[ soft piano music ]
Audio's rolling. Can you bring the mic down?
Okay right there. Right there's good. Okay.
Could you share with us
your story about your transition
from high school to college
as a first generation
college student?
Because I'm from a really small town. 
All my family lives there.
So we're really close knit 
and I was the first one out of all my cousins 
and siblings to go to college.
So I was the first one to go away for so long.
So it was kind of hard
on me and my family to be away from each other.
Even though it was only 2.5 hours
but I didn't have a car so it was really hard to communicate.
I tried calling family and
asking for advice.
A lot of times it's hard
when your parents
don't know what you're going through in college
because they've never been
but they try their best to help you.
But it's best to maybe try to find
someone that's either a close friend or a professor
that would be able to help you with the transition
or someone else that's
gone through the same thing.
So just being away from family
made it really difficult
and then just not clicking
with a bunch of the people
in my major at the time
made it really hard.
That was for me
for instance
I was in a small university
and it was important.
I have been at very large universities
larger than Virginia Tech.
It's always the small groups within
those universities where you have to identify.
I think we have great people here.
That's really what it's about,
it's about people.
These professors brought me in
as they've done other students.
And I say, "Brought me in" as in they've extended themselves to us.
It's not that they stand
in front of a pulpit
and they, you know, speak a
bully pulpit to, you know, 500 people.
Although the class size is
extremely small in this college.
That's not what I mean.
I mean these people go outside of
that, "Okay, I'm here, and you're there."
Students are not treated that separately
or that differently.
They treat you as an
important individual.
An investment
in my opinion is a
good word to use.
They treat their students as investments.
I've seen students come back and meet with them
with warm, wide open arms. 
They know, they know who you are
even after you go on.
My one piece of advice
and it really holds for first generation college students
and those that aren't
is seek out a professor that you can connect with
seek out a group of students that
enjoy the same things as you do.
With regard to that professor we
want to hear your story
We understand your background
and we understand that
you may or may not have a
support network at home.
And that really holds
for every student.
So come tell us your story
and we will connect you with what
you need to be successful.
I always say to my students that
my job is to make you successful
and I'm only successful if you end
up doing what you want to do.
What makes me like Virginia Tech
or love being here at Virginia Tech
is the sense of community.
I know it sounds like a cliché.
But when I first came to Virginia
Tech everybody talked about it.
People outside of Virginia talked about it.
When I was in Richmond
I knew people who had gone to Virginia Tech
and they talked about that sense of community
and that sense of family because
you went to Virginia Tech.
But now after having been here at
Virginia Tech for 5 years
I absolutely do feel that way.
Even when I leave Virginia Tech to
go to a conference or go back to Richmond
they say, "Where are you from?"
"Well I go to Virginia Tech"
and it's an instant feeling of community you've got an association with someone
and that's very important.
When I think about
what excites me about
coming to work
and teaching and working
with students it's that 
it's seeing them get the idea
and feeling good about it
and so you'll sort of
wait for those moments
and I guess you do all you can
to develop them
but that's kind of, that's what it's about I think, yeah.
One of the things that Virginia Tech is very good at
is pushing that interaction, there's group projects.
Which as a student people are constantly, "Aw, I don't want to do a group project."
These group projects make students interact
and in the work place and
in the real world
everything is about interaction
with other people.
There are very few islands
in the real world.
We all are interconnected
and we work together.
We depend on each other.
Virginia Tech gives you somebody to depend on.
So that's a strong attribute.
[ Transcription provided by Will Pfeil ]
