more a part of what of my professors were teaching me, because then I could go try it,” Maxey said. “Then I could come back and interact (with the professors) about what worked or about what things I could do to tweak it to become more successful.”

MORE: Information on all bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral offerings from the College of Education

Maxey said he was grateful for the options that were available to him at Spalding as an adult learner looking to make a career change into teaching.

“Spalding was a huge part of my educational journey,” Maxey said. “Right now, with the teacher shortage that we’re experiencing, I hope there’s a lot of people out there who would consider it. If they’re looking at making a change in career, looking for something very meaningful in which they can impact the life of children, I would certainly recommend that they consider Spalding and they consider teaching.”

After spending three years at Lassiter Middle School, Maxey’s career took a unique turn. He moved to North Africa to work for eight years for a non-profit organization doing teacher training in small villages.

“Every day, I used in Africa what I learned at Spalding,” he said. “I used a lot of the same principles my professors at Spalding taught me in how to use a variety of teaching techniques that I was able to pass along to those teachers and help them be successful in their settings.”

Maxey returned to the United States in 2013 and began teaching in South Carolina. His Teacher of the Year award shows that he’s done an exemplary job.

Maxey is eager to start traveling to talk with students, teachers, administrators and legislators about education policy and classroom practices. As a special education teacher, he said one priority of his will be to discuss enhancing teaching techniques for students with autism.

And, as he travels as Teacher of the Year, he’ll be riding in style. As for that brand new BMW, Maxey said, “I’m looking forward to putting a lot of miles on it.”