 You know, I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college. I had some very excellent high school teachers in the public schools in Chicago. So I was convinced that when I came to Gustavus, I was going to take the professional education courses and become a secondary ed teacher. Gustavus afforded the opportunity for students to do independent studies in the subject of African history. I had a number of experiences there at Gustavus that really propelled me on the path that brought me to Charleston today. I have been involved in the AME church all of my life. I joined with a couple of colleagues to write a book which tried to contextualize the racially motivated murders that occurred over at Emmanuel AME church in June of 2015. We wanted to try to memorialize the lives of those people who lost their lives and we wanted to make sure that the reading public understood what kind of people these were, what kind of contributions they had made to this community, what their great potential was to continue to do good. I have found that a lot of times people look at the position that you occupy and they look to you to be the voice of the voiceless. There's a lot of responsibility there. There's risk as well as reward and you do what you can to try to improve the community that you are a part of and make the lives of those who live here better in whatever way that you can. I am Dr. Bernard Powers and I'm a Gusty. Make your life count.