 For our second recipient, we are excited to recognize Dr. Michael Brandon. Dr. Brandon joined NCSSN's faculty three years ago and has quickly become an outstanding teacher and colleague. As both a team and solo instructor, teaching American Studies and the highly requested Black Studies course, Dr. Brandon creates an active, lively, collaborative classroom atmosphere in which students are challenged, engaged, comfortable, and serious about their learning. In Dr. Brandon's classes, students experience the joy of investigation and discovery. Keeper of the Dream work is hard work, but I mean, I'll tell you. Look, you get a boot for this award. You gotta have a boot for it. Dr. Brandon's well-organized lessons, rich in content that ranges across areas of study, challenge and empower his students to think critically and creatively, to work together, to apply their knowledge and understanding to real-life situations, and to think and act as informed, engaged citizens. For example, in one of his classes, he requires students in his class to research and present a current event from human trafficking to local government to the environment, making students more aware of their responsibility to the world around them. Elizabeth Moose, Dean of Humanities at NCSSN, shared that as a teacher and as an academic advisor, Dr. Brandon recognizes his students as complex, whole human beings, and he supports their growth not only as students, but also as people. Beyond the classroom, Dr. Brandon passionately invests time and energy in extracurricular activities that promote and facilitate students' engagement with civic issues and the world beyond NCSSN's campus. Dr. Brandon serves on several committees, including the Mental Health Committee, the Campus Cultural Climate and Diversity Committee, where he serves as one of the three coordinators who are helping our campus with our diversity efforts. This year, Dr. Brandon is sponsoring the Civic Engagement Club, the Teen Court Club, and NCSSN Socialists, all of which grew out of a campus advocacy project that he and his teaching partner implemented last year in American Studies. Service learning also plays an important role in these clubs, as well as in the new civil rights-based mini-term course Dr. Brandon is sponsoring this year. Several students nominated Dr. Brandon for the Keeper of the Dream and had this to share about Dr. Brandon's work with the Teen Court Volunteer Association. Dr. Brandon serves as the catalyst for this project which partners with Durham Teen Court in an alternative justice program that provides first-time juvenile offenders who have admitted guilt to misdemeanors as a second chance. Through the work of this program, we are exposed to an important social dilemma. We have the opportunity to look at the educational disparity between students in Teen Court and their peers. In addition, the program also established a new tutoring program. Whether it's driving students to Teen Court sessions on Thursday night, or helping out on various nights or weekends, Dr. Brandon has stepped up without hesitation to provide this opportunity for NCSSN students. In addition to his busy life as a teacher, advisor, and club sponsor, Dr. Brandon continues to grow as a scholar through his ongoing research, writing, and publication. Last summer, Dr. Brandon worked in Mississippi as a senior scholar with the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program's Mississippi Freedom Project, sponsored by the University of Florida. It not just as Dr. Brandon gave a presentation of social justice pedagogy at the City's Museum of African American History and Culture, just miles away from Richard Wright's boyhood home. He also gave a presentation on pedagogical approaches to black studies in Vicksburg at the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation, and moreover, he joined University of Florida undergraduate and postgraduate researchers in service at the Watkins Street Cemetery in Vicksburg and at the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center in Glendora. Lastly, he had the privilege of interviewing Mississippi State Senator Willie Simmons in Cleveland for the program's archives among other fascinating interviews. Dr. Brandon called his work with the Oral History Program an invigorating, productive experience that has not only led to plans for a new mini-term trip, but also new approaches to integrate public and oral history into his African American studies and black studies curriculum. Students who nominated Dr. Brandon wrote that it's hard to capture in two pages in a few hundred words the passion and energy that Dr. Brandon exudes. All we can say is that if anyone on campus wants an intelligent, engaging discussion on race relations or basketball, Dr. Brandon is the man to visit. That if anyone wants to drive hundreds of miles to march against inequality, Dr. Brandon is the man to visit. And that if anyone wants to understand what it means to unyieldingly dedicate oneself to improving a community, Dr. Brandon is the man to watch. So please join us in recognizing a true keeper of the dream, Dr. Michael Brandon.