Video Transcript – Leslie Durham

Donna Llewellyn: Before I go on any further, I want to introduce two people who are going to just do more of a welcome from campus. And, I’m not gonna do a real formal introduction of them, I’m gonna let them tell you a little bit about themselves, their pathways to their current positions, and a little bit about the impact of undergraduate research maybe and so I’m going to start with Dr. Leslie Durham, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences here at Boise State.

Leslie Durham: Good morning, everybody.
As Donna said, I’m Leslie Durham, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. My home department is theater film and creative writing. And I am very excited to be here with you today as you begin your summer of work.

As Donna said, she asked me to talk about my career path and how undergraduate research helped to shape it. So when I was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I studied English and drama. I had always loved language and storytelling, but when I was in college, I discovered that I also loved theater. My life changed during a lecture on Shakespeare when the professor just captured my attention and held it now for 30 years actually. When he said theater is the word incarnate, I wanted to understand that mystery that he was talking about. To be able to take it apart and to be able to reproduce it for others.

And even though I was terrified about trying something very new, and I, despite the theater background, am an introvert, not an extrovert, people always assume that I’m an, an extrovert because of theater. I went over to the drama department and I volunteered to help be on a running crew to be backstage for a play called Glenn Gary Glenn Ross. And so even though I didn’t know anybody, I raised my hand. I volunteered, and I absolutely loved what I got to experience there.

And so I started taking more classes. I started acting and directing and I loved seeing a story unfold physically in time and space thanks to the language that was visual as well as verbal and the communal aspect of theater was something that really, was special to me. The ephemeral nature of an art form that you got to experience in the presence of others was completely moving to me. And so as an undergraduate, research for me meant understanding place, their historical context, their place in an author’s canon of work. The smallest details of historical manners and customs. Performance traditions, the way the texts have been imagined over time. I tried to understand story and theme, character and action, design, direction, and audience reaction, tried to understand the complex system that is live performance. So that I could make new forms of mystery for audiences.

I wanted to make text speak again and anew. I wanted to help people see the world and themselves differently and better after what they had engaged with on the stage. And I wanted to help them be better to themselves and better to each other. In some ways, this is very different from what you plan to do this summer, but in other ways it’s really quite similar. I started from a place of curiosity and sought to answer questions. Some big and some small. I reviewed existing literature. I collected and analyzed data and I tried
to transform it into meaning. I collaborated with my peers and sought help from my mentors and ultimately I presented my findings.

As the great Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett said, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” That’s what I did through undergraduate research. And that’s what I keep doing today as the Dean of the College. Today I rarely make theater in a conventional sense, but I take the lessons that I learned from undergraduate research into my work every day. As I try to reimagine the story of what a college can be and do in a rapidly changing world. I try to maintain a sense of curiosity. And even wonder about the ways that education can change individual lives and larger communities. I seek other voices to help me understand the challenges I face. I read voraciously and I analyze data of all kinds about a changing workforce and changing industries and how we might prepare students to thrive throughout their lives as the world keeps moving around them. I love to try my ideas out with my peers, my leadership team, and I keep looking to mentors, who might help me navigate paths more smoothly as I design programs, structure budgets, try to solve problems and help people do their best work. I translate ideas into action just as I did on the stage and I try to make my college better for students and faculty.

Of course, I fail often, but research has taught me it is possible to fail better. And so I try again. This summer, I hope your work creates for you a sense of purpose and wonder. I hope you revel in questions and details
that excite you. I hope you make new connections with peers and mentors who will help you advance your ideas. And I hope that they give you the courage to try again, fail again and fail better. That’s part of what makes research artistic and scientific, academic and administrative, frustrating and challenging and wonderful. I hope you have a great summer and I will be so excited to hear about all that you’ve accomplished.

Donna Llewellyn: Thank you, Leslie. I’m always inspired by your words. So thank you for welcoming our students so well.