It is an honor to be nominated by the Delphi Center for Teaching and Learning for the KYVU Online Excellence Award. I must introduce my teaching philosophy by discussing the impact of Jesse Stuart on my life and work. I read The Thread That Runs So True as a high school student in my small hometown in southern Illinois. I was a scientist wannabe and suffered terrible longings to attend East Tech or some other advanced high shcool in Chicago. It was not to be. I cried when I read of the country students from Jesse Stuart's one-room Kentucky school who went to the big city for a scholastic competition and came away with every award. I took hope from the story and tried my best to bloom where I was planted. I took the most difficult courses, listened to my teachers, read the dictionary and the World Book, joined the math club, the FORTRAN club, the French club, the Latin club. The results were as miraculous as those of the The Thread That Runs So True: I won 4 academic scholarships and attended Washington University as a full scholarship student.

Teaching now in a new School of Public Health and Information Sciences, in a new department, the miracles continue. My online course "Introduction to Biostatistics for Public Health" is available via the Internet and Blackboard to public health students all over Kentucky. The first offering was Spring 2006 with a total of 24 students that supports the Kentucky Schools of Public Health Master of Public Health program.