William & Mary

Interviewee: Stephanie Chu

Interviewer: Carmen Bolt

Interview Date: May 31, 2018

Duration: 01:14:38

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00:00:00

Carmen:               Okay. My name is Carmen Bolt. I’m the oral historian at William and Mary. It’s currently around 11:00 a.m., on May 31^st, 2018. I’m sitting in Kimpton Hotel Allegro, in Chicago, Illinois, with Stephanie Chu, School of Law, Class of 1992. So, can you start by telling me the date and place of your birth, and what years you attended William and Mary.

Stephanie:            Sure. I was born in 1967 in Iowa City, Iowa, and I attended William and Mary Law School from 1989 to 1992.

Carmen:               Great. And you mentioned where you were born, but can you tell me a little bit about where and how you were raised, and some about your family?

Stephanie:            Sure. My father was in graduate school. He has a doctorate in education. Worked for the company that created the ACTs, so lots of college students and college folks. I know about those. And my mother was a speech pathologist who went into real estate. I lived in Iowa City until I was 8, and then moved to suburban D.C., in Silver Spring, Maryland.

0:01:01.8              So, on the Maryland side of the border, and grew up. I have a younger brother, and it was the two of us, and we went to big schools, and were actively involved in things. My parents are actually University of Maryland graduates, and always stayed involved in their school.

Carmen:               Great. And I was going to ask about when you first thought about college, but it sounds like that might have been part of growing up, with an academic for a father, and parents were really involved in their alma mater.

Stephanie:            It was. It was. There was – probably growing up didn’t even know there was an option not to go to college. It was part of the DNA. Even my grandparents on both sides had attended college, even my grandmothers, which was somewhat unusual. And lots of teachers in the family. So, education was always a priority.

Carmen:               Sure. And how did William and Mary get on your radar, coming out of undergraduate?

0:02:00.0             

Stephanie:            So, I was at Duke University, undergrad, and had a terrific experience. I wish I could say that I was very career focused and laser focused on being a lawyer. At the time I was graduating, I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do, professionally, but wanted something that would have a long career, and some flexibility. And really my options as I saw them, were to go to law school, or to go back to Spain where I had studied abroad, and earn a Masters, and teach, which was kind of a passion project, as well.

                             I chose what I thought was the more practical of those solutions, and something that my mother was particularly more interested in. She was worried that if I went to Spain I would end up staying in Spain forever, and that was not something that was high on her radar.

0:02:59.2              We had a terrific undergraduate law advisor, Dean White, who was at Duke. And I did a lot of research, and I wanted to find a school that was really high quality and excellent education, but also, not necessarily the cut throat 1-L experience--there’s a novel called “1-L” that’s been around forever, and it’s about how awful law school is. And I wasn’t interested in that kind of an experience, and I had found William and Mary on my own, through research and talking to people, and really like the sounds of it. And the law school professor was encouraging me to look at Vanderbilt, as well. And I said, “Nope. I really think William and Mary is the right school for me.” At the time, they offered a weekend for students who were applying. And so, I had the chance to go and stay for a weekend with a law student, and shadow that person. And it really felt like a terrific fit.

0:04:00.8              And it was at a kind of wonderful intersection. It was geographically where I wanted to be forever, in the Mid-Atlantic Region, the right size, the right feel, fantastic faculty members, and as a public school, there was--even though I was out of state--it was a tuition price point also that was attractive to me, because I would be taking out loans and paying for law school, myself.

Carmen:               Right. So, when you attended – well, you went to that weekend at William and Mary for applicants, had you been to Williamsburg before that?

Stephanie:            I had, growing up in the D.C. area, there were always field trips, and so it was probably 5^th grade I spent a weekend in Colonial Williamsburg. My grandmother – my grandparents live in Gloucester, Virginia, at the time, which is very close by. And so, that area was a destination every summer for me, growing up, once we moved to Maryland.

0:05:00.3             

Carmen:               So, you were familiar with the area, but not so much William and Mary before you got there. Can you tell me a little bit about that first weekend there? What it felt like, looked like, smelled like? I don’t know. Just what the experience of being there was.

Stephanie:            Gosh, I was so nervous, it hard for me to remember too much about that piece of it, as opposed to when I came – had enrolled, kind of, as a student. The classes were very foreign to me, the format, because law school is taught in the Socratic method. So, there’s a lot of being put on the spot. And for me that was a big challenge. At the time I wasn’t comfortable really speaking up in class, and presenting made me very nervous. So, the whole idea of law school had me anxious to begin with. And seeing it that weekend, certainly reinforced that that was going to be something that would be a personal grow opportunity for me, to be able to conquer.

0:06:01.1             

Carmen:               Sure.

Stephanie:            But on the other hand, all of the other people that I met – my host student was wonderful. She was a second-year student, and she introduced me to so many people, and clearly, everybody in the building kind of knew each other, at least by name, whether they were in the same class year or a third year/first year. That really appealed to me, because there was a community feel to the school that I didn’t see in a lot of other places or other schools.

Carmen:               Sure. So, you mentioned this a little bit before we started the interview, but what was the level of interaction between the law school and the broader William and Mary campus.

Stephanie:            There – there wasn’t terribly much overlap. Geographically is in kind of its own corner, set off from the rest of the campus. There were – I had a dear friend who had been an undergraduate, had another career, and was coming back. We became very close friends.

0:06:01.1              And Robert Bryant was our conduit to what the William and Mary undergraduate experience was. He was the person I knew the best who’d been an undergrad. But I, personally didn’t spend a lot of time on the main part of the campus. I loved on Brownlee Place, so not on Richmond Road. Up the other direction. I didn’t have to park on campus. I didn’t have to eat on campus. I wasn’t living on campus. There were no graduate student dorms at that point. Those were added after I graduated from the law school. So, it was a pretty separate time. I think the first time I was in the football stadium was for my graduation. [laughs] However, I did get engaged on the main campus under one particular tree. Just happened to be walking back from a movie at Dog Street, and on our way to the Greenleaf.

0:08:00.6

Carmen:               Aw – sweet story. I want to get more into that, if you will, in a little bit.

Stephanie:            Sure.

Carmen:               So maybe there’s something special about main campus to you, then.

Stephanie:            For sure.

Carmen:               So, what then was kind of the social experience of being a student at the law school, if you weren’t engaging very much with the larger main campus and the majority of the students. What did that look like?

Stephanie:            The graduate students – other graduate students we saw from time to time, were primarily education program students. Some business, but not very many. Some people would come and study at the law school library. We did have classmates that did go to Swem and study, or go elsewhere on campus. I was just a law school denizen, so I didn’t get out very much more than that. Our class was 160 – I want to say 162, 163 students. So, a lovely size. And we really socialized primarily with the law school groups.

0:09:00.7              William and Mary was a very social--it was, when I was there--a very social graduate program.

Carmen:               Mm-hmm –

Stephanie:            Because Williamsburg is a small town, my experience there is that the law students were living with each other as roommates, socializing with each other. There were a lot of couples who ended up coming out of our class in particular, and there were some terrific traditions that built a social network. There was a Friday night grad thing, and if other graduate programs were invited, I don’t remember, but I think it was pretty much run through the law school students. We had bands. Every year there was a law school student band. And they would play at the grad things, or at the Greenleaf, and we’d end up at the Greenleaf.

0:09:52.1              So, there was a tremendous social component, and because, unlike a major metropolitan area--I live in Chicago now, and I worked at a law school here for 17 years--and because Williamsburg is a small town, and everyone was living together, and being together, and there weren’t as many opportunities to be working in the legal field as someone who attends a school, say, in Chicago. You spend a lot of time with the other law students. Sometimes people called it the fishbowl.

Carmen:               Right.

Stephanie:            Because there wasn’t a lot going on outside of the school. But for me, it was a terrific opportunity, because I liked that close-knit feeling.

Carmen:               Wonderful. So, I want to talk a little bit about professors or mentors that you had – advisors, anyone you look back on as being impactful, kind of during your educational trajectory.

Stephanie:            So, there’s so many, and I was thinking about this in preparation. What strikes me about my time at the law school is, I do remember all of my classes and all of my professors.

0:10:59.8              And I had a great experience, undergraduate and I can remember a few professors, but really, the people who stand out in my memory are from the law school years. At the time, the way that the education was designed, you – every first-year student had a legal writing class. But you were in law – there were law firms. And all of your kind of practical training happened within those classes. So, a professor was the Senior Partner, or and Adjunct, and then there was a Junior Partner, who’s a third-year law student. And then you had first and second years, and you were your own little firm. And it was the name of the person. So, Jim Moliterno was my Senior Partner. And he happened to be the head of the legal writing program, all in all. And, I learned so much in that particular class.

0:11:59.6              And he took such care of his students that I always think of him whenever I think about my law – especially my first-year experience. We were in the class for the first two years. But that was a very formative experience, because we were doing so much of our writing in that class, and writing our legal briefs. And having to get up on our feet and actually present our cases, and go to trial in our moot court. So, he was particularly important to me.

                             I had Altamante Selassie for contracts, who was fantastic, and Linda Butler, who’s still at the law school, even now. Taught my property class. There – torts was with I. Trotter Hardy, who I don’t think is there any longer. He was fantastic. The professors were all really accessible.

0:12:59.2              They were – they actually, it wasn’t just that they were in their office for office hours, and then no where to be found. They were actually in the building all the time. The building was small. You walked by their offices all the time. So, we were really engaged with those folks.

                             I loved that there were so many strong women, also, on the faculty. Jayne--I totally forget…

Carmen:               Barnard?

Stephanie:            Yeah, Jane Barnard, who we just honored. She has a beautiful portrait now, hanging in the law school. She was really an essential character for me, looking at women in the profession. She had come from practicing. She actually practiced in Chicago, at a big firm called Jenner and Block. At the time when I was her student, I had no idea I’d end up in Chicago. But she, and Linda Butler, and Susan--Why am I blanking on her name? I see her face so clearly…

0:14:00.9              I was just thinking about her this morning. She taught our legal procedure class. Has gone on to win all these awards for teaching at the law school. She was even a visiting professor at the law school I worked for, for a little while, so I was able to see her, frequently. They were really important in just setting the tone, and encouraging the women at the law school. My classmates came from lots of different backgrounds, and many of them were second career law students. They had had another career. They were significantly older. Their lives were very different than me, coming directly out of undergraduate. But I felt like the women professors especially took an interest in that. I think we were the first class that tipped the scale with more women than men. I’m pretty sure. I’d have to check that.

Carmen:               We always spot check, but that sounds . . .

Stephanie:            Check that one.

0:15:00.5              But I believe that our class was – the first time that that had happened.

                             Another person who not only was a mentor while I was in law school, but afterwards, given my professional trajectory, we were colleagues, is Rob Kaplan, who at the time was the Assistant Dean of Career Services. For someone like me who came to law school thinking, “I will be a lawyer, and that will be my career choice,” without the appreciation of the breadth of law and the number of options that are within the law, and the need to figure out what within the law was going to speak to you, Rob was really important – Dean Kaplan – for helping me figure out what it was I wanted to do. I don’t think I finished that process while I was in law school, but I certainly got much closer to what that meant while I was there.

0:16:00.3              And then, the fact that I ended up working in Career Services in law schools and that I saw him at different professional conferences, and we had a lot of experiences and professional challenges and opportunities in common, and he became a terrific sounding board, and is still somebody I hold very dear in my heart, and look forward to seeing every time I’m back in town.

Carmen:               I’m astounded by the number of connections you’ve already mentioned, just even since you left. Even since you made it to Chicago. Still connections within the William and Mary network.

Stephanie:            Right, and it’s interesting because when I moved here in 1992, not having been from Chicago, there really – I didn’t think there was much of a presence. I knew older students who had come to Chicago, and was very excited, and they were wonderful. But beyond that little group, I tried to reach out to other people and my networking in working to find a job, and the beauty of it is because William and Mary is so small, nobody said no.

0:17:05.0              And everybody was willing to talk to me, and give me advice, and help me to kind of navigate my way in this new city in the new profession, and welcome my husband and me. He was a Chicagoan, so he certainly knew people. [chuckles] And he came with the job. But it was an invaluable experience, and I had – I would meet with people who, their undergraduate schools were University of Illinois, or University of Michigan. It’s such a large place, even though they have the school spirit and the school pride, you can find those grads anywhere. But the William and Mary Law School grads are really special.

Carmen:               That’s great. It sounds like it has become and continued to be an excellent resource.

Stephanie:            For sure.

Carmen:               So, this is a pretty broad question. Take it in any direction you want. I would love to hear about some of your favorite memories or experiences during your time at William and Mary. What you might have done for fun?

0:18:00.8              You’ve talked a little bit about it, but if you’d like to expand some on specific moments?

Stephanie:            Sure. There was that moment of orientation. The first week of school you show up and you have a week of – they actually refer to it now as law camp, but I don’t remember them calling it law camp when I went to it. And it certainly didn’t feel like any camp I had ever been to, because you had assign – your first assignments. They taught you how to brief courses. You attended all your classes. But, it was the first opportunity that we were interacting and meeting the people who would become our classmates, and we would spend the next three years, very intensely living with and around and studying with. So, that’s a particularly good memory for me. I actually was living with somebody I knew at Duke. We both were coming directly from – we had friends in common, so we had decided to live together, but didn’t know each other all that well.

0:18:59.9              So, we were getting used to each other and to our town house on Brownlee Place, which we loved and stayed in all three years. I actually met my husband the first day of orientation. He was in Elizabeth’s--my roommate’s--legal writing course, and so that very first night, a bunch of people went out. Not so many places to go out in Williamsburg. We ended up at a hotel bar called Tusks, which I couldn’t – I could probably drive you there; I can’t tell you exactly where it was. But it was on the edges of Colonial Williamsburg. And it might have been a Days Inn or something. But they had a hotel bar that was decorated in safari theme, with rattan fans that would wave over the dance floor, and I believe heads of animals with red lights in them. Just vague memories. But there were – we went out; we went dancing.

0:20:04.6              And that was the first time that I had met him, which was really fun. It didn’t take us too long to start dating, but that was the first. He actually didn’t remember my name the next day.

Carmen:               Oh –

Stephanie:            But I remembered his.

Carmen:               Aw –

Stephanie:            But it’s fine. It worked out in the – it all worked out in the end. And the last thing I was going to graduate school to meet a husband – make a – meet a husband. Typically, not a law student set, so it feels very funny that that was a theme. But you know, it might be one reason why I’m so – I feel such a strong attachment to William and Mary and my experience there, and that we share joint friends from our graduate school experience. So, that keeps us really connected to the people that we met while we were – while we were there, too.

0:20:56.0              The grad things on Friday nights were great fun. Classes were intense. In some law schools you are in a set segment, a section of the class, and you only go to school with that 30-person group, and you move together as one. What I loved about William and Mary was that there was a large section and a small section of every one of the required classes. And sometimes you’re in the large section, and sometimes you were in the small section. So, you were actually interacting with everybody. At some point, you really did have almost everybody in the class, in your classes. So, that’s how we got to know each other, better.

                             The – doing moot court and having to present a trial, a very culminating experience of our second semester was the kind of exercise they tried to emulate real life and the client situation as best as possible. So, you could get called in the middle of the night by a client, and these were residents of Williamsburg that the various law professors and adjuncts knew who would play roles in your, in your court cases, in your cases.

0:22:05.6              And you would have to figure out what you needed to do to address their problem. How to make it happen. You’d have to write something, and then you’d have to make a motion before the court. Very intimidating, but such a great experience to have gone through. My moot court partner that I was paired with is still someone I think of as one of my dear friends from the law school.

                             Being with these smart, really talented group of students was eye opening to me. And to have the experience – I always envied the people for whom this was a career change, because I felt that their world view and their world experience made the concepts and the education more easily soaked in and understood, than someone who -

0:23:07.2              I had always worked. I’ve worked since I was 14. It’s part of who I am. But I didn’t have a lot of extensive professional life – some are professional experiences, but that’s about it. But I was always in awe of the various people and how they tackled their studies, and how they tackled the legal profession, as well. And our group of friends – we knew everybody, but our closest group of friends included folks who were married. Including folks who had been out for a very long time, as well as people had taken a year or two off, of some of us who were coming directly from undergraduate. That’s an outstanding memory. There were always – we had socials, so it kind of flowed from undergrad.

0:23:59.9              In that way they were fund raisers for the public service fund to raise money for students who wanted to work in the public interest and take unpaid jobs. They could apply for a stipend through this particular student group, which my law school roommate was really active in. They did things that probably wouldn’t fly today. We had a date auction – dinner date auction. And so, they would ask students from each grade if they would be willing to kind of walk a cat walk and be auctioned off as a dinner date. I’m certain that doesn’t happen any longer.

Carmen:               Haven’t heard of any cases, lately.

Stephanie:            No – one of those things that has changed. We always had a Barristers’ Ball Formal, and would get dressed up. And they often were at the hospitality house, which I understand is a dorm now, which is a big change. Just a chance to cut loose a little bit.

0:24:59.1              Get dressed up; hang out with people that we enjoyed. Do the Electric Slide [laughs] which has survived.

Carmen:               And will continue to, I’m sure.

Stephanie:            Believe it or not. There were a lot of us who would do that. My boyfriend, at the time, not my now-husband, but my boyfriend, was musical, so he was in the band. So, it was a band of third-years when we started. They were really cool, and they were great musicians. And I wonder where the Dead Penguins are today.

Carmen:               Dead Penguins?

Stephanie:            The Dead Penguins. And then once the Dead Penguins players graduated, then Michael was a part of the next kind of wave of bands. And I want to say everybody from our class year – pretty much everybody was. So, they had a couple of different names. The 10,000-Legged Funk Machine was one of them, at some point.

0:26:02.1              But they would play the Greenleaf. They would play – there was a bar out Route 60, somewhere else that they would play, as well. So, new law students would always pack the bars and enjoy hearing their music. A lot of BoDeans, as I recall.

Carmen:               So, what was that? Why was there this standing tradition of bands coming out of law school?

Stephanie:            It’s so interesting. And I wonder if there are bands today, if it still happens. I’ll have to ask the next time I’m on campus. I don’t know. I think – I guess – I don’t know if William and Mary is unique in attracting some creative people as well. There was always somebody who designed a clever poster for the grad things on Friday nights. There were always the people who were working – who were playing just for fun. We had a law school newspaper – we actually had two law school newspapers while I was there.

0:27:00.2              There were two different versions. And one was kind of a subversive undergrad – er, underground movement, as an alternate newspaper. I sold advertising for them, for part of the time. But, people had other interests that went beyond studying law, even though that’s so vast as it was. I also think that because there weren’t as many opportunities for people to be clerking, and if they did, they had to travel – for the most part would travel. Some people would go to Richmond; some people would go to Norfolk and work in law firms or government agencies there. Somewhere interning. I interned my third year--was it second or third year? Must have been my second year in the spring, I interned for Greg Davis, who’s an alum. And he actually was a senior partner in the writing program, and ended up asking me to be his junior partner in my third year. And that was one of the best experiences that I had in law school, too.

0:28:04.6              And it really kind of led, helped lead me to what I’ve done, and what I still do professionally, today. Kind of coalesced my interests and my desire to work with students. And to be – less in the teaching part of things. Teaching law didn’t appeal to me, nor would I have been qualified. But being a coach, and helping, especially first year students acclimate to law school, and acclimate to Williamsburg, those are things that I was really more passionate about. And I still do a lot of that kind of work today.

Carmen:               Great. And we will, actually, probably talk a little bit more about that. Because I want to hear about your trajectory, and how you really kind of figured out what it was that you wanted to do as a career, post-William and Mary. But before we get to that point, I have a couple more questions about your time at William and Mary. This is going to be kind of a turn from what we were just talking about – about all those excellent memories.

0:29:01.6              And just – it sounds like so many individuals from different walks of life, and points of life coming together, and creating a relational community. Were there any difficult memories that you have, that you can look back to. Just difficult or challenging times during your time at William and Mary?

Stephanie:            Sure. I think they were less personal than, again, I feel the community very strongly. I’m just one of those people. We had a couple of people who left our class, at different points. Some by choice, and others, potentially not by their own choice, but just struggled with the work. And every time that happened – the first person left after first semester. So, we came back in January, and she was gone. And it made us really sad, and we – kind of that community ethos felt like we were missing a part of us.

0:30:00.5              And there were people that that happened to, all the way along, who left school. So, that you always hate to see happen. And that was a hallmark. And one of the reasons I wanted to go to William and Mary was I felt like it was a strong and supportive community, and it was. And it really bore it out in those things kind of happening. I remember the strife less so than I remember anything else. It’s kind of ironic. I feel there was a time that – we were graduating in 1992, and the economy at that point was terrible. And people who had secured summer positions – the way it works, often in law schools – if you’re going in the large law firm direction, you summer – summer internship, and hopefully you get an offer at the end of that summer to continue on, and come back after graduation.

0:31:01.7              There were a number of people who received summer offers, and then the permanent jobs – they received permanent offers, or summer offers, and they were withdrawn, because the firms were contracting at that point. And everybody was contracting. Government agencies were contracting. There just weren’t a lot of jobs out there. So, there was a lot of pressure on the career services office, and high expectations of Rob Kaplan and his team to help us figure out, now that we’ve invested this time and this money in getting a law degree, how were we going to – how were we possibly going to move on from there?

Carmen:               Right.

Stephanie:            Even for Michael – so, we were engaged our second year, in March, and he worked here in Chicago, for a law firm – and Intellectual Property firm, for the summer, and I worked at a very small, boutique firm in Annapolis, Maryland, who didn’t regularly hire their interns.

0:32:05.3              That wasn’t an expectation that I would walk out of the summer with a job.

Carmen:               Sure.

Stephanie:            But it was the hope for his job. And he got a call in September, when firms would be making offers, to say, you would have an offer, but we are folding. The whole firm folded. And he had no idea that that was coming down the pike. And at the time, all of the on-campus interviewing had already happened for these other firms. So, our lives were up in the air. We knew were being married, getting married at the end of May, after graduation. Neither of us had a job. I was looking, and then he was having to look. At that point, the plan was, we were coming to Chicago, and I was trying to figure out how to wrap my head around the legal community here. It all ended up working out.

0:32:58.4              He was – he continued to be in touch with a small, boutique firm, and they did eventually offer him a job in January--January or February--so it resolved well. But that was a difficult time for everybody. There was so much uncertainty, and people saying, I’m sorry – even though we committed to you, we can’t take you on. And I think – I didn’t know at the time when we graduated how long it kind of took people to settle into something and find something. I know my job search wasn’t easy, and it took me – I think I started my job in June, so I started working almost a year – in the legal field – almost a year after I had graduated, and that particular time period was personally challenging, because I liked – I’m a worker. That’s what I do.

0:33:59.4              And having that struggle to find something, personally was a tough point. But again, that has informed the work that I’ve done, ever since, and given me some credibility, especially when I was working in the career services field, of having had a challenging job search, and having to rely on networking and not having a set path, like someone at a large law firm would have.

Carmen:               Yeah.

Stephanie:            Those were tough. I don’t remember there being any kind of tension with the administration, ever. With the dean – there were some dean changes. We had a lot of dean changes while we were there. Some short-term people. It didn’t feel like that affected us as current law students as much as it might have affected the alumni community, or the giving, perhaps. I wasn’t at that point in my time to remember that.

0:35:00.0              But we had – I don’t think there were any professors who – people have stories of professors who disappear.

Carmen:               Ah right –

Stephanie:            People who aren’t invited back. And I don’t think any of that happened during our time at the law school.

Carmen:               What about – and you mentioned, the state of the economy, and preparing for that coming out of law school. What about other national or international socio-political things going on? Was there any sense or awareness or reaction to things that might have been going on in the broader United States or world? I’m thinking the end of the Cold War, and the AIDS crisis going on. Feminism is about to start. Like different things were going on.

Stephanie:            And the Gulf War.

Carmen:               Yes, and the Gulf War.

Stephanie:            That, we watched unfold during our time at the law school, which is a very scary thing to be living through.

0:35:58.6              The – it was a bit of a bubble, as Williamsburg probably can be. William and Mary – the law school has, and I believe the college and the university does, as well, have a great desire to invest in veterans, and in-service members. And so, I think the Persian, the Gulf War, it affected everybody, but we would see firsthand, our classmates who had served, or were serving, what their experience was, and that uncertainty about what would happen, and who would be called up, and would they have to go again. And we certainly knew people who would be in harm’s way. You know, there weren’t other wars in my lifetime, and to watch it unfolding on CNN, with Wolf Blitzer, and all the anti-aircraft missiles going on in the background, it was riveting.

0:37:00.4             And scary, for sure, for sure. Here we were, not that far from, outside of AIDS having been named AIDS, and what that meant. And one of the volunteer opportunities that I explored was to be trained as an HIV, AIDS counselor. I didn’t end up working – doing any of the counseling, but I did receive the training. I learned so much through it at that time. And I do forget how new that all was.

Carmen:               Right.

Stephanie:            Especially in 1989, 1990, it wasn’t very many years outside of that. But there were really some very dedicated people at the law school that were doing, doing that work and that social outreach. I also was a Casa volunteer, which is special court appointed advocates.

0:37:59.9              We had a pretty strong tradition of having law students take on those guardian ad litem positions, and work with families. I only had the opportunity to do it for a year. It was fantastic, but also very hard, because – it was hard for me to be rational. That’s not within my personality. I’d get very caught up with the kids and their lives. And it would have been a challenging arena for me to have worked in, but I was glad to have served, and to have had the opportunity to represent those children in the court system.

Carmen:               Yeah.

Stephanie:            I studied abroad, actually. The William and Mary program in Madrid. Walter – Walter [Felt] was another one of those wonderful – John Levy – just the names of the professors, and all of these people had such an impact. But at the time when I went abroad – I’d studied in Spain, also in college through NYU.

0:39:00.5              So, you would hire two law students to be the coordinators of the program, and they were looking for people who were fluent in Spanish, because the tag team members who went over, to oversee the program didn’t speak Spanish, and it was a residential program, and we were living in a palladio, and most of those people didn’t speak any English. So, my counterpart was actually somebody who was Puerto Rican, who was not a William and Mary law student, but we became great friends, and we had this experience of being in Madrid. So, we would have been there the summer of 1990, taking law school – taking legal classes, and then living there. There wasn’t an internship portion. I think there might be now, or if there was, I didn’t have one arranged. But it was a great opportunity to work very closely with – both with the residential collegiate people, and then –

0:40:03.1              It was a little challenging, because I also had to be the one who was solving the problems for everybody within the program.

Carmen:               Right.

Stephanie:            Whether that was housing and who roomed with who, and where the rooms were opened.

Carmen:               Was it standard that there was a study abroad component of the law experience? That’s just not something I had ever really heard of before. Making a note of it here.

Stephanie:            There were two programs that William and Mary ran: One was in England, and I’m not sure – I don’t think it was in London.

Carmen:               The Exeter one? I’m not sure –

Stephanie:            Yeah. It was Exeter. And then this one in Madrid. And I believe they still continue today. They’re still there. And then we also had a Draper Scholar. So, there was somebody, we had an exchange with--I think it was Queen Mary’s College--and that still exists today.

0:41:00.7              There’s a fantastic woman. She’s actually in Chicago, so I get to see her. But she was a Draper Scholar when I was a first year. Charlotte Wager. And because I ended up settling here, and there were enough people kind of, who were her friends, and we knew each other, we’ve stayed friends as well. And I’ve always associated her with William and Mary, but she ended up coming to the States after her Draper year, to pursue – she got an LLM as a Draper Scholar, but she pursued a JD, an American JD, and she now lives here. And she’s in Chicago, so I get to see her.

Carmen:               Small world. Connection story, again.

Stephanie:            It is a small, small world.

Carmen:               So, I am – now there’s so many connections that you’ve brought up, I am totally interested in hearing your trajectory after William and Mary. And you brought up a little bit of that, given just the state of the economy, and the job market coming out, but I would love to just hear about really, your trajectory coming out of William and Mary, finding that first job, but also, figuring out what it is that you wanted to do with your law degree.

0:42:05.6

Stephanie:            It is, you know, I went to law school relatively uninformed. It was a choice, because I thought it would be flexible. I knew my parents like the idea; especially my mom like the idea of me being a lawyer, and being a practicing lawyer. And I was a fine student. I wasn’t a stellar student. I didn’t have a passion for the law that I saw in a lot of my classmates. So many smart women who just really dug in, and just loved and enjoyed every minute of that part. For me, I was trying to figure out, well, I know I’m driven by other people. Other people and by relationships. And what does that mean for being a lawyer?

0:42:56.5              I thought, is that going to be a trusts and estates kind of position, where I would be a trusted counsel to help plan, and then take things apart for people. But no one thing that I experienced or did really spoke to me. I would have had a fine career as a lawyer, if I had wanted to stay in practice, but I don’t thing the personal awards that I’ve had in the way that I’ve steered things now, I don’t think it would have been quite the same.

                             So, I was leaving law school, trying to sell myself and market myself as a lawyer, without really having a passion for what I was doing. And I’m sure that came through in interviews. So, there were a couple of challenges in trying to find a job. I was moving to a location that I had no connection with, and as a woman, I didn’t really want to say, I’m following a guy. We were married, so it was more legitimate than I was moving out here with my boyfriend.

0:44:02.3              But I did have to explain how I came to be coming to Chicago. And the truth was that my husband had a job out here, and here I was. Everything on my resume was East Coast. All of my work experience. All of my education, and trying to persuade people that I was a good investment, to take on, to train and invest time in and grow, it probably did not make a really compelling case for that, in the way that you need to, especially in a challenging job market.

                             Sorry – I didn’t have a lot of traction from Williamsburg. We studied for the Illinois Bar Exam in Williamsburg. So, we graduated Mother’s Day; we got married May 30^th, and then we went back to Williamsburg and studied. At the time, they gave us VHS tapes for BarBri, review course.

0:45:00.2              And we would sit up in a little study room in the library with our classmate Kate Atkins, who was also coming here, and just watch hours and hours of videotape. But the benefit of that was that we could go and take a bike ride, or whatever we wanted. And we actually ended up working it out with Kate, where we would just watch the videotapes at home. We’d just swap the tapes. So, we would really study on our own schedule, which was a gift.

                             But I digress. Move to Chicago. Not so great at finding a job. Not such great skills in terms of interviewing, or being very wise about marketing myself. I’d had good training and good coaching, but I don’t think – I just wasn’t there yet, personally. I was very young. You know, three years out of law school. I ended up – I wasn’t working. It was getting more and more depressing. I was not even getting a lot of interviews. And the interviews I was getting weren’t – things weren’t panning out.

0:46:00.6              And so, I started temping – just general temping. And I can’t tell you the number of places who were happy to take me on as a receptionist, [chuckles] or somebody’s assistant. And that’s great. But I have two degrees, and I really want to work in my professional field. So, it was an income. It was jobs. I talked to anybody and everybody I could about the fact that I was a law school graduate, and because I would do a good job, they would be willing to introduce me to people that they knew. I also decided to volunteer. And there’s an organization here called Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, even though I wasn’t licensed, because I was waiting for my bar results – they had a need on one of their committees, somebody to serve in the officer role as secretary. And that – I can take minutes, and communicate and get things out to people.

0:47:00.4              And it’s still one of the best things I did find. Find something that no one else wants to do, and do it well, in a group of people who have contacts that can help you.

Carmen:               Wow.

Stephanie:            So, I met tremendous people through that organization. I was never able to work in their legal clinics, because I ended up getting a job before, you know, pretty soon after my bar results came back in, but I still had a fantastic experience, and really respect the work they do. And met some fantastic lawyers through that.

                             So, I was doing that. The time went on. We went home to my family in Maryland that first Christmas. Keep in mind that Mike is now working all the time. Round the clock. There wasn’t the technology. He was sitting in the law library, surrounded by books. And working just lots of hours in a day, because he was at a large Intellectual Property firm. So, I would actually go to the firm and sit in the library, just to be able to see him.

0:48:01.3              So, I would – I wrote all my wedding thank you notes. I would do resumes there; I’d write cover letters. I’d take a book. After I was doing whatever I was doing, I would show up there.

                             We went home for Christmas, came back. I still didn’t have a job. And it was really a – it was really challenging to me, because I had always worked. And to be at those loose ends was frustrating. I decided to take an improv class. We lived very close to a place called the “Annoyance,” which is locally very famous. And it was the scariest thing I had ever done, besides going to law school. The first thing they have you do is stand for two minutes in front of the entire class and not say anything. Just stand there and let people look at you. And it was really uncomfortable. But again, it was in no way related to the law, or even a profession, but it was the best public speaking training I’ve ever received in my entire life.

0:49:05.4              And I did six we- six months of classes with the same group of people, and then, we actually had a show. We put on a show. And for another six months, at 10:36 on every Friday night, we were at the Improv Institute out on Belmont, and I was never the funny person. I was always the straight person. I was very good at details. But everybody could play off me. So, that was a terrific experience, that I always tell people who are struggling – you know, do something that scares you. And I didn’t think of it as professional development, but it really was skill development for me.

Carmen:               So, you’re saying you chose to do improv as something that scared you?

Stephanie:            Right. In the meantime, I – all along, in trying to figure out professionally what I wanted to do, and what my passions were, I spent a lot of time talking to Rob Kaplan, still.

0:49:59.3              Back at the law school they were still really supportive, even as people had graduated. And really, kind of taking stock of everything – every kind of work I’d ever done, and what about it was rewarding. And to this day, it’s still a technique that I use when I talk to people who are trying to figure out what they want to do. Even your scooping ice-cream job in high school. What about that – was there anything about that that you really liked? And I cobbled together from everything that I chose to do, is that I liked that coaching role. I liked being the problem solver. I liked a short-term problem that I could fix, or that I could set somebody on the right path for, and coach. So, how – how is that going to play out? I loved my law school experience. I loved that community. I thought a lot about working at a law school, or working in education.

0:51:00.1              And I said, the last thing I want to do is go into career services, is what I started saying, because that’s such a hard job. But as I was networking here in the Chicagoland area, I ended up being connected with someone who was the Assistant Dean of Career Services at Chicago Kent. I had reciprocity to conduct my job search out of their office. So, I would go and use their resources. Rob Kaplan set that up for me. And I would spend a lot of time there. And the woman who was Assistant Dean was really nice, and it turned out her husband was at the same firm that my husband was at. So, there was a nice synergy. And she helped to introduce me to a lot of people in that arena, and she watched my job search and how I tackled it, and how I was networking. I interviewed at John Marshall Law School for a job in Career Services. I interviewed at Chicago Kent – there was an opening, and they were willing to hire –

0:51:59.8              Oh! I’ve actually skipped a whole portion. That did all happen, but it happened because when I found my first job – I must have answered an ad. I don’t even have a recollection of how I found out about the opportunity. But the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission is an arm of the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois.

Carmen:               Right.

Stephanie:            And they investigate and prosecute lawyer misconduct – ethical misconduct. And they, at the time, had a backlog in their hearing level operation, and they were hiring people to be the equivalent of judicial clerks for these hearing boards. There was a hearing board, there was a review board, and then things would have to go into the actual court system. So, I was hired into a clerking position where I was working with the volunteer chairs of each of these hearing boards, and helping write their opinions and doing research for them. It was a great job.

0:52:58.1              I probably started that job – I must have started that job in March. So, it didn’t take too much longer after I came back. It was a terrific job. I worked with a person who’s a professor at DePaul. He oversaw the clerks. There were four of us. The lawyers I worked with on the hearing boards were all terrific. I really enjoyed that opportunity, because they would hear – they would have a certain caseload, so I would work with, frequently with the same people. The people who were in charge of the ARDC, Jim Grogan, just fantastic people. But again, it wasn’t – it was a two-year limited position, so I knew I was going to have to figure out something else. So, that’s when I started doing the networking. I’d had my job search through the Chicago Kent Career Services Offices. I’d kept in touch with Lisa Abrams, and I continued to try and infor – do an informational interview. But it was really during that period of time that I spent the time narrowing down what it was that I wanted to really do and pursue that I felt would fit me best, and where I could excel in what my skill base would be.

0:54:06.6              And so, there was an opening that happened at Chicago Kent, and I interviewed, and I was lucky to be hired on as the Director of Career Services. And I was only two years out of law school. And my client base, the students, in many cases were older than I was, had way more professional experience than I did, and it was astonishing and rewarding that I could offer them a way to figure out what it is that they wanted to do, and really good, concrete suggestions for how to get there. And that was a terrific opportunity.

                             Lisa Abrams, who was the Assistant Dean was great at facilitating professional development. She really pushed me to be involved in the professional association. I ended up speaking frequently, mentoring other people who were interested in the job, supervising our own staff members.

0:55:05.8              And then when she left, I ultimately was promoted to Executive Director, initially. Again, I was still pretty young. I was maybe six years out of law school. And it took me a while to prove to the administration that I should be an Assistant Dean. It took me actually having another job offer at a different law school, and having accepted for Chicago Kent to say, “Is there anything we could do to keep you?” Which was fantastic. And I said, “Yes, I would like the Assistant Dean title. I would like to work four days a week,” because at that time I had two children--was about to have a second--and we were hoping we would have three children down the road. And they said, “That’s great, but we also want, because you’ve done such great work with alumni, we want you to take over Alumni Relations.

0:56:00.6              So, they pulled that from the Development Office, and kind of combined those two functions, which was a really unusual combination.

Carmen:               Yeah.

Stephanie:            It was a great combination. There was a lot of synergy. But, I found that the higher I rose, as an Assistant Dean, the less I was working with students. I was overseeing the people that were working with the students. And I was spending a lot of time as an administrator. I love being part of the senior administration team, and working on the long view for the law school, but I really did miss the actual counseling. I didn’t get to do as much of that as I, as I did.

                             I eventually ended up deciding to step back from full-time work – even four days, four days, two departments. I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean, that’s really the trajectory. But I had the opportunity, when I decided to come back. As a woman, that pull and being a working mother is real.

0:57:03.2              And it is really hard to balance. And I grew up at a time where I was told I could be anything that I wanted to be, and I could do everything. And my expectation was that I could do everything. And to me, it felt like a surrender to say I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I had a husband who was working at a big firm, tons of hours. My new position, which I had asked for, meant that I had a lot more evening and weekend commitments, and I needed to travel. And we had these little, little kids, and knew that we wanted another one. So, I did make the difficult decision to step out of that role. And the Dean at the time, Hank Parrott, was great, because he said, “Well, are you willing to do anything for us?” So, I actually worked a day a week for a long time, for the law school, managing its board management of their Board of Overseers. I took on some admissions work. I was doing some development work and alumni work, still.

0:57:59.6              So, I – I was able to keep my hands in, and Kent was very generous. They – whatever amount of time I was willing to give, they were willing to find a way to use my skills. As the kids got a little older, I kept condensing it down to the point where I was only working in admissions. For a while that meant, every week, going in, having a meeting, taking a cart full of actual files home and reading them at my kitchen table. And then it went all electronic, and I didn’t need to go in at all. So, it was just me, solitary.

                             At the same time, Latin School, where my children were, I was an active volunteer in pretty much everything you can imagine, and it gave me that social interaction of working with teens and directing teens again, and I knew that I couldn’t just sit at my kitchen table anymore, and they had an opening, and said, “you know, we know.” At the time we had – my husband and I had chaired the big fundraiser for scholarships.

0:59:00.0              And there was an opening, and the person who’s now my boss said, “Can I pick your brain? I know you used to do this kind of work.” And we had a long conversation, and I came home and said, “Do you think she was going to offer me a job?” And Mike said, “No! Why would she?” And she called a week later and said, “We’ve decided what we need is – we keep saying we want a Stephanie 2. Can we actually get a Stephanie? Would you be willing?” It was earlier than I wanted to go back full-time, but it’s been a perfect fit.

Carmen:               That is quite a trajectory.

Stephanie:            It’s quite a trajectory, so – I love to volunteer for the law school now. I’m not a great connection person for students who are looking for active positions. That’s Mike. We send all those people that way. But for students who are trying to figure out what they want to do, or some advice on how to tackle a search in Chicago from a long way away, that’s where I feel like I can be helpful, and why I’ve really stayed involved with the law school, and try and be helpful in whatever way – small way.

0:59:00.0             

Carmen:               Sure, no – I think that’s imperative, because I mean, similar to 1992, the 2008 until current sort of job market looked, has looked similarly bleak for students. So, I think having that experience, and really, it sounds like, from what you mentioned, sounds like sometimes building your own network from the ground up when you were here. Yeah, I just think that would be incredibly helpful to a new student, searching, because they are, they all are. So very fortunate if you come out of school with something locked in.

Stephanie:            Right. Hopefully it’ll be on the upswing. And there’s such a contraction in the legal market now. And the whole profession is changing. So, there’s a lot of uncertainty.

Carmen:               Yeah, but to have someone kind of in that position to help navigate it, I think that’s just imperative to have. So, it’s wonderful. So, if there’s anything specifically you’ve taken from your William and Mary experience that you’ve used, or that’s been helpful to you in charting your course, what would you say that is?

1:01:00.2

Stephanie:            I mean certainly on the academic and hard skill side, the writing skills that I developed in law school, I use in my profession all the time. Especially now that attention spans are shorter, and we have to communicate in fewer words, and more impactful – legal writing really helps you do that. [chuckles] They made you cut out a lot of the stuff that was unnecessary. I take that with me. I take the critical thinking skills and the analytical skills from that side of things. The experience of needing to be able to sound knowledgeable, when sometimes you don’t feel that knowledgeable. I mean, the improv training was great, because it helped me have the confidence and sell that, but the actual use of that skill in a professional setting, I learned that piece at William and Mary.

1:02:00.5              I knew of the need before I knew how I personally could make that happen. I’ve carried – we have so many dear friends from our time there, and my hopes for what my graduate law school experience would be like were exceeded in terms of what we’ve come out of law school with, and connections. I’m able to pick up the phone. I like to think our class is more close knit than any others. Mike and I shared our last reunion--we chaired a couple reunions--but our last one, we had the highest turnout of any class. Great respect for each other, and ability to call on one another when we need a referral or need some advice.

                             The things I learned from Rob Kaplan as a professional, I have turned to time and time again. He’s the consummate – he’s not in the same role now.

1:03:00.6              He oversees something else. But I return to the way he interacted with students and how respectful he was, and how individually focused he was on each person. As a young person, I didn’t have the world view to appreciate that as much as I came to appreciate it, as I made my way through the world.

Carmen:               Excellent. So – we’re back to kind of really broad questions. But that answered one of them, and also kind of brought up a couple pieces of the next. So, the ways that you remained involved with the law school at William and Mary. You’ve mentioned a couple, like reunion committee work, and being a mentor, sort of an advisor for students who are searching, potentially for jobs in the field now, in Chicago. But what other ways have you stayed involved with William and Mary.

1:03:58.3             

Stephanie:            I would love to say I was part of the co-counsel program. The law school has a program where alumni mentor first year students, but again, because I’m not practicing in the field, I love to be a resource for anybody interested in alternative careers for their law degree, and how best to market that. And what is going to be persuasive in terms of transferable skills. That kind of coaching for anybody headed in that direction. I feel very fortunate I was asked to be on the Association Board, so I just finished my second year; my first full term serving the law school in a leadership capacity in that way. The best part of that is the interaction with students. At our meetings, usually the first thing we do is have a networking breakfast with students and get to talk to them about what they’re doing. And just helping expand the reach of the law school.

1:05:00.1              It’s so much more national – nationally known and national presence in lots of other places now, and I love being a part of helping, you know, make that happen. Dean Douglas, Dave Douglas was a first-year teacher; I was in his first legal history class. Mike and I both were. And to know that he’s at the helm, and this long trajectory of him being Dean, it just makes it that much more personal. Beach has been there for so long, Faye Sheeley in admissions admitted us back in the day, and we feel so grateful for that. Both of us. It’s great to have those overarching relationships that 26 years later, there are still people that we know there. I would be involved, no matter what. I think we both would, because we feel so strongly about the law school. We’ve got people like Morgan Hunter on behalf of the law school now, who of course I didn’t know, because she was probably in diapers when I was in the law school.

1:06:06.9              But, that opportunity – they do such a good job at connecting personally. It all just comes back to that relationship piece of it. Whether it’s relationships with people at the law school, or students that are coming through and leaving, or people that I’ve known for a long time, it really makes a difference.

Carmen:               Yeah. It’s kind of the line of continuity from the time you were there, even ‘til today, and I would say, who knows? The foreseeable future.

Stephanie:            This is – this is totally a non-sequitur –

Carmen:               Oh, go ahead.

Stephanie:            But I feel like I have to mention it, because it should be in the William and Mary history.

Carmen:               Sure.

Stephanie:            So, John Levy, who is a long-time law professor at the law school, I never had a class with him, but he was the externship coordinator, so I found my externship through him. But he would carve out of wood, we call them feely-fish.

1:07:01.3              And they were beautiful feeder fish that were pocket-sized, three-dimensional. And they were a talisman, a token, a touchstone that he would have. And he had given me one, and he’d given my husband one – my boyfriend at the time, my fiancé. And we asked him if he would carve them for our groomsmen. So, all of our groomsmen also have this fish. And so, when he passed away so unexpectedly this year, right before our reunion – he was just somebody I always looked forward to seeing every time that I went back, who whether you had him or not as a professor, he knew everybody, and he cared so deeply about people, he was really a salt of the Earth, mainstay, and someone who we really, we will miss. But we have our feely fish, and we keep them and think about Professor Levy all the time.

Carmen:               Did he do that for all of the law students? Or is it a hobby of his that he just . . .

1:08:01.8             

Stephanie:            I don’t think so. I don’t know how we were so lucky to have had the feely fish. He didn’t – I don’t think he did them for everyone.

Carmen:               So interesting.

Stephanie:            But, just again, a great example of the people that are at William and Mary.

Carmen:               Sounds like a very prominent figure, that you would know whether or not you came into contact through a class or something. That’s great. I’m glad we have that on record.

                             So, you’ve answered most of my questions, honestly. I did want to ask you specifically, since we’re doing this oral history as part of 100 years of co-education, we’re celebrating that this year. We’re about to kick it off. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on the value and contribution of women. You’ve talked a little bit about it, but, the value and contribution of women at a place like William and Mary, and then more broadly.

Stephanie:            Absolutely. Having been, I think, part of the first class that was primarily women, that was a huge step forward in the legal field, and there’s always discussion, even now, on women and representation.

1:09:01.0              And how do we keep women in the field, and working in the field, and what does that look like? It’s been a challenge all along, and that’s not going to go away, but the more women who are in position that have a chance to make those decisions about how women are treated in the workplace, the better that will be, is my hope and my expectation. I think we, we definitely have seen some of that. There’s a lot of work to continue to be done, but there are a lot of smart women out there who are working towards that.

                             The law itself was very male oriented for certain. The women that I know who have faced challenges at their employers, whatever kind of employers they are, with discrimination or not being taken seriously –

1:09:59.2              When I was interviewing, my interviewing time was so fraught, I actually, at the time I didn’t wear glasses, and I was blonde and I have a high voice, and as professionally as I tried to present myself, I felt like I wasn’t being taken seriously, so I even went and got frames – glasses frames with clear regular lenses, just to appear a little bit more studious, a little bit older. I don’t know that it worked. But – those kinds of things happened at the time.

                             You know, I’m a mother; I’m a parent. I have three kids. My husband went to a single sex school for a little while when he was very young, and he really encouraged us to look there for our kids. I’m a huge believer in co-educational experiences, for people to be equipped to work in the world. I understand there are lots of studies that say, especially for girls, single sex education is really important, and I absolutely understand that, but, it was my, our choice to make sure our kids were raised – especially I want our boys raised to know the power of women.

1:11:10.2              I’ve – I said a couple of times, I’ve always worked, since I was 14, all the time, and I wanted my kids, especially my boys to have a mom who is professionally engaged. And although I stepped in and out and been gone part-time, and done things in lots of different ways, I think that’s kind of the way that women can have it all, not at once, but in some sequence – some rational sequence, to try. Everybody makes tradeoffs and sacrifices, no matter what their situation is. I was so lucky to be able to be very part time when I wanted to, and then very lucky to be able to step back into things. But I know it’s not easy. I have classmates who have tried to step in after taking time off, and found it incredibly challenging.

1:12:04.9              Even if they were up to date on the content base, it was very hard to persuade people that they were serious and up to date enough with their skills to continue.

Carmen:               That’s great. Thank you for answering that. So, at this point, I want to open it up to you, actually. This is a time to bring up any other memories you have, thoughts you have, hopes you have for William and Mary and its future. Anything like that.

Stephanie:            The law school is in such good hands. It’s a time of change in legal education, for sure, and I know the plan now is – that the law school classes have grown, and they’re now being drawn back down about to the size they were when I was in school, which I think is a wise choice, number one, because of the job market. So, just having fewer people out there, and having that same personal attention and high-quality education.

1:13:04.2              The fact that the law school really prides itself on practical working knowledge, and having well-rounded, skilled graduates who can step in pretty much anywhere, and succeed, and do a good job, and represent William and Mary very well. I feel like the law school is in the right place for that.

                             I’m so pleased that William and Mary, in general, has the stature of the school has grown. My godson is a – just finished his first year there. Makes me so proud, and I love hearing his stories about what’s happened. In the work that I do, because I work with high school students, I have had some, more and more students now going to William and Mary, and I’m so proud and so interested in their experience as undergraduates. I’m so impressed with the thoughtfulness of the curricular changes that have happened.

1:14:00.5              And again, the fact that they drawing people, even more people from Chicago, and sending them back this direction, to work. And excited about the Chicago weekend of William and Mary, and broadening the people I know through the William and Mary connection.

Carmen:               Is there anything else you would like to add at this point?           

Stephanie:            I’m sure I’ll think of things in the middle of the night, tonight – like, “I should have told her!”

Carmen:               You can send them in an email. I’ll add them to the metadata. It will be there.

Stephanie:            Alright.

Carmen:               Well, thank you so much for participating. This was wonderful.

Stephanie:            Thanks, Carmen.

Carmen:               And I hope you do have a great William and Mary weekend, this weekend.

Stephanie:            Thank you, thank you.

01:14:38

[End of recording]