A Final Goodbye

K

Dan Williams, one of Lyndon States most beloved professors, will be leaving at the end of this semester. Dan will be leaving us to take a join in Washington DC to work as a copy editor for CCTV, a Chinese State Televisions American affiliate. His love for China has taken him from us, and though we shall miss him, we are glad that he will be doing something he loves.

Dan first came to our campus in 2006. He hailed our cold campus from Samford University in Alabama. If you have ever taken Dan’s Law and Regulation class you have heard him talk about his time at the private Catholic University. Before then he lived a rich life as a world wide journalist for organizations as prestigious as CNN, where he worked for over a decade.

He has worked in both Germany and his beloved China. In 2012-2013 he took a break to be a Fulbright Scholar, teaching journalism at Xian International Studies University. Though not much is known of his time there it is said that he illegally brought back plants and then planted them right here in Vermont.

Despite his criminal tendencies Dan is arguably the best professor at Lyndon State College. He has the highest rating on RateMyProffesors.com, which is in it’s own the highest honor a professor can have. Where some professors are pompous and strict, Dan is kind and considerate. He doesn’t care whether you learn things “his way”, just that you learn them. His door is always open if you need help or just want someone to talk to. He teaches several English and Journalism classes. If you are an EJA major you have most likely taken Journalistic Writing, Introduction to Multimedia Storytelling, and Law and Regulation. To him teaching journalism means opening up a new world to his students.  “Journalism is a free ticket to the best show on Earth,” he says. “It’s a front-row seat on history.”

Dan is more than just a professor though. He has been the advisor for the critic for eight years. Helping mold young journalists through practice. In his final goodbye to Williams Michael Miley said of the esteemed professor “Burned into our memories is the image for a man who would never shy away from talking to a student and dispensing his wisdom no matter whether it be those sluggish Monday mornings or the late nights on Thursdays working with the Critic Staff.”

He also is a co adviser for the Society for Professional Journalism and Editor of NewsInk. At the same time Dan works as a member of the China Currents Educational Board. Whether he is remembered for his teaching, advising, or his friendship Dan Williams will certainly be missed by the students of Lyndon State College.

Above is a word cloud that we made by asking several of Dan's students the first word that came to mind when thinking of Dan. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwA911e_Kf8PM0hJcHBucnhJTW8/view?usp=sharing

Final Project

For our final project we plan on interviewing students about one specific teacher at Lyndon State. We are going to get their opinion on the teacher and than have them write down one word that they would use to describe them. With that one word we are going to make a word cloud. With the interviews we are planning on doing a video project. Depending on the responses of the interviews will determine if we also use a podcast. We also plan on having a writing component to it as well. We have not decided what each team member will be doing for the project. We know that we will conduct the interviews together. When we figure out how the interviews go we will figure out who will complete each step of the project.

Video Project

   Logging has been a very big part of the history of Bethel, Maine. The mountain village was originally settled in 1769 as the small Canadian hamlet of Sudbury.  In the late 1700's Doctor Timothy Andrew and his wife moved from Boston to Maine and built what is now the Andrew's Farm, which still stands today. They were one of ten original families to survive the last Native American attacks in the 1780’s, and sense then have survived everything from scarlet fever that wiped out an entire generation of children, to snow storms that killed all their animals. In the last hundred years the family has expanded their business to include logging, both in the surrounding towns and their own vast holdings.

    Timothy Andrew spent the majority of his life on the Andrew’s farm. He studied agriculture at  the University of Maine Oreno and joined that army soon after graduation. He was stationed in Chicago in the years leading up to the Vietnam war were he met and married his wife Jo Ellen, a Texas native and true southern bell. After they married they moved back to Maine to start their family in the 1960s. Tim would go on to run the family farm just as his father before him, and his son after that. Tim’s father Richard Andrew would spend winters in the New England forest cutting wood to support his family, as Tim does now.

“Our family’s logging history goes back four generations. My great great great grandfather was a doctor, but his son was a farmer and a logger. He worked for the brown company in the woods and my father was a scalar for the brown company out of Berlin.”

 Richard worked cutting and hauling trees for what about two dollars a day, including room and board. During the fall season, they would go into the woods and wouldn't come back out until Christmas time. It was important to the families that the men made it out in time to buy Christmas presents for the children, sense this was the 1950’s and the women had little to no way of supporting themselves.

    “[One winter] there was a huge snow storm, and the men couldn't get out of the woods. And all the women were upset because there was no money to buy toys to put under the trees.”

So starts the family story that has been passed down for generations. A story of how a group of Andrew women took Christmas into their own hands.

            “They went to be and had a dream,” tells Andrew “of making animals, by carving blocks of wood, covering them with cotton, and pieces of cloth.”

    Though the family no longer makes handmade toys the story lives on. It is told every Christmas to younger generations, as a lesson to always appreciate what you have and above all to take pride in their rich family history.

      Logging has been a very big part of the history of Bethel, Maine. The mountain village was originally settled in 1769 as the small Canadian hamlet of Sudbury.  In the late 1700's Doctor Timothy Andrew and his wife moved from Boston to Maine and built what is now the Andrew's Farm, which still stands today. They were one of ten original families to survive the last Native American attacks in the 1780’s, and sense then have survived everything from scarlet fever that wiped out an entire generation of children, to snow storms that killed all their animals. In the last hundred years the family has expanded their business to include logging, both in the surrounding towns and their own vast holdings.

    Timothy Andrew spent the majority of his life on the Andrew’s farm. He studied agriculture at  the University of Maine Oreno and joined that army soon after graduation. He was stationed in Chicago in the years leading up to the Vietnam war were he met and married his wife Jo Ellen, a Texas native and true southern bell. After they married they moved back to Maine to start their family in the 1960s. Tim would go on to run the family farm just as his father before him, and his son after that. Tim’s father Richard Andrew would spend winters in the New England forest cutting wood to support his family, as Tim does now.

“Our family’s logging history goes back four generations. My great great great grandfather was a doctor, but his son was a farmer and a logger. He worked for the brown company in the woods and my father was a scalar for the brown company out of Berlin.”

 Richard worked cutting and hauling trees for what about two dollars a day, including room and board. During the fall season, they would go into the woods and wouldn't come back out until Christmas time. It was important to the families that the men made it out in time to buy Christmas presents for the children, sense this was the 1950’s and the women had little to no way of supporting themselves.

    “[One winter] there was a huge snow storm, and the men couldn't get out of the woods. And all the women were upset because there was no money to buy toys to put under the trees.”

So starts the family story that has been passed down for generations. A story of how a group of Andrew women took Christmas into their own hands.

            “They went to be and had a dream,” tells Andrew “of making animals, by carving blocks of wood, covering them with cotton, and pieces of cloth.”

    Though the family no longer makes handmade toys the story lives on. It is told every Christmas to younger generations, as a lesson to always appreciate what you have and above all to take pride in their rich family history.