Month: August 2018

Lesley Goodaker ’17 Lesley Goodaker interned in marketing at Spring & Sprout dental network. She based her senior seminar project on the work she’d done there. She invited the vice president of marketing and communications to be on her review panel. But she still wasn’t prepared for what happened during her presentation… …a job offer on the spot. “To say that was a surprise would be an understatement,” she says, “but it was incredibly exciting.” Lesley’s study in her writing, rhetoric and communication major centered on rhetorical practices, but she was especially interested in incorporating digital technologies into her projects. So she worked with WRC professor Kerri Hauman to craft her curriculum to give her as much time in the Digital Arts Technology Lab (dArt lab) as possible, learning video and audio editing softwares and taking courses in digital rhetoric. To have faculty and staff that recognized the growth potential I had and pushed me toward that was indescribable. “In my program, you could really pick and choose what you want to focus on,” she says. “I had done several videos with Dr. Hauman in our Digital Rhetoric class, and it laid the foundation for technical skills. She made sure we were getting exposure to a lot of different tools.” She used her newfound expertise in her internship—which Hauman recommended to her—where she worked with a creative agency to gather all of the video and audio footage they had compiled

Read “Offer of a Lifetime”

Bill McCann ’79 We talk a lot about the Pioneer network, lifelong connections and how Transy has your back long after graduation. Ask Bill McCann, Class of 1979, and you’ll find a specific example of how that generous faculty-student connection works even decades after graduation. In Bill’s case, it’s with a faculty member he didn’t even know as a student. But that didn’t stop him from asking for help. McCann has always loved the theater and held a deep interest in playwriting. “Theater is another way of looking at the world,” he says. “It’s a way of getting people to think about things they might not otherwise think about, in ways they wouldn’t have thought of before.” He began his career at Transy as a theater major, but, at his father’s urging, changed his academic focus to history.  After Transy, he worked for a defense contractor in D.C. and earned a degree in education. He returned to Kentucky to work for the Department of Education as a financial management consultant for school districts, helping with everything from budgets to bidding practices. He was always observing and sharing best practices. Then, as he was passing through mid-life, he asked himself what he really wanted to be doing—“and it was to write plays and do theater.” He decided to earn a master’s in theater at the University of Kentucky. “I’d always been involved with theater,” he adds, “I’d tried and struggled to

Read “There for the Asking”