Emmitt Smith, Maverick Speaker

You recently spoke on cam­pus about “A Cham­pi­onship Vision.” What does that mean? It’s see­ing where you really want to go and devel­op­ing a plan on how you want to get there. You always have to have a plan to achieve your vision. I wanted to play pro foot­ball, and that’s been achieved; now I’m work­ing on the plan to make sure the rest of my […]

Benoit Lecomte, ’11 Master of Architecture

When did you think you could do some­thing as epic as swim the Atlantic Ocean? I was fol­low­ing the progress of a French rower who was row­ing across the Atlantic. I real­ized that I was swim­ming faster than he was row­ing and thought it was some­thing I could do. I was already swim­ming so much, and I felt like it was a nat­ural pro­gres­sion. What […]

Aaron Resendez, Student Congress President

Why seek such a demand­ing stu­dent posi­tion? I wanted to make a dif­fer­ence and be able to con­nect with stu­dents. I remem­ber com­ing to fresh­man ori­en­ta­tion. The Stu­dent Con­gress pres­i­dent wore a suit, and I didn’t want to go up and talk to him. So dur­ing ori­en­ta­tion this year, I wore a Polo shirt and khakis, and I talked to a lot of stu­dents. I […]

Vivian Walker, Social Work Graduate Student

You recently served a White House intern­ship. Where did you work? I was in the Agency Liai­son Depart­ment of the Office of Pres­i­den­tial Cor­re­spon­dence. The office receives about 65,000 let­ters a week and some­thing like 100,000 e-mails a day. Some are requests for con­grat­u­la­tory mes­sages to Eagle Scouts or new­ly­weds, but oth­ers are more seri­ous. My depart­ment specif­i­cally dealt with let­ters that could be char­ac­ter­ized as […]