President’s Blog

Maxine’s Fall 2023 Post
Hello, Everyone! If you attended the Delta Kappa Gamma Colorado State Convention in La Junta in early
June, you’re likely still feeling the afterglow of that wonderful gathering. It gave us the opportunity to
actively participate in the business of Delta Kappa Gamma, to attend fascinating presentations on a
variety of engaging topics, to learn about Colorado history, and to connect with friends and build new
relationships. Congratulations to Suzanne Foster, our outgoing state president, for planning such a
meaningful event, and thanks to all who made it happen.
For my first post on our website as President of our state organization, I thought I’d include my
acceptance speech from the state convention, as a way of letting you get to know me and to know the
theme for the upcoming biennium.
“What an honor it is to be asked to serve and represent such a dedicated group of educators. Thank you
for this opportunity to grow with you as we continue to keep the joy of teaching alive by promoting
professional and personal growth of women educators and excellence in education.
I have taught at the college-level for nearly 25 years. I currently teach at the United States Air Force
Academy in Colorado Springs, where I’ve been for thirteen years now. I like to tell my educator friends
that I teach at one of the few places where when the professor walks into the classroom, students rise
to attention and report in saying, “Ma’am, class is present and ready to learn.”
I’m the Director of First-Year Programs, where I design curriculum for our Advising Program and help
conduct Academic Advisor Training. I advise roughly 80-100 fourth-class (Freshman) cadets each
semester, and I teach music and history classes on an associate basis. It’s gratifying to watch our cadets
learn and develop into knowledgeable, disciplined Air Force officers. We just last month graduated over
900 second lieutenants, most of whom will now go on to pilot training. Quite a unique learning (and
teaching) environment.
What drew you to the field of education? What was it that called you to be a teacher? So many of us
in Delta Kappa Gamma have devoted years of our lives teaching others to know more, to do more with
their lives, and to make a positive difference in our world. Take a moment and reflect upon why you
chose to be a teacher. Except for a brief phase when I thought I wanted to be a rock star, I’ve always
wanted to teach. I had wonderful teachers from K-12 who introduced me to the world, and they
inspired an insatiable intellectual curiosity in me that is still alive and well today. I’d like to share a few
short personal vignettes with you to help you get to know me through the lessons I’ve learned.
I wanted to be a teacher since I was in second grade. My mother even put up a blackboard in my room
so I could practice writing on the blackboard while talking to my students. My students?? My students
were initially my two older brothers—who quickly grew out of that assignment—so instead, with an
active imagination, I would set my dolls around the blackboard and teach. There I was making
worksheets for my students to study from and then grading their papers. (My mother would do the
homework for my 15 doll students, so that I could grade their papers.) My mother, though never a
teacher, taught me many lessons.
Fast forward several decades. I earned my Master’s and Doctorate degrees. I like to describe those
years working on the Ph.D. as (to quote Charles Dickens) the best of times and the worst of times. I
loved the research, learned from the best, and made some lifelong friends and colleagues, but the
demands of teaching undergraduate classes, while taking graduate classes and music lessons, while
collecting and analyzing over 1,200 pieces of early American sacred music for my dissertation were, well,
challenging. I learned just how patient and supportive my husband was as he proofed and read the full
463 pages of my dissertation—no fewer than FIVE times, and I learned the heartfelt satisfaction of a job
well done.
While I was music professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University, I guided numerous students through their
undergraduate research projects. Students oftentimes have difficulty just coming up with a topic. They
fail to see the richness of the world around them or the opportunities for research looking them right in
the face. I would share with them how, well after grad school, I came across the topic of the music of
Olgivanna Lloyd Wright by just happening to be on a tour of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
What seemed to be an aside, turned into my life’s work of bringing Olgivanna’s music to light by
transcribing her many hand-written scores into performance-ready compositions. The research took me
to eastern Europe—to Montenegro, several times to research the life of Mrs. Wright (Olga Ivanovna
Lazovich). To my students I would say, “You never know where you’ll find your next research project.
Learning has no boundaries.”
Fast forward. Learning has no boundaries. My inspiration for this message to you came just a few
months ago. Some of you already know this, but early in March my husband Bob was diagnosed with
cancer. On that same day, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It took awhile for us to be able to talk
about it. I know many of you have dealt with or are dealing with serious health issues as well. The day
after we found out, we just sort of wondered around in shock. About a week later we shared the news
with one of my former students, Grant. Grant is not JUST a former student, he is like a son to us. He is
worried about us, but we told him about all we’d learned about these diseases, and we reassured him.
The next day, after he’d had a chance to process things, I got a text message from him. It reiterated the
saying—that four-word phrase—that he had heard from me in the classroom several times: Learning
has no boundaries. . . . Nothing more eye opening and gratifying than when your students teach you
the lessons you taught them! Learning has no boundaries. Learning has no boundaries.
​That’s the message I’d like us to explore during this new biennium. We
have so much to share as teachers; we have so much to learn as teachers. Let’s remember that spark
that initially called us to be educators – the LOVE OF LEARNING that lives inside of each one of us, and
let’s use that positive energy to strengthen Delta Kappa Gamma. We’ve learned so much at this
amazing State Convention, let’s build on that. Let’s keep the momentum going. I’m pleased to
announce my biennium theme for Colorado State Delta Kappa Gamma 2023-25 is: Learning has No
Boundaries: Forward Moving Ever with Delta Kappa Gamma. Thank you so much for this opportunity.
I look forward to getting to know you better and to working beside you in the months ahead.”
Thanks for reading, my Friends.