I have taught for the last five years at The University of Texas at Austin, and as this semester ends, so does that chapter of my career. It’s been a time full of wonderful experiences, relationships, and memories. I wanted to share an experience that serves as a nice capstone to my teaching career here.
My students work with nonprofits in Austin in both my Team-based Communication and Business Communication courses. This semester, two of my classes have been working with Texas Search and Rescue (TEXSAR), an all-volunteer organization dedicated to first response, and the experience has been so good for the students and myself. To me, a good pro-bono student project experience is heavily reliant on the client. Can they focus the project for us on one issue that is “actionable”? Are they responsive to students? Do they know the limitations of their own organization and its members, as well as the students? Most importantly, do they want help from students and will their interest in the relationship stay strong throughout the project?
With TEXSAR, the answer to each of these question is a resounding YES. Greg, Brandon, Melissa, and company gave my students a focused issue in each class*. They have been incredibly responsive to all student ideas throughout the last six weeks. They invited students to meetings. As one example of their dedication to making this project work, ten members showed up to our end-of-semester presentations.
*The issues were/are, in a nutshell: Given our situation, what are the best sources of short-term and long-term funding for us to reach our goal of becoming a Texas Task Force? (Business Communication class) and: How can we build relationships with local municipalities and organizations so they will turn to us for help in emergency situations? (Team-based Communication class)
We have worked with many high-quality nonprofits over the last few years; a few have been good, most of them have been great. Still, the experience with TEXSAR has been head and shoulders above anything I could have imagined for my students.
Here is an email from Greg Pyles, CEO of TEXSAR, and a good guy:
Andrew,
I regret that I could not attend the classroom presentations due to a
training class that had been previously scheduled. After being briefed
by the TEXSAR team members that attended the presentations I must say
that I do not have the words to express our gratitude for the effort
you and your students have invested in our organization. “Thank you”
does not seem to even approach the level of our appreciation.It occurs to me that the best way for TEXSAR to express our
appreciation is for us to take the action items and ideas presented
and implement them. We are busily working on implementation of many of
those items. The “added value” your classes have contributed will be
apparent soon.I am personally humbled at the vigor, abilities and passion your
students have shown as they put thier packages together. The
interaction during the process was very valuable to us, in and of
itself. The lasting value of this contribution will never be
forgotten.Please share this message with each student that participated and let
them each know that they are welcome in our “house” anytime. (Also
feel free to post this on your blog, if you want.) If they want to be
included on news updates or be notified when we make deployments we
will make that happen. It would give me great pleasure to have them
see the TEXSAR team in action.I hope that it goes without saying that you are now a life member of
TEXSAR! If there is anything, no matter small or big, that we might do
for you in the future it would be our pleasure.–In service to our communities,
Greg Pyles, CEO
TEXSAR, Inc.
www.texsar.org
A good relationship makes each party better off and improves the quality of life for those around them. That’s what I feel this relationship has been like. I’m honored to have worked with such a great organization, and I’m happy to end my teaching career at UT Austin with this experience lingering in my mind.
Thank you to Greg, Brandon, Melissa, and TEXSAR, and to all the nonprofits we have worked with. Thank you to my students. Thank you to UT for starting off my teaching career on the right foot. Hook ‘em!
Dissertation related: An article in today’s New York Times about a drug bust gone wrong. An officer shot an unarmed suspect without waiting for special forces to come do their job:
The Police Department has acknowledged that the officer who shot Mr. Graham, Richard Haste, had never received the classroom instruction required of officers in the street narcotics unit.
Yikes. So why was he out there?
They also questioned why the unit’s officers used a narrow tactical radio frequency to alert their colleagues in the van that Mr. Graham might be armed, rather than issue a warning on a more heavily trafficked channel that would have drawn other police units to the scene.
I don’t know how much you can blame an officer who hasn’t had training to know the proper actions or interactions required of his position. I wish I could interview the officer who shot the suspect about how he and his team made their decisions that day.
You might know that I’m currently working on my dissertation on emergency response teams. I’m particularly interested to know how much emphasis is placed on structure vs. flexibility in training. Here’s a good quote from Participant #9, a firefighter in Central Texas:
No matter how organized it is, there’s always a little bit of chaos. But as long as you get the job done safely, and mitigate as much loss as you can, that’s fine. There’s no perfect scene and everyone has a little different ways of handling it. But one of the big deals, we talked about communication lingo, is saying, if you forget a particular code, or, you know, you don’t quite know how to sound quite as professional on the radio as your supposed to—because all of our radio traffic is reported, especially in a big scene, it’s gonna be—if any incidents come out of it, it’s gonna be replayed and everything else—bottom line, if you just tell people what you need, no mater how sophisticated the language is, that’s kind of been the new mantra in the department, because we have so many new people, kind of interchanging in and out of the department.
But the focus has been on: stop worrying about following every rule to the T, just use your common sense. You know, don’t waste time or energies trying to make sure you’re following every protocol. If you see an obvious fix to it, don’t let common sense go out the door.
I ran my first half-marathon this weekend in Austin. My goals were to finish and not get injured; I’m happy to say I accomplished both and finished under 2 hours.
From 2001 to 2010, I had probably run a total of 150 miles willingly. I like team sports and am not much for athletic activities that don’t involve a ball. But I felt like I wasn’t getting enough exercise, and running is an efficient and flexible way to work out. So in December 2010, I started looking at running as a critical part of the rest of my life.
In 2011, I ran about 400 miles. Nothing amazing, but more than I had done over the rest of my life combined. I always thought of running as a boring activity, but it was really my frustration with not being good at it. Once I learned to get over that, getting on the trail became much easier. I lost motivation in September or so (my running partner, Blake, moved out of state and it was a hot summer in Texas), so I signed up for a half-marathon to give me a good proximal goal to keep me going.
My old running partner was in town this weekend. We both ran the half. Not together, but we met up at the finish line. We thought it was interesting how people always look so happy afterwards in their pictures. We thought it would be funny to take a picture that reflected how most people’s bodies probably felt. That’s below.
I know people run marathons and ultramarathons, and ultraultrasupermarathons…but in 2010, if you told me I would run 13.1 miles one day, I would have said you’re crazy. A lot can change in 14 months.
