On the 18th of June I worked in the morning on a speech for rotary. I was invited to speak to the Fayetteville Rotary Club on the next day at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, so I wanted to make sure to be thoughtful about the remarks I shared with them.

At 11:00 a.m. I met with Prof. Flaccus and I want to say a special thanks here to Prof. Flaccus. She has worked tirelessly around the plants and the courtyard garden. The beautiful plants that you see in the courtyard are her work, along with Dr. Michael Hollomon and Prof. Ann Killenbeck. They are in charge of both designing and then overseeing the work of planting those and making sure that we have the very best plants in to honor the life and legacy of Dean Richard Atkinson. She and I had a meeting about some plants we had received that were not very successful and also about our ivy in the front and what we might do to both fill in the empty spaces there and the ivy that was receiving too much sun along the driveway that leads up to the entrance to the courtyard. That was a great meeting. I got the chance to walk around with her and visit with her around the various plantings and what was left to be done. And thanks to her for her very diligent work (all her own time and in many cases her donations) to fill in spots in the garden and to try new plants to make sure they would be successful. The garden is coming together very, very nicely and I think those of you who are not in the area will be very, very pleased with her work when you see it.

That afternoon I had lunch with Dr. Margaret Clark who retired from the College of Education and is a Sorority Sister with whom I’ve traveled abroad. We ate at Joe’s Bistro, which is in the Fiesta Square Shopping Center. I have to say foodies, this is not particularly highly recommended on my list of places to eat. The food was sort of adequate, but not particularly interesting. Go try it and see what you think.

After lunch with Dr. Clark, I came back and met with our Director of Career Services, Susan Schell. She talked about her plans for improving the Office of Career Services’ programs during the coming year. She will be creating an advisory committee of students to work with her around those efforts and has some ideas about bringing in smaller law firms and also programming around career opportunities that are available. Stay tuned for those new programs and services.