 When I first started off, my mentor that I could look up to was my mother. She was a mentor to always focus on what I could do, not what I couldn't do. And so it never occurred to me that I couldn't do it. So when I was accepted into college at 15, I stayed focused, went straight through, got married, had two wonderful sons, Ken and Kelsey. I went to graduate school, older, so I was 30 but 31 when I left Mississippi and I took my two sons with me so it was no such thing as failure. So I'm saying that to say that parents can have a really significant impact on your life. She's part mom, part aunt, part cheerleader, part coach. I've had a chance to speak to some alums over the last couple of years and one of the things that they would mention was if they had a problem they would say, have you talked to Dr. B? Here's what's going on in the residence halls. Have you talked to Dr. B? You got into this college. Have you talked to Dr. B? I have to admit my high school classmates used to call me. I get them for that, but they used to refer to me as a little nerdy. So when I came to the school, I fit in perfect with them. The students may not have known it, but I identified very easily with them which made it even a better environment for me and be able to appreciate what they gave to be here. She has a gift about her that she can bring calm or serenity to a person in any type of situation. She would always greet an individual student or a person or me with a smile. I always wanted to know how I was doing and was concerned about my welfare. I still today will think, what would Joanne Barber do? And that instills me to be the best person I am today. She helped to lay the foundation for what the school is today. Our school is a true living learning environment and I think she really helped to foster an overall school community that lived that. And so a number of the programs that we have today including the student leadership and research program, our step up to STEM program, we're all started by Dr. Barber and still are going strong today and thriving. I'm so proud that we are celebrating women in STEM. I've worked my entire career on the idea of increasing females in math and science and STEM related fields. Sometimes that data does not increase as much as I would like. So the idea of celebrating it, maybe other young females can see that they can too be a female in science and math areas and have their own identity.