Welcome to Alumni Live, the podcast.

These are conversations with Grand Valley State University film and video

graduates about the industry, the film, video major, and alumni profiles.

This episode is brought to you by the Chuck Peterson Memorial Fellowship.

The fellowship was established by Chuck Peterson's family and friends to assist

upper level students in the film and video program at G V S U, who are working

on creative projects that support the nonprofit sector in their community.

Kyle Macciome, the 2020 recipient of that fellowship, describes the

benefits of the support he received.

When going through this fellowship, there are three separate parts

of yourself that I think get to experience a lot of development.

The first is, as a student, because this is a learning process, you get to learn

how to work with a client, on your own, independently out in the world, away

from the classroom like you would in something like Producing for Clients.

And the second one would be as a video maker, as a video producer, as someone

who has respect for the work that they're doing and wants to improve on

themselves and produce a final product that can be used out in the real world.

And then the third one would be, as a citizen, you know, you're not making

video for an entertainment value or for some kind of commercial purpose.

It's for a nonprofit, it's for a direct benefit in your community.

And being a citizen of that community, understanding how you can directly impact

and improve it, is a really valuable experience that I think the fellowship

teaches you to be as, as a student, as a filmmaker, and as a citizen, all three

of those things are directly a part of this process that you get to learn and

ask yourself, how do I wanna be seen and how do I wanna act as these three roles.

For more information and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.

Now back to the show.

Welcome to another episode of Alumni Live, the podcast.

My name is Katie Dehn.

I am a 2006 film grad, the president of the GVSU Film and Video Alumni

Network Board, and the Women in Cinema Mentorship program director.

Today we are talking all about mentorships.

We have Gerry Cooke.

Gerry is the Director of Mentorship at GVSU.

That's not his only tie to GVSU.

He's also a proud alum.

For almost 30 years, Jerry has been part of the GVSU family.

Aside from his time at GVSU, he spent almost 20 years at Gordon

Food Service in various roles, and for more than eight years, he spent

time mentoring GVSU students in the Seidman College of Business.

Hi Jerry.

Thank you so much for joining us today to talk about mentorships.

My pleasure, Katie.

Thanks for having me.

So first, let's start off.

What makes you passionate about mentoring at your alma mater

and helping others to mentor?

Have you been to Allendale lately?

It's amazing to watch the growth of Grand Valley, especially from my

time and then, I had been gone from Grand Valley for a while and I went

back to Allendale as I became more involved in mentoring and coaching.

And just the size and scale and to watch this small regional university

that I went to, which didn't have a lot of street cred, in my day become this,

this big institution that's not only a university, but it's part of the West

Michigan fabric of, of the community.

And if that doesn't get excited, I mean it's like free, it's like free

street cred for me, for my degree, looking that much better and that much

better.

Better, man.

It just keeps getting better and better at Grand Valley for sure.

So, What mentors have you had yourself, and how did those relationships

help you get where you are today?

One of the best things about mentoring is completing the circle

and giving back, and everybody's been helped at some point in their life.

And back in my time at Grand Valley, we didn't have mentoring programs, but

we definitely had a lot of faculty, we had a lot of staff, and we had,

just a lot of folks at Grand Valley that were willing to help people out

if you knew how to ask for that help.

I had, a turbulent set of undergrad years.

I was a, you know, late teen, early 20 something who was sure of

everything and didn't know anything.

And I had, mentors directly at Grand Valley who helped not only

kind of point the direction, but.

Keep me outta trouble.

And the first one of those that I would recognize is Bob Stoll.

Uh, Bob Stoll is Director of Student Life for 38 years.

And though Bob is retired, he's still actively in our mentorship

program and, and mentoring students.

And it was the times when I came to Bob's office for office hours, looking back now

as a professional, the amount of time he would spend with any student who would

walk in and, and sit down what he was doing and, and turn his chair around.

And we would talk and.

Mentoring kind of falls into two buckets.

Not to get too Jungian and and philosophical, but I mean, there's

introverts and extroverts and I was an extrovert and I needed not only

contact, but I needed affirmation.

And so Bob Stoll is a big piece of that and still helps me today.

He's still a mentor of mine, and some of those mentorships become

really lifelong friendships.

Paul Isely, who is now.

Associate Dean at the Seidman College of Business.

He was a professor and I was in his very first class, so we were both kind of new.

So he was a new professor, I was a new student, and he, he tried and

continues to try to teach me economics, which was not my, my greatest skill.

But, um, there was always something great again about Dr.

Isely's office hours, where I could pop in and get real advice on things

I was struggling with, not only academically, but interpersonally,

you know, relationships, struggles that I had, with family and friends

and that kind of support nowadays has been a lot more normalized, but back

then you kinda had to go and find it.

And, uh, they have been kind of instrumental to, for me, even

now and throughout my career.

That's awesome.

What are some other benefits of being a, of, of the opposite end of that, like

being a mentor because you've mentored several students throughout the years.

Yeah, so I've got, um, I don't know, probably 18 or 19, uh, folks who

I've spent time with and, many of those I'm still in contact with.

So it works both ways and.

I think one of the things that really shocks people about mentorship when

they be a mentor is first there's kind of like that whole grieving process.

There's, there's fear of, I, I'm not gonna be a good mentor.

I don't know what to say.

I'm not gonna be good at it.

And then there's kind of like a grief process.

What did I sign up for?

I don't have time for this.

They called me, what should I do?

And then there's a negotiating process.

Well, I, I, I'm only gonna do this, you know, one day a week.

And finally there's the acceptance process and.

I've also been mentored by my mentees, so seeing things through the lens of

my mentees brings me up to speed in a way that I didn't appreciate before.

I'll give you two really good examples.

I get approached all the time by employers who are interested in mentorship and

they want mentorship to fix a problem or they, they say that the work

environment right now is terrible and they can't get employees, and my answer

to them is, we'll start mentoring and they say, I don't have time for that.

Well, these are the same company leaders who would go out and pay for a study

to figure out how would I best attract a college student into my workforce?

Well, don't do that mentor, because the last time they talked to a college student

who wasn't a family member or an employee was probably a long time ago, if not ever.

So if you wanna understand today's up and coming students, spend time with

them, also develop that relationship so that you're not going blind

the next time you're looking for that intern or that new employee.

But most importantly, I think right now with the burnout rate we have in

our professional community, post covid.

People are looking to either get energized or get out.

And somebody I worked with for many years at Gordon's, who's a professional

mentor I went to and I said, look, I have to have you in this program.

And they said, Jerry, I just don't have time for this program.

And I said, I.

You need this program because when you're empty, you need to be full.

And when you're full, you need to be empty.

And a lot of our professionals nowadays are absolutely

just swamped and burned out.

And the chance for them to do something truly altruistic like mentorship

doesn't come along very often.

And I tell mentors, I can't pay anything, but I can offer you something that

you're not gonna get anywhere else.

I've closed multimillion dollar deals and that feels good, and it's fun to

go out and have a fancy dinner and a couple of drinks and celebrate that.

It pales in comparison to when your phone rings and your mentee

calls you up 10 years down the road and says, you know what?

That thing you said to me, or that thing we talked about, or I achieved

that goal, you can't beat that.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's powerful.

So the next question I had, which you kind of already talked about was this idea of

the time versus benefit of being a mentor.

So I don't know if, if you had anything else, in regards

to that, that you haven't

covered?

Yeah, so the, the number one question I get asked is how

much time is this gonna take?

And I tell people what we're looking for is we're looking for two points of contact

per month, and I tell most mentors spend about an hour a month on the program.

So if you figure you and your mentor are gonna get together, or

your mentorship partner are gonna get together, Maybe it's by phone.

So I have a lot of mentors who are not even in Michigan.

They've left the, the West Michigan area.

Many of them are alumni.

Some of them are abroad and they do video calls and they do telephone calls.

It all depends on what you and your mentorship partner kind of settle on.

Some people enjoy that.

Some people wanna sit down and have a cup of coffee.

So the number one thing I tell mentees is invite your mentor back

to campus, whether it's downtown, grand Rapids, or out in Allendale.

They haven't probably been there in a while.

Like I said, most of them are alumni and it's fun to bring them

back buy a, buy a coffee and chat.

But a lot of the time commitment starts not feeling like time.

And I find when people do that an hour.

A month, so maybe 15 minutes talking on the phone twice a month and maybe a half

an hour of you scratching your head as the mentor going, man, I talked to my

mentee and they said they were interested in this, that and the other thing.

I'm gonna let that settle in my mind.

I.

I love to network, so we're networking.

So I had a, a mentee that wanted to meet Elon Musk and so we, for six months

launched a campaign and I got all the way to Kimball Musk, who's his brother.

Uh, when that mentee decided that she no longer liked Elon and he did

something and it was in the papers and we were done with Elon Musk.

But I enjoyed a whole six months of trying to figure out how do

we work our network to connect to people that may be unconnectable.

And I think that idea too is, As the mentor and the mentee, you

have to have that conversation about what are we gonna do?

And 99% of the time, the mentee has no clue.

What they want to do.

So if you rewind the tape back to when you were at that point in life, did you

really know or were you just answering the question from the age of five of what

do you wanna be when you grow up, Katie?

You know.

Well, if you would've asked five year old Jerry, he wanted to be a farmer.

I thought a farmer was the coolest thing you could do.

You drive tractors, you feed cows.

It was cool.

That's not what I'm doing today.

Life changes and it changes pretty fast.

So I think if you put in that hour a month, Two points of contact,

you'll find that that grows.

But the mentor has to be prepared to kind of lay out the, the menu,

if you will, of goods of, of, these are the things that I like to do.

Does any of this interest you?

And try to have that conversation.

And that's the first part I would call of mentoring.

And then deep mentoring, which we can talk about a little bit later on if

you'd like, is that next level of that.

So,

I had a question on, do you have any advice for alumni who are

considering becoming a mentor?

And I think I really wanna get into how do they get over that

hump of, I don't feel qualified

for this.

If you've survived to this point, especially post pandemic, you have

all kinds of things to offer because obviously you graduated, obviously

you got a gig, you paid your rent.

So some of the things that are very benign to you and I are very, very simplistic.

or elementary, are mind blowing and sometimes.

The mentee just wants to talk.

They don't expect you to solve all their problems.

I have a, a little manual that I, I inherited from the last person who

did mentorship at Seidman, and I think point number one is your mentor is

not Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy.

The mentor is not there to give you, an internship or to loan money from

the mentor mentor's there to teach you or demonstrate skills that survive to

where they didn't have to borrow money or ask somebody else for an internship.

This podcast does

reach out to alumni as well.

So some alumni graduated and never had mentors.

Do you have any advice for how they can find mentors in

their lives post-graduation?

I tell people, it's easier than you think.

Spend some time really thinking about what it is you want to

manifest, what it is you want.

We have a seminar called Life Crafting where we do this and

we ask a series of questions.

And the point of Life Crafting is, don't worry about what's

possible or not possible.

So ultimate you actualized.

If Ultimate Katie could do ultimate anything on the

planet, you now have the wand.

You run the world.

We get down to brass tacks.

Where would you like to live in the city or in the country?

How would you get to work?

Do you like to walk?

Uh, does that, does that sound cool?

Do you wanna drive a Ferrari?

If so, what color is it?

What's your house like, you know, what's your family life like?

What do you wear to work?

Do you work with people or paper?

We ask all these questions and I push the participants to really not focus

on what's possible or not possible.

Cause people are like, oh, I can't afford that, or I can't do that.

And they get this ultimate idea of kind of like, Hmm.

I wanna live in a mid-size city.

I wanna ride a tram to work, and I want it to be in Europe, probably western Europe.

I love to eat mussels.

I like kitche art.

And then I asked them to research that and they come up with something

like Bruge a city in Belgium.

And they're like, I'm like, great now.

Now do the networking part that we've taught you to do so well, we

always jump to networking and we don't think about what it is we want.

So when we meet people, we can't broadcast our vision.

And then if I start walking around and saying, Hey, I wanna

do something in Bruges, Belgium.

Cause I've always wanted to live there and I love eating muscles or whatever it is.

And then you run into somebody else who's like, oh, I did a teaching

fellowship, or I know a gig or something is gonna come along, but

you have to broadcast your intentions.

Now this becomes very easy in the digital age because we have things like LinkedIn.

So if you're somebody out there who's looking at Grand Valley alumni

especially, who's looking for something?

I'd take my silly example.

I would probably start looking up alumni that went to Grand Valley, that live in

Western Europe, preferably in Belgium, preferably Bruges, who sell seafood.

I don't know, but you can run a search to do this, and I can almost guarantee

we are a community that's a university.

So this whole idea of being a Laker for a Lifetime has really paid off for me.

Everybody I've ever approached and asked to help with mentorship.

They do it because we're a small, Midwestern university.

I think with this kind of value of we help each other out, you know, and we're,

we're not a big flashy university with a, uh, necessarily built in rah rah

culture, but we quietly get the job done.

And so I think if you reach out to your fellow Lakers,

it's a great place to start.

But once you've solidified your vision, anybody who's closer to

your vision than you are, That's, that's to me a potential mentor.

And I think most people are flattered enough and most human nature

still works for a tribal society.

And if you truly go to somebody and say, Hey, I need your help, it works.

In fact, that was one of the secret things I used to do when

I collected money in my old job.

I, I wouldn't call people up and say, Hey, you owe money.

I call people up and say, Katie, I need your help.

And I learned that from one of my business mentors and I still start some emails

with, Hey, so and so, I need your help.

Next sentence.

Let's get into some specific examples of how have you seen mentoring

relationships help students?

Like do you have any stories

you can share?

I.

I met a student when I was a pro mentor in the program, so that's what we call

our people who are volunteers, who are usually Laker alumni, and we try to pair

people with a job that that student wants.

So if a student's studying accounting, I try to hook 'em up with an accountant.

They study sales, sales, HR, et cetera.

So I was paired with a student.

The student and I met, we had a nice conversation where you're from,

what are your hobbies, et cetera.

And then I said, well, what do you want to do?

And the student said, I have no idea.

And I said, I like your honesty.

This particular student wanted to learn networking and didn't

have a, didn't have a vision.

So I said, well, let's create a vision and let's start with some networking

and let's do business lunches.

And back in the good old days, I used to get lunches paid for by the company.

So it was, uh, a nice opportunity for me to take my student

and somebody else to lunch.

And I said, who's your favorite professor?

We're gonna take them to lunch, and then we're gonna take their boss to lunch,

and then we're gonna take their boss's boss to lunch and we're gonna do this.

Have you ever met T Haas?

I asked the student student's like, no.

I'm like, you know who T.

Haas is, right?

Yeah.

He's the president of university.

I said, you and I are gonna get a meeting with T Haas.

Now, I don't know if we're gonna get a meeting with T.

Haas or not, but let's try it.

So we start these machinations of taking people to lunch.

And so we were based in downtown Grand Rapids, so we based

ourselves at Zs Bar and Grill.

And for the first lunch I took my mentee, I introduced that mentee

to the entire serving staff and I said, Hey, this is a mentee.

He's a student at Grand Valley and he's learning networking, and

we're gonna use this as our office.

And then we talked about all the things I learned in psychological sales school

many, many years ago when I sold insurance right outta Grand Valley, and we did

things like we would always put the guest in the best seat to face the windows

and we would sit against the wall.

We asked the, the servers, uh, via an extra tip to help us

out by using titles like Mr.

Or Mrs.

Or Professor, and we tried to make that person that we networked with feel like

the most important person in the room.

So this went on and pretty soon the student starts to gain confidence.

Cuz these are easy, right?

We take a professor to lunch or coffee, Hey, can we meet the department head?

We take that person.

In the meantime, as the mentor, I'm benefiting cause I'm meeting all

kinds of people at Grand Valley.

I didn't know.

And that eventually led to a, an adjunct teaching gig for me too.

But we went on and on and on and, finally the, the student has enough chutzpah

to walk into the President's office.

I don't know how many students do this now.

I'm not recommending people just go and do this, but the student walks into the

President's office, that time was, in Zumberge and on his own demands a, a

meeting, but he has a story to tell now.

He's just not a student who showed up.

He shows up with his story about how his crazy mentor suggested we

do all these meetings and we did all these meetings and these things, and

he's interested in talking to the President, about his mentorship journey.

I knew nothing about T.

Haas at the time and I was shocked when we were given time for a meeting.

And so we were sitting across having lunch at Kirkhof Center, overlooking Zumberge

and we were talking about our strategy and I said, you know, not no matter what

happens in today's meeting, you've won.

This is awesome.

This is a, this is a big deal.

President's a busy person.

We're gonna get 15 minutes for the President president's office.

This is cool.

What are you, what are you gonna say?

And the student said, I think I'm gonna ask T.

Haas to be my mentor.

And I'm like, bold.

I like that.

Okay.

Well, long story short, we go in, T.

Haas invites us in, and he came out from behind the desk and we sat around

the little round table there in the President's office surrounded by his

memorabilia from the Coast Guard.

And we small talked, and then T.

Haas got down to business, said, well, what can I do for you?

And the one thing I hadn't prepared my student for was a yes,

because the student said, well, T.

Haas I'd like you to be a mentor.

And T.

Haas you know, very smart, says, well, what would that look like?

He didn't say no, but he didn't say yes and the student nor I had no

answer for what that would look like.

Right.

I didn't expect T.

Haas to have, you know, meetings with his student or, or come

out and do these things.

So we kinda left it at that.

But the student did contact me years later, was one of those students that

said, Hey, I had to go do this meeting the other day, and I was asked to go,

you know, bust down the door to go sell something to this CEO or CFO, and.

It was a lot easier than going to see T.

Haas and I used the tactics and techniques that we did to do that.

So that's an example of kind of where it turned out.

Well, I had another, student whose goal in life at the time was to

get a internship at 3M Corporation.

I said, why?

And they said, because my friends got one there, and I think it'd be fun.

And I said, all right, let's figure it out.

So we started doing a little bit of digital research.

We found it all about the CEO of 3M.

And, uh, we found out that in addition to being the CEO, this person was very,

very, we're talking like page four or five down on the resume, right?

So they, they were interested in orphanages in Guatemala or something.

And so we put together a packet.

We did some research and we got the student through his buddy who

worked there, invited to their national meeting or something.

So I said, you know, the CEO's gonna speak at this thing, so the CEO's

gonna come down from that stage, and this is what I want you to do.

And so we rehearsed this whole thing and what happened was is the CEO came

off the stage, was going back, and there in the wings was my mentee with a

packet and a cover letter said, uh, the cover letter said that his goal in life

was to work as an intern at 3M.

In addition, it had all the qualification skills for the

internship that was, you know, set up.

So this is Career Center stuff, so shout out to Troy Farley and

those folks putting that together.

But it, it matched everything they were looking for.

But the thing I'm most proud of in our rehearsal is, and

then the student said, and Mr.

CEO, in addition to that, I'd really like to talk to you about your work in

Guatemala, because insert story here.

They offered him the job before he left the conference.

Wow.

I don't want this to sound like I did that.

I was back to being Gerry the farmer.

I was providing kind of a, a ground I prepared to ground.

I planted a seed.

I may have sprinkled a little bit of my own manure, through some of

the things I said were, you know, likely, not likely, and watered it.

And then the mentee grows.

Right.

So it's not, I didn't do that.

And I think one of the failures I see in mentorship is when the mentor feels like

they either need to be the sage on the stage and know everything, or they try

to meld the mentee into what they are.

And the mentor's job is not to create a replica of yourself.

The mentor's job is really to make the mentee, the best mentee they can be.

If

a student came up to you and said they weren't sure they have time for

mentoring, what would you say to them?

I would do a couple of things.

First of all, the old coach in me when people said they didn't have

time to practice, I would say, hand me your schedule and write down

everything you do in a day, and I will find time for mentoring.

What they're really saying is, I haven't made mentoring a priority.

Or if they're very introverted, they're like, prove to me how this pays off.

Show me what's in it for me.

If you listen to Don Lubbers in my, podcast, he says, the student must

be mentored, must, he doesn't say should, could, must is the word that

he uses, I guess to be a little bit more of a salesperson about it, I

would say, what do you want to achieve in your life and would you like help?

If the answer to those questions are yes, then you wanna mentor, and I think there's

very few easier ways to learn about life, than through having great conversations.

That being said, I think post pandemic, especially your average freshman who's

walking around at Grand Valley is really a high school junior, and most of your

juniors who are walking around at Grand Valley is really a college freshman

because, They didn't get a normal two years and for us, who are more advanced in

our experience, okay, so it's two years we missed out, we did some different things.

Um, we got to spend a little bit more time at home.

For them this was devastating and we are seeing a huge dearth in human

skills as, Dean Lawson at Seidman calls it human skills, that to you

and I seem maybe simplistic, but to them, just having a conversation,

going to a business lunch, meeting somebody they don't know is a big deal.

And I think we're recovering from that rather nicely.

But I think right now, if you are going to work in this world and get a paycheck,

you're, you need to have human skills.

So long story short, you can't afford to not be mentored.

You, you, you gotta find time and you're doing it whether you believe

it or not, because your friends who you're surrounding yourself with are

having a mentorship effect on you.

The, the extracurricular activities, the clubs, all the stuff you do

that is a form of mentorship.

So

you mentioned earlier this idea of deep mentorship.

Can you tell me a little bit more about

that?

Yeah, so at some point, um, originally our mentorship program lasted one semester and

I found out that one semester is not even enough time to get to know each other, let

alone get into what I call deep mentoring.

So now we do a full academic year and I have some folks at the end

of the year say, can we keep going?

And I'm like, yeah.

It.

You don't have to be, enroll the program to do mentorship.

Right?

Stay in touch for a lifetime.

Uh, that's what I did.

Deep mentoring comes after we've established the rapport and the respect

with our mentorship partner to ask and be

vulnerable.

And vulnerability is the key word in deep mentoring, and I learned this from a pro

mentor in our program who I appointed to a advisory position with me because

I'm a raging extrovert and he's a raging introvert and Gerry telling stories

about, Hey, I'm gonna send you this conference and make you talk to a ceo,

all your introverts in your audiences.

Either turned off the podcast at this point or went to go be sick

in the bathroom because that's the last thing they want to do.

So this individual and I spent a lot of time developing strategies to help

introverts understand why mentorship is important, and vulnerability

and connection are those two words.

So deep mentoring happens when somebody, and this is all relationship, human

relationships, when somebody decides to be vulnerable and share something.

And if you think back to all of your friendships especially, there's usually

a point in that friendship where somebody shares something that's, that's pretty

hardcore, pretty deep, and usually that is testing the waters to be a safe space.

And when that happens, then the other person tends to

share something vulnerable.

So I tell our pro mentors and we actually do a workshop on vulnerability

where we talk about this and, and by this point, which is usually second

semester right now, winter semester.

You know, share something with your mentee that didn't go well and now

the mentor's mind is, but wait, I'm supposed to be this Paragon.

I am the T of all things that that I was supposed to be.

I don't want to tell 'em when I failed.

I.

Or when I got fired, or when I got divorced, or whatever it was in your

life that was difficult for you.

But by sharing that, you open the table because you know what, do you remember

what it's like to be, a freshman or a sophomore or a junior or just graduating

and you have no clue while you've been honestly putting on a brave face

and say, I'm gonna go do the thing.

You're like, I'm not sure if I want to do the thing.

And that vulnerability exists.

And so I share with with folks in my undergraduate days, I was not the

world's best undergraduate student, so graduate student me with honors chords

on speaking at graduation would've been appalling to undergraduate me

who just didn't care, just wanted his degree and wanted to get out.

But there was a time when I fell below the 2.5 standard for the Seidmen College

of Business, and I was in jeopardy of being dismissed from the university

if I didn't get my act together.

And that's when mentoring got really real because I needed help cuz I

wasn't performing well academically.

So that vulnerability is the key to deep mentoring.

So being vulnerable, offering something out there, and then

listening without judgment.

Again, we're not there to reshape our mentees.

We're there to farm, right?

I can't reach in the ground and pull that shoot out and make it become a tree.

We're there to prepare the ground, to fertilize things,

to make it grow and get real.

Wow.

You've covered so much today.

Is there anything else you'd like to share or comment on that we haven't touched

upon yet?

I just want to, you know, tell people to really think about your

mentoring relationships in your life.

Those of you who were mentored or now realize you were mentored.

Reach back out to your old mentors and thank them.

That means so much in keeping this going.

Those of you who were mentored who want to thank those,

mentors, think about mentoring.

If you've survived this long, you have the skills to mentor.

There's so many great programs at the university.

There's so many great places to give back to Grand Valley.

That's not difficult to do and it is awful fun to reconnect and it's amazing

by helping somebody else how much you're gonna end up helping yourself.

Well, thank you again for connecting with me today.

We want to promote anything that you have.

On your repertoire you wanna share with us, that would be the time to plug that.

Do you have anything you wanna

share?

Absolutely.

So I would be remiss, my social media team would, would draw and quarter

me if I didn't mention the Seidman Mentorship Program, which just

Google Seidman Mentorship Program.

If you wanna go to www.gvsu.edu/Seidman/mentorship, you can.

You'll find us.

You'll find our podcast.

Anybody who's interested.

You don't have to be a, Seidman graduate to be, uh, a mentor in

the Seidman mentorship program.

And, you can find signup links.

We do that in the summer, and it's an academic year.

It's an hour a month, and there's some great students out there who,

who really want to talk to you.

Gerry, thank you again for all of your time and just the dedication

you show to Grand Valley.

It's very inspirational.

And with that, I end today's podcast.

Just letting you know, there will be another podcast about mentorship coming up

in the next few weeks, and that will focus entirely on the Women in Cinema Mentorship

Program that started just a year ago.

There

we'll be interviewing one of our alumni mentors as well as a mentee

who's now a graduate herself.

And thank you for sharing your time with us today at Alumni Live: The Podcast.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Alumni Live, the podcast.

Subscribe to our podcast to hear more from our alumni across the industry.

Check out alumni live on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

For more conversations and networking.

Let us know what topics you wanna hear our alumni talk about.

The Grand Valley State University Film and Video Alumni Network is here

for you, and we're glad you're here.

Thank you for listening.

This episode is brought to you by the Dirk Koning Memorial

Film and Video Scholarship.

Here is Gretchen Vinnedge, remembering Dirk Koning.

The Koning Scholarship enables students to get that kind of an education, to be

a good filmmaker, to be able to express their voice and to continue Dirk's dream.

For more information and to donate to the scholarship, visit

the link in the description.