Well, we're here in downtown New York City, the heart 
of the Big Apple, and you can just feel the excitement, 
the energy. We had a great crowd of folks in business 
and the arts and other disciplines and fields so it was 
an exciting experience to be here and see that JMU 
has a strong presence in the nation's larger city. So 
tonight one the major themes among the alumni was 
the importance of working in teams and how they 
learned that at JMU. For example we had a lot of 
alumnus from the College of Business who have taken 
a class called COB 300, which is taught by teams of 
faculty and teams of students that participate together 
in putting together business plans and it turns out that 
that experience, while it's very rigorous and very 
challenging, students stretch themselves, but they 
found out that that was great real world experience to 
prepare them. Because after all, when you get out in 
the workplace you're working in teams you're working 
with other people, you're having to listen to other 
perspectives and learn from other people. So that kind 
of experience, while it requires more resources, it 
requires a lot of intentionality, is something that's a real 
hallmark, I think, and not just in business, but in other 
disciplines as well. For example, tonight, we had a lot 
of people in the arts and talked about that. And that's 
another area where working in teams is essential to 
success, whether it's in the orchestra, or the chorus, or 
student theatrical productions. And yet again, we see 
those individuals who had those experiences at JMU 
who are now being successful, right here, whether it's 
Broadway, Carnegie Hall or other places in New York City.          
