President Tim Hall

This is the time of the year when I hit the road to visit with alums around the state and the country. A week ago I visited with Austin Peay alumni in Houston, Austin, and Ft. Worth and plan to make this an annual trip, since we have so many graduates who have settled in Texas. My mom completely approves of this plan, since she lives outside of Houston and I was able to swing by to visit with her a little before our alumni meetings started!

I’m always amazed at these meetings about the career paths our alumni have taken with their Austin Peay degrees. In Texas, for example, Rick Canady, the executive director of one of the largest eye clinics in the world and Dr. Warren Chaney, who had spent many years in California as a film writer and producer. Dr. Chaney is credited with having discovered actress Tia Carrere in a grocery store in Hawaii, if you can imagine that.

What a year of weather! Four snow days and now the university has had to cancel classes because of flooding in Clarksville and the surrounding areas. Almost every bridge in Clarksville is closed, with the Cumberland River and the Red River at or near record heights. Thankfully, damage to the campus has been minor. But I know it must be frustrating to our students to have the university closed on one of our final examination days. Here’s hoping things are better tomorrow.

Today I had the privilege of meeting Austin Peay ROTC cadet Shamai Larsen, who was honored last week by receiving the Legion of Valor Association’s Bronze Cross of Achievement and is the first student in APSU’s history to win this award. Shamai was one of eight students out of 4,500 ROTC seniors across the country recognized for her overall excellence in the ROTC program. She is an active duty soldier whose selection to participate in the Army’s Green to Gold program brought her to Austin Peay last fall and will see her graduate this coming spring. She’s a member of our cross country and track teams and a 4.0 student. We could not be more proud of her!

Last week was an exciting one in the life of the Peay, since we inaugurated the first annual Peay Read and its associated lecture. This year, all our entering students were asked to read “An Ordinary Man,” by Paul Rusesabagina, whose heroism was the subject of the movie, Hotel Rwanda. Mr. Rusesabagina talked with his experiences in the 1990s, when he saved the lives of more than 1200 men, women, and children who took refuge in the hotel he managed from the genocide raging in Rwanda. I count it a great honor to have had the chance to meet him.

Last night, APSU’s art department celebrated the opening of Modern Light, the new exhibit of photographs from the collection donated to the university by Jim and Nan Robertson. Jim and Nan were on hand for the opening, and Jim, in fact, gave those present insight into some of the stories behind the pieces in the exhibit and the artists who created them. APSU faculty member Susan Bryant is the curator for the exhibit, and she was obviously thrilled to see the university acquire some of the very pieces she discusses with her students in class.

I mentioned to those present that Jim and Nan have discovered the secret of “high touch” generosity. They realized that the collection they wanted to give to a university would have more impact at an institution such as Austin Peay, rather than at a larger institution with more resources, where the collection might have simply taken its place along side many others. At Austin Peay, the works they so generously donated to the university will have a tangible impact on the lives of our students. We don’t simply plan to store them in some well-guarded vault, but to use them actively in the instruction of students.

It was a fine evening, centered around a great and generous gift to the university, and to a couple who are wonderful new additions to the Austin Peay community. Welcome Jim and Nan, and thank you!

Austin Peay’s first yearbook since the early 1990′s is out, and people who see it are going to be blown away!

Full of life and dazzling energy, it’s all here: Mudbowl, the Toga Party, Tacky Prom, OVC champions, International Night, Graduation, and hundreds of other moments across the last year. Half a century from now, our current students will return as alumni to celebrate their 50-year reunion and they will bring this year’s Monocle with them. “Can you believe we ever looked that young (or that thin)!” Kudos to Patrick Armstrong, editor-in-chief of this issue of the Monocle, and best wishes to Racheal Yeatts, the upcoming E.I.C., and to all the staff members who helped to revive a fantastic tradition.

I had a fine lunch last week with the officers of FAM–”Future Alumni Members”–a new student organization created with the help of our alumni office. F.A.M. is an organization offering students opportunities to interact with APSU alumni and other students while strengthening their lifelong loyalty to Austin Peay State University. A crucial element in the success of a great university is alumni support, so we are trying to reach out to our students while they are still here at APSU to help them start thinking of alumni life after they graduate. We also want to engage members of F.A.M. with some of our current alumni, so that ties between our present and past students are strengthened.

Austin Peay’s new yearbook should be out in a few weeks, revived after an absence of more than 15 years by our student affairs division with the leadership of Tammy Bryant, our director of student affairs. The staff of The Monocle has been hard at work all year and spent the summer sorting through thousands of photographs and laying out the yearbook, which is being published by Jostens. I saw some of the preliminary pages this week, and they look fantastic. Tabitha Gilliland, our coordinator of student publications, has done a great job of providing guidance to our student staffers.

Soon after I arrived at Austin Peay two years ago, I pulled together a group of folks at the university to talk about making the Peay’s history more visible for our current students. A sense of tradition will help our students be more rooted and engaged in the university. The knowledge that their own years at Austin Peay will eventually find a place in that same history will, I hope, help inspire them to make the most of their time here.

The 2008-09 yearbook is on sale at http://www.jostensyearbooks.com.

We had a fine meeting of Austin Peay alumni in Atlanta last week, at the home of Wayne and Bobbi Pace. Wayne recently retired as chief financial officer for Time Warner, and he and Bobbi have settled into a new home in Atlanta. I never fail to hear stories at these events of how our alumni were helped and influence by their professors at Austin Peay. Years later, they still remember a faculty member who paid them special attention or gave them some crucial bit of advice. Not many alumni recall much about who was president of Austin Peay while they were here, but they have a lot to say about particular faculty or staff who influenced their lives for the better. And that’s as it should be.

Meetings such as we had in Atlanta are a way for APSU alumni to reconnect with one another and also to get a fresh view of the things happening on campus right now. We are working overtime to find new ways to stay in contact with our alumni, but nothing beats getting out on the road and seeing them.

Toward the end of July, I had the chance to attend the conference banquet for the Clarksville Writers’ Conference. This was my second year to attend the event, and I marvelled again at what a wonderful job Pat Winn and those who have worked with her have done in getting this conference established in Clarksville over the past five years. The keynote speaker at the banquet this year, John Egerton, was first rate, and though I did not have a chance to hear the other conference presenters, it looked like the conference had attracted some fine speakers. Austin Peay’s own Chris Burawa, the new director of our Center for Excellence in the Creative Arts, participated in the conference. Chris is a poet and a translator. He has a volume of poetry published under the title of The Small Mystery of Lapses, which I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed.

I hope those of you who missed the conference this time will plan on attending it next year: it’s a great addition to the cultural life of our community. Oh, and if you see Pat Winn about, thank her on behalf of all of us.