{"id":14334,"date":"2018-04-16T14:27:41","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T21:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=14334"},"modified":"2020-10-14T12:35:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T19:35:45","slug":"another-thank-you-to-dr-kenneth-coale-a-students-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2018\/04\/16\/another-thank-you-to-dr-kenneth-coale-a-students-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Another \u201cThank You\u201d to Dr. Kenneth Coale: A Student\u2019s Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Sharon Hsu<\/h3>\n

Moss Landing has had a series of faculty retirements in the last year, including many who have been a part of the local community for decades. Kenneth Coale has long been synonymous with the lab space, helping students in the shop and forever carrying his coffee mug down the hallway. While we welcome this influx of new blood in the near future, we feel keenly the loss of familiarity and trust. Sharon Hsu, a student in the Vertebrate Ecology lab, wrote this piece to read aloud during Kenneth's retirement party. It echoes a sentiment many of us in the student body feel keenly. - Amanda Heidt<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m really mad at Kenneth.<\/p>\n

Wait, let me explain.<\/p>\n

The first time I met Kenneth, he was shining a laser pointer on giant squid in a plastic tube. I had seen him before, in the hallways, making what I know now are trips to the staff room coffee pot, but I\u2019d never spoken with him before.<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kenneth didn\u2019t even bat an eye and went smoothly into an explanation about how the blue laser could penetrate much further in the liquid while the green (and this is where he nonchalantly took out another laser pointer) did not.<\/p>\n

\"kenneth-coale-1bkhonw\"What I would come to learn is that this interaction summed up so much of what we the students (and let\u2019s be honest\u2026 everyone else as well) love about Kenneth \u2013 his ability to teach and explain, without pushing or judging.<\/p>\n

Months after this first meeting, I found myself in Kenneth\u2019s Chemical Oceanography class. His first announcement in Chemical Oceanography was, \u201cYou\u2019re only going to do as well as you want to in this class.\u201d And this was the most amazing thing anyone has ever said. Because honestly, it\u2019s amazing to have someone who wants to teach you things yet has the patience and belief that you can learn and do on your own accord.\u00a0 I like to think that what Kenneth was implying was, \u201cYou\u2019re only going to do as well as you want to in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not just the academic teaching that we love. It\u2019s also just Kenneth \u2013 how he checks in to make sure we are okay. Because honestly, being okay is difficult sometimes, especially for grad students. Sometimes checking in is easy. Once on a boat trip in the Slough, half of the boat ended up clothed in extra jackets Kenneth had brought along. And once, checking in involved Kenneth single-handedly combating the housing crisis and temporarily adopting homeless students.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, however, checking in is a little more difficult. More than once I have heard Kenneth tell us that the faculty is here to support us and not put us down, and more than once he has offered to listen to students who are feeling lost or down. And whether or not we choose to talk, just to have someone \u2013 and especially someone who could just as easily not have the time - offer to listen, means everything.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0969-e1511984893378-300x197\"And now\u2026. Kenneth is retiring. We are looking for a new faculty chemical oceanographer. Candidates have been chosen, interviewed, and evaluated. As students, we are also asked for our evaluations. And as a student, I really don\u2019t feel qualified to evaluate any candidate\u2019s academic merit. The only thing I can evaluate is how any new faculty member might interact with students. Will they understand the grad student struggle? Will they care? Will they make me feel comfortable talking to them about things I might be struggling with?<\/p>\n

Quite frankly, I\u2019m a little skeptical, which is not to say I can\u2019t be won over. But there it is. I\u2019m mad at Kenneth because he\u2019s leaving. I\u2019m mad that the new students won\u2019t be able to take Chem Oce or shop class with him. I\u2019m mad that we\u2019ll see less of him shining laser pointers at dead squid, and I\u2019m mad that trips in the Slough sampling swirling vortexes will end, along with using calculators to calculate the slope of a line and jeopardy using the loudest metal objects as buzzers. I\u2019m mad there will be one less faculty member that says, \u201cI\u2019m available. You can email me or call me. Here are all my phone numbers.\u201d And I\u2019m mad that no one is going to start off another class saying, \u201cYou\u2019re only going to do as well as you want to in this class.\u201d I\u2019m mad that we may be losing one of the biggest champions of the students.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I\u2019m mad. But mostly, I\u2019m thankful.<\/p>\n

Can the words \u201cthank you\u201d sum up everything we want to say to Kenneth Coale?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think so, but I\u2019m not sure what else we can say.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Kenneth, for your patience.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Kenneth, for your kindness, and your willingness to be a champion of the students.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Kenneth, for keeping an eye out and making sure we are okay.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Kenneth, for teaching us \u2013 about chem oce, but more importantly, about life.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Kenneth, for showing us what we can strive to be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sharon Hsu Moss Landing has had a series of faculty retirements in the last year, including many who have been a part of the local community for decades. Kenneth Coale has long been synonymous with the lab space, helping students in the shop and forever carrying his coffee mug down the hallway. While we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-14334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drop-inblog","tag-chemical-oceanography-lab"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20252,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14334\/revisions\/20252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}