My name is Adam Hernandez and currently a senior at Peoria High School. I had the pleasure of meeting Kyle Lauing at DeVry Day on October 10, 2008. He seems like a great person. He is the Instructor of The Game and Simulation course at DeVry University, Phoenix.

1) What is your title/position?

Instructor in Game and Simulation Programming for DeVry University

2) How long have you been employed with this firm?

18 months

3) What are your specific job responsibilities?

Teaching students topics of game development including: Data Structures, Artificial Intelligence, Level and Modification Design,DirectX, software engineering principles, and game engine design.

4) What do you like about your job?

Teaching students topics that I also have a passion for is very fun and rewarding.

5) What do you dislike about your job?

Nothing really.

6) How would you describe your job?

Harder than it seems from the students perspectives, but very fun and rewarding.

7) What kind of environments do you experience within your company and your job?

Teaching is a kind of laid back environment compared to the gaming industry which is very fast paced and long hours.

What are you most proud of about your work?

Teaching students how to make video games for a living and seeing them have fun doing it as well.

9) What educational background do you need for your job?

Generally a Master’s Degree in the topic you are teaching.

10) How long have you been interested in Game Programming?

For about 8 years now.

11) What inspired you to become a Game Programmer?

Being an avid gamer myself and having a passion to want to create them myself.

12) What advice do you have to offer a person starting in this field?

It takes a lot of long, difficult, and focused work, but having a game to show people is a really fun feeling because most people have no idea how to accomplish that.

Although I am in a classroom nearly every day and talk to the teachers about the students and teaching, I decided to interview three different teachers. 

How did they describe their job?   They need to know when and how to discipline, how to gain 6 year olds’ respect, and most importantly, how to get 20 1^st graders to focus on the same thing at the same time.    What was the most challenging part of their job?    Classroom control.  I have been told that classroom control is the most important thing when teaching. I have also been told that teaching little kids takes a lot of patience.   All the teachers answered the same way. It is all about positive reinforcement. I learned you need to reward the students that are doing what they are supposed to be and use them as an example for those students who are off task.  Classroom management will determine how effective of a teacher one can be.       

What education do you need for the job?  There are certain classes that will benefit a future teacher more than others. During the interview I found out that multicultural diversity classes are important. These classes teach the future teacher that different cultures are accustomed to different things and how to balance out American customs with the students own. Another mentionable class is the classroom management class. This will help a future teacher out a lot. This class teaches different methods of discipline and what to do when students do not cooperate or when they are just plain too noisy. Course choices are important. 

What kind of characteristics and personality did your interviewee have?    I learned that not everybody can teach, patience is important, that coworkers’ attitudes can play a huge role on other teachers.   

What is the one piece of advice your interviewee would tell themselves at your age?  The most important piece of advice was told to me by Mr. Hinds. He said “Sometimes you will have bad days. Really bad days.” He told me that because of these days, “It is important to always remember why you wanted to become a teacher in the first place. Never forget that reason and everything will be ok.” 

The Peoria School District has teamed up with Pursue the Passion to send over 600 students into the community to do interviews with professionals who have jobs the students are interested in. Below is an interview Kimberly Gravening did with Stephen Dunn, a trumpet professor at Northern Arizona University.

“How would you describe your job?”

Dr. Dunn explained both enjoyable because you get to play and learn as you go. You always learn as you play of course. Also, he said it was very time consuming. Being a trumpet professor truly takes much time on yourself, your family, and your students.

“What is the most challenging part of your job?”

The challenging parts of his job he explained were how to balance teaching with other activities. With so much responsibility and work that is completely understandable, but being able to figure out how to balance them is key. Also, he explained that you see a lot of students; it’s hard to split your time up equally with every student and get to know them well when you have such a small amount of time.

“What do you enjoy most about your job?”

The two things he loves of course, music and his students. Being a trumpet professor you get to deal with the students who are just as interested as you are and share that love for music.

“How much of your life is devoted to work?”

A round about percentage of how much time he said was probably around 70% of his life.

“What kind of person is suited for this job? What kind of characteristics and personality do they have?”

The kind of person suited for this job he explained would be someone who enjoys working with people and music and share that compassion for understanding. They need to stick to it, do years of practice. Some characteristics would be to work hard, be interested, learning, all while dealing with everything else going on in the world.

“Where were you at my age and where did you think you were going to go in your career?”

Dr. Dunn word by word told me, “right here”. He truly set his goals high and stuck with them and became very successful. He truly is a good example for others.

“If you could tell yourself one piece of advice at my age, what would you say?”

“Take every musical opportunity you have!”

Noah set up an interview with a family friend who was a 94-year old Latin American history professor at the University of Texas. It was one of the best, most eccentric interviews of our project.

The framed black and white photos hanging from his office wall, some faded past the point of recognition, told the life stories of John W. F. Dulles. A photo of him shaking hands in a tuxedo brought back memories of his days in the Latin American mining business. He began as a muck stick laborer before utilizing his Harvard business education (class of ’37) to work his way up to Executive Vice President. The lovely woman on the wall was his wife of sixty-eight years.

Stacked high on his desk were notebooks of yellow lined paper; each sheet had words thoughtfully scrawled out in perfectly legible handwriting, double spaced for his assistant Ana to type. The first copy of Professor Dulles twelfth published book, Resisting Brazil’s Military Regime: An account of the battles of Sobral Pinto, arrived the day of the interview. Professor Dulles claimed it would be his last book because research is no longer possible due to computer illiteracy and the loss of mobility for his annual trip to Brazil.

The mobility in his right leg is still strong enough to make the seventy-five minute commute from San Antonio to Austin three times a week. He drives himself while listening to either an audio-book on cassette or a Houston Astro baseball game on the radio. He checks into a motel before settling into his office, which is located in a student dorm. He then leads a ninety-minute lecture to a captive audience of twenty students. At the time of the interview, Professor Dulles was beginning his 45th year of teaching at the collegiate level.

Professor Dulles had large, understanding eyes behind dark, thick glasses. He looked a lot like Larry King, only twenty years older with more disheveled gray hair. He actively asked questions when holes weren’t filled in a story, and held an inquisitive gaze with the person speaking to draw more information out them.

At a loss for questions and in complete awe of a man who lived a full life, Noah asked the cliché question we all would like to know the answer to: “What’s the secret to life?”

Without hesitation, Professor Dulles answered in a rhythmic voice, “Have a great interest in what one is doing and be active.” A long pause came and went as the culmination of ninety-four years of wisdom sunk in. “That helps ones attitude and prolongs one’s life. I wouldn’t want to sit around and watch television.”

Scott Hatley, founder of the non-profit Incight, is wheelchair-bound due to muscular dystrophy. That did not stop him, however, from graduating from the University of Portland, in 2001, and immediately starting his company, which offers employment and educational opportunities to people with disabilities. Scott was inspired by his summers spent at the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s summer camps. Scott realized that camp was the best part of the year for many of his friends, who did not otherwise envision themselves as normal people, with normal opportunities.

Scott’s success is incredible. Incight is currently supporting 70 disabled scholars, in their college career track program. These students receive not only financial support, but also the support of mentors, and internship programs; all of this is intended to help people overcome, what Scott calls, their “handicrap.” This is the term coined to describe all of the excuses and self-imposed barriers and limitations many disabled people must confront, if they are to find their way in the world. Really, it is applicable to every person, who must overcome insecurity and fear, and just go after what they love.

It’s funny how we can become so blinded by responsibility that we don’t realize how out of wack our priorities have become. Katie had her epiphany when she realized that she was rushing her daughter back to bed so that she could return to her open e-mail account. She realized then and there that she was putting Corporate America ahead of her own family. She needed a change.

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Born into a “Beaver Cleaver” type of family in Iowa, Katie was raised by her parents, both of whom were public school teachers. Although careers in education had many benefits, large financial gains were not one of them. Deciding that teaching wasn’t for her, Katie opted for a career where the money was; accounting. Katie attended two colleges before finding the University of Northern Iowa accommodating. Majoring in accounting, she found that her college pushed students towards public accounting, a similar theme at most business schools.

But Katie wanted something different. She wanted to travel. She entertained interviews with public accounting firms, but found what she was looking for with Honeywell. The company is a diversified technology and manufacturing leader in aerospace products and services. They offered her a job with 80% travel. Her first Monday on the job she was on board a flight headed to Scotland. This trip would be the first day of a 13 year stint in Corporate America

She loved the competitive culture at Honeywell. She soon became addicted to the competition and became obsessed with outdoing those around her. Her career became her number one priority. She became so submerged in her work that she found herself unable to spend quality time at home with her family. Katie’s commitment to her status and sales number allowed her to excel with Honeywell.

She soon became addicted to the Honeywell culture, where achievement is paramount. After five years of loyal service, she left Honeywell for a job that paid a little more. Five months later she found herself on the Honeywell doorstep five begging for her job back. She was now back in the corporate life that she had grown so found of.

Whether it was her parents’ influence or growing appreciate for it, she found herself wanting to teach. Everyone she talked to told her that she had to go and get her PhD first., but the opportunity never really made it self available to her.

There’s a saying that Katie told me about how she came to be a teacher. She said that “when God closes a door, he always opens a window. But the hallway leading to the window is sometimes really long.”

Well, Katie went down the hallway and eventually exited out of the window. She was having lunch one day with an engineer, who expressed how he found accounting so difficult to understand. Katie volunteered to teach him accounting once a week during lunch. The engineer found it so useful that he brought his whole team of engineers along with him to these sessions. Katie was now teaching 20 engineers the ins and outs of accounting.

These sessions led to an official class, which Honeywell now offers their employees. A professor from Duke University was brought in to teach the class full-time. Katie and this professor communicated about the direction of the course, and in their discussions she found that he knew the department head of the business college at the University of Arizona, which, like Honeywell, was located in Tucson, AZ. She asked the professor for a letter of recommendation, the planets aligned and she now found herself an adjunct professor teaching a graduate level auditing class at the university level. Talk about a change!

She was still working at Honeywell and doing teaching on the side. She was told that it would be three years until she could be offered a full-time teaching position. But six months later, after receiving the Undergraduate Faculty of the Year Award in ‘05-’06, she was offered a full-time position teaching Governmental Non-Profit Accounting at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I guess that window was wide enough to dive headfirst through!

Author’s Notes:

Back to the thought that people can become addicted to their careers. I find it funny because it seems like most people I’ve talked to have been addicted to their external accomplishments in their job, not the job itself. When I ask people about their careers, they tend to first point to their “accomplishments.” To an outsider like myself, these accomplishments are impressive, but they say tell me that you’re only as good as what you’re up against. And if you’re up against the other employees in the company, then your accomplishments are only good within that circle. Outside of that circle, what do people care that you were the top salesperson when it comes to KDR 610 weather receivers?

The point that I am trying to make with Katie’s story is that she came to realize that internal accomplishments outweigh and outlast external accomplishments. The way she kicked her job addiction was by finding that teaching satisfied her personally, unlike the monetary and competitive accomplishments she had while working for Honeywell.

And I hate to be cliché, but it seems like if we just let our conscience be our guide sometimes, we would realize what we want to do. After Katie decided to leave Honeywell, they offered to cut her hours down to 40, then 30, then 20, finally offering her consulting jobs to stay with Honeywell. But she just couldn’t do it. She feared that she would fall back into her routine and allow herself to be engulfed in her work again.

She didn’t talk to anyone from Honeywell for six months after she left. One month ago, she finally allowed herself to be exposed to the corporate culture again, when she went to a cocktail party to see some old friends. In comparison, it was like returning home to find your friends in high school still doing the same things they used to do.

Katie now feels as if a huge weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She does not regret staying with Honeywell and is thankful for the experience. When she talks about teaching though, her tone and expressions say it all. She has turned a new page in her life and has found the window at the end of the hallway. No longer do her summers consist of 60-80 hour work weeks in 110 degree desert heat. Instead, her summers are spent with her daughter, traveling to California’s Disneyland or back home to Iowa to visit the family.

Her advice to students:

“When you are deciding where to work, you are told it is a life decision, but it’s not. You’re young and if you don’t like what you’re doing then you can get out of the situation and still be 24 and have your entire life ahead of you.”

Joyce Richards is the President of the Phoenix Junior Achievement office, and was a very interesting individual. She did not attend college, and out of high school worked in the private industry before finding a personal satisfaction in education. She has been at Junior Achievement for ten years, and is very passionate for making a difference in students lives.

Over 59,000 students participated in a Junior Achievement program the past year, where volunteers teach students from K-12 the fundamentals of a free enterprise system. Being a two-time volunteer myself, I enjoyed seeing the work behind the scenes to make this program work.
When we arrived at the JA office, it appeared to be just another ordinary office. When Joyce took us for a tour we had no idea what we were in for when we entered into the door of Exchange City, a program that reached out to over 10,000 students in the Phoenix area. It reminded me of was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because it really was a city that was run by fifth grade students. They had City Hall where we met the Mayor, but the Judge was out on break where she joined 1/3 of the other students to consume products to make the businesses go round.
Some of the businesses included retail, sports, signs, and food shops, all while the DJ made announcements and the bank was busy cashing paychecks. All of this is to teach students about the free enterprise system.

You can visit the Junior Achievement website at www.jaaz.org

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When people think of Hall of Fame Basketball Coach Lute Olson, many things come to mind. Maybe, 1997’s improbable March Madness run, when Lute’s Arizona squad knocked off three number one seeds to become NCAA National Champions. Or maybe it’s the four Final Four appearances, the twenty-three straight seasons of making it to the coveted NCAA post-season tournament, his eleven Sweet 16 appearances, or perhaps the impact his former players, like Gilbert Arenas, are having on the NBA. But by the time I was posing for a picture with Lute, with his national championship ring resting on my shoulder, I realized why Lute has been able to experience such great successes in his coaching career.

To put it in perspective, Lute Olson has been teaching the fundamentals of both sports and life since before the existence of rock-n-roll. To put it another way, he was providing young athletes with guidance and leadership before man walked on the moon. It is for this reason that Lute’s critics say that his age is a handicap in his coaching ability. Lute would argue that his passion for coaching has led him to the fountain of youth, so to speak.

Lute was our first interview on the tour, and given his reputation, I was as nervous as a Palomino racehorse. Over the course of my three years at the University of Arizona, Lute had become an idol of sorts, as is his typical status amongst Wildcat fans. The more I thought about who I was going to be talking to, the less I knew what I was going to ask him. The interview was booked. Step one. The next step was everything else. “What I was supposed to ask him? What should I wear? Could I touch him?” I obviously wasn’t thinking straight.

We composed ourselves as best we could and walked into the reception area of his office (which I swear to this day smells of success) and sat down. I could feel the butterflies in my stomach multiply as Coach olson appeared in the doorway. But like a grandfather to a child, Lute sat us down to impart his wisdom. For the next forty-five minutes we listened, almost afraid to do anything else for fear of missing a syllable of his soft spoken tone. The following is a summarization of what he told us.

With his father passing away at a young age, Lute always viewed his basketball, football, and baseball coaches as role models. These coaches were the father figures that were missing early in Lute’s life. It is perhaps for this reason, that a 14-year-old Lute decided he was going to be a coach. He would never waver in that decision for the next 58 years!

At 19 he married his wife Bobbi and at age 21, he graduated from Augsburg College with a double major in History and Physical Education. With wife (and degrees) in-hand, Lute set off on his pursuit to coaching. Lute Olson’s first real coaching job came in the quaint town of Munulman, Minnesota, located near Detroit and the Great Lakes. Lute’s responsibilities at the small high school consisted of teaching six classes, head coaching both the basketball and football programs, assistant coaching the baseball program, and chalking the lines of the football field on game days. The baseball field didn’t need lining, seeing as how there was no baseball field. All of the baseball team’s games were played out of town and the after-school practices held on the football field.

While his many duties weren’t reflected on his paychecks, they were compensated by Lute’s passion for teaching: “It was never a case of saying to myself that I’d rather be doing something else. I was teaching six classes, coaching three sports, and had a wife and two kids to support on a low salary, but I was happy because I was doing something I loved doing.”
Lute’s year at Munulman produced the school’s first sports title in 32 years, and proved to be the starting point of his thirteen years of coaching at the high school level.

Next, he ventured to Two Harbours, Minnesota, a city three times the size of Munulman. There he taught and coached for four years. In his time at Two Harbours, Lute went back to school to receive his Counseling certificate. With this, he took a counselor position at a Junior High School in Colorado. He and his family had decided that they’d had enough of the Minnesota weather. This was the first time where Lute had accepted a position with a school that didn’t request his services as a coach.

In a classic case of “not knowing what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone,” Lute’s year off from coaching made him realize where his true passion lied. He decided that he couldn’t just be a counselor. He needed to teach. He needed to coach.

This decision led him to coaching opportunities in California, where he started as an assistant high school basketball coach. Lute admitted that at that point, he had never imagined coaching beyond the high school level. But after thirteen years, his dedication to the game and resulting success earned him a strong reputation in the Southern California area. Word caught (Santa Ana) wind and Lute was soon offered a head coaching position at Long Beach City College, where he would remain for the next four years. Building on his successes, in 1972, Hall of Fame Coach Lute Olson broke into Division I Men’s Basketball when he became the head basketball coach at Long Beach State University.

Long Beach State was a very good basketball program with some very real eligibility issues. One year, despite a record of 24-2, the 49ers were unable to enter the post-season due to NCAA violations. Regardless, the team’s success opened up a new door for Lute and his family. This time however, he would not be working with for a re-known basketball school, but rather the lowly regarded University of Iowa. So the Olson family bid farewell to the California coastal breeze and headed back to the Midwest.

In his nine years at Iowa, Lute took a program that was tenth in the Big 10, and transformed them into a top ten team in the country. His tremendous success at Iowa had numerous college teams courting him to turn around their programs in the same way. Among these teams was the University of Arizona, which housed a loyal following, but a team that was mediocre at best. He had been to Tucson before, and liked the size and feel of the city. After a conversation with his family, Lute left a lifetime contract at Iowa and a preseason #4 basketball team for a state mandatory one-year contract and a team that at the bottom of the Pacific 10 conference. He accepted the position as a personal challenge.

“It was taking a big risk, but it worked out well.”

It worked out well indeed. The first year Lute’s squad tied for second place in the Pac-10 Conference. The following year the team posted 20 wins and started a string of 22-straight tournament appearances that is still running today. In 1997, Lute’s team won a national championship, and returned to the title game in 2001 before losing to Duke. He is beloved not only loved as a coach in Tucson, but well respected as a person throughout the collegiate world.

A few years ago, Coach Olson was asked to be the commencement speaker for the graduating student body at the University of Arizona. As he pondered exactly what to say, he concluded that the basis for his speech would consist of having a passion in whatever career path you decide to pursue. In that speech he told students exactly as he told us:

“The main focus of (this) speech is following your passion. Make sure you find out where your passion is and follow your passion because unless you do that, you won’t be happy with what you’re doing. A lot of people think they want to do something because they could make a lot of money doing it. But if you don’t have a passion for what you do, you are in fact going to have to go to “work”. Whereas I have felt I have never had to go to work. Coaching has always been something I’ve loved doing. You’re either in it all the way, or you should get out of it because you are cheating the guys you’re working with.”

PTP Thoughts:

Lute’s story displays the resiliency it takes to truly follow your passion. He balanced family responsibilities with low pay, moved from place to place seeking out better opportunities, all the while never wavering from his decision to pursue coaching. His story also shows that, as the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It took him seventeen years from the time he graduated college to the time he accepted his first Division I coaching job, a destination he never dreamed of traveling to.

Lute offered us one of the best quotes of the trip when said:

“If you don’t have a passion for what you do, then you have to go to work.”

But if you have a passion and you follow it, you never have to work a day in your life. Lute Olson, self-admittingly, hasn’t worked a single day in his 50 years of coaching.

Another great quote in regards to preparation and practice:

“Practice for perfection, and even though perfection won’t be reached, that doesn’t mean (you should) stop striving for it.”

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