Winter 2024

Mel moved in. We'll clean things up a bit. 

This cute student served a mission with my good friend, Nancy Madsen Wilkerson, in Slovenia

Faculty introduce themselves at SFLSA opening social - Dr. Andrea Busby (with Ruth), Dr. Lauren Barnes, Dr. Rachel McGovern, Dr. Alex Jensen, Dr. Chelom Leavitt (with daughter), and me. 

Winter 2024 started with Mel getting her tonsils out and a seminar with student teachers, then me getting sick. I missed Wednesday - Friday of the first week of classes due to Covid. I am so grateful for awesome TAs and for Starlyn, who covered for me. I didn't worry one bit! Things went well. I couldn't take care of Mel, though. She did great! She was so patient with the pain, took her meds, and was a real trooper! I really admire her bravery. Then Monday was a holiday and Friday I was at Disneyland. So, you might say I eased into Winter 2024 slowly. LOL. 

We did have an SFLSA opening social this past week, which had an awesome turnout. We got about 100 people there, including faculty and SFLSA board members. We're also interviewing for Dr. Dawna Baugh's position. We had a candidate in last week and another comes this week. 

I also had the surprise of my life when I went to the mail and got the copy of the alumni magazine, Family Connections. My feature article was there! I'M PUBLISHED! It was so cool to see it finally in print. I was asked over a year ago to write it and submitted the article a year ago. These things take a long time!

We're prepping for the UACTE conference. I'll be teaching a pasta making class with some students. To prepare, I need to make a giant batch of homemade pasta and tomato sauce. I also need to weight out about 32 bags of 65 grams of flour and get the other ingredients ready. I need to grab supplies from the lab for the class. I'm glad I can involve students in projects like this. I will be receiving an award and Kamiko gets to be my plus one at a dinner. I'm really excited about having him there with me. 

I've been working on getting my faculty plan updated. My vita is finally updated and uploaded to the BYU website. I also submitted my grant proposal to take some cooking classes, and I have my report ready to submit for my new faculty series. It's been over a year of special projects. I do get paid for it, so that's nice. I've also learned a lot. According to the data I collected, my advanced students really learned a lot over the semester. They went from knowing very little about food deserts, global food supply, and some equipment, to feeling very comfortable with the topics. We're getting there. 

I'm the lead advisor for SFLSA now and I'm feeling more comfortable with my duties. I realize I've learned a lot and I'm ready. I've also been problem solving with student teachers and have pretty good intuition on what to do. I feel like I'm really contributing and am doing pretty great at my job. I'm blessed with inspiration to help me, for sure.