BYU employee since… 1996.
My job at BYU is… I wear several hats right now. I am the director of the BYU London Centre, but on campus I am an associate professor of classics and the coordinator of the Ancient Near Eastern Studies program.
I’m currently working on… two things: 1. Making meaningful connections with people, places and institutions in London that can bless BYU students and, in turn, that can be blessed by BYU and its students. 2. Getting back to some research and writing so that, at my alarmingly advanced age, I may still become a full professor. Pray for me.
I’m currently reading… I am rereading “The Once and Future King,” by T.H. White.
I get most excited about my work when… students become passionately excited about the topic we are discussing, be it a written or a visual text. Wanting to read the New Testament in Greek sparked my interest in my field and led to me studying classics. It is still exciting to see what additional nuance and meaning can be found in the Greek text.
When I tell people I work for BYU, they often say… how lucky I am to work with such exceptional students.
My go-to comfort food is… Savory: pasta. Sweet: chocolate.
A common misconception about the London Centre is… that it is “too expensive.” While study abroad can be costly, there are many resources students can access to help pay for study abroad programs: academic scholarships, experiential learning grants and many other sources. There are helpful people at the Kennedy Center, who can direct you to those resources. This semester, we have had a wonderfully high number of first-generation college students participating in the program, and I would love to see that continue and become a trend. I was a first-generation college student myself, and I did not participate in a study abroad because my family was poor, and I believed I could not afford it. With the types of financial help available, even when I was a student, I believe I could and should have gone. There are even more sources of help now.
My top recommendation for visitors to do/see in London is… difficult to narrow down, but I think I would have to say: museums, museums, museums!!! Almost all London museums.
