Vince Bertram is a native of New Castle, Indiana. He earned four degrees at Ball State University, including a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in educational administration.
After graduating from Ball State, Vince spent 20 years in education as a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent. Today, he serves as President & CEO of Project Lead The Way (PLTW), an Indianapolis-based nonprofit organization that provides a transformative learning experience for PreK-12 students and teachers across the country.
In this episode, Vince talks about his upbringing, what inspired him to become a teacher and a coach, and his memories of working with legendary coaches John Wooden and Rick Majerus.
Vince describes some of the influential educators he met as a student at Ball State and the moment he knew he was ready to leave his successful career as a school administrator to lead PLTW.
Vince also shares his thoughts about Ball State’s innovative partnership with Muncie Community Schools and weighs in on how our country might address inequities in our educational system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can learn more about Project Lead The Way at www.pltw.org. You can follow Vince on Twitter at @vincebertram and President Mearns at @PresidentMearns.
If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show.
Vince Bertram is a native of New Castle, Indiana. He earned four degrees at Ball State University, including a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in educational administration.
After graduating from Ball State, Vince spent 20 years in education as a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent. Today, he serves as President & CEO of Project Lead The Way (PLTW), an Indianapolis-based nonprofit organization that provides a transformative learning experience for PreK-12 students and teachers across the country.
In this episode, Vince talks about his upbringing, what inspired him to become a teacher and a coach, and his memories of working with legendary coaches John Wooden and Rick Majerus.
Vince describes some of the influential educators he met as a student at Ball State and the moment he knew he was ready to leave his successful career as a school administrator to lead PLTW.
Vince also shares his thoughts about Ball State’s innovative partnership with Muncie Community Schools and weighs in on how our country might address inequities in our educational system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can learn more about Project Lead The Way at www.pltw.org. You can follow Vince on Twitter at @vincebertram and President Mearns at @PresidentMearns.
If you enjoy this episode, please leave a review to support the show.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Today my first guest is Vince Bertram.
Vince is a native of New Castle, Indiana. He earned four degrees at Ball State University, including a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in educational administration.
After graduating from Ball State, Vince pursued an extraordinary career. He spent 20 years in education as a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent in Evansville, Indiana. And he now serves as the CEO of Project Lead the Way. Project Lead the Way is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and it provides innovative educational programs to schools all across the United States.
And we’re going to talk about the future of education in America. And since Vince is from New Castle, Indiana, we also have to talk a little bit about basketball. Vince played basketball, he was a graduate assistant coach here at ball state, and he coached high school basketball. So, Vince, welcome and thank you for joining me.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Well, thank you. It’s an honor to be with you. And I’m really excited about the opportunity to have this discussion.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Maybe before we talk about your career, and as I said, it’s been a varied and extraordinary career, let’s talk about your own education.
When you were a student, whether in elementary school, middle school, high school, were there any teachers who had a memorable experience on you personally and professionally? And if there were, who were they and what was that influence.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
As I think back over time, just the challenges of many children growing up—my parents separated when I was young. Just thinking about the struggles of my mom, working multiple jobs just trying to make ends meet. Both my parents dropped out of high school. So, education wasn’t viewed as highly consequential in my family. But it was my teachers who did inspire me, and people who believed in me. Perhaps at times I didn’t deserve it and at other times, I didn’t believe in myself. I remember my high school principal, Phil Gardner. He called me into his office one day, uninvited.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
That’s the way most principals do it. They often come with an invitation that’s unexpected.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
It was this day that I received something very different from him. It wasn’t criticism. It wasn’t punishment. But he looked at me, grabbed me by the shoulders, said, you may give up on yourself, but I will never give up on you. It was a turning point for me. One, it really motivated me. But more importantly, I started to think about, how can you do that for a lot of kids. How can you be that inspiration, that belief, in their future and their promise when they can’t see it themselves.
That really lead me down a path in education. Now I look back on those experiences and I’m forever grateful for those who influenced my life at a very early age. Also, I don’t want to dismiss or neglect the importance of a community. Not just those in a school, but those outside of it who really embraced me in ways that, again, I was undeserving. But it was that outreach. They didn’t have any expectation of a return. They just wanted to make a difference to people.
As we get older, we reflect on why people do that. What it comes down to is they just want to help people. And that’s what I wanted to do with my career. It’s because of that influence and support and foundation that has allowed me to accomplish the things I wanted to do.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Do you think the principal had somehow identified you as special, with special potential? Or do you think this was something he did with many other kids in your highs school?
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Perhaps at the time I wanted to think he saw something in me. But I think great educators figure out how to meet the needs of all kids. They identity particular talents and understanding that it may not be in mathematics or discipline, rather something different. How do they expose students to see the world of possibilities and inspire students … I think that’s what great educators do. And I think great educators make every student feel they are the only student in the classroom.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
He certainly planted a seed that has grown into something extraordinary. But after you graduated from high school, you enrolled here at Ball State. Why did you choose this university—and the same question, were there any professors or staff members here who had a particularly memorable influence on you?
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Ball State has long had a great reputation in training teachers. I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and I wanted to coach. And there’s no better place than Ball State to fulfill that aspiration and dream. So, it really wasn’t a matter of multiple choices. It really came down to I wanted to be a teacher and I wanted to be trained at Ball State.
I always looked, when I was advancing, getting a masters or my specialist or doctorate, I looked at other places and kept coming back to Ball State. Why would you go anywhere else to study education? And I feel very, very good about those decisions.
I think there are a lot of people throughout that journey who influenced me in memorable ways—different ways. I think about former Dean Roy Weaver, an extraordinary leader and friend. He was an innovator …the way he was always thinking about way we need to think differently about education. Professor Jay Thompson. I remember Jayne Beilke, who was just an outstanding teacher. I remember having conversation with her about gender equity in one of my classes, and I wrote a paper about Title IX. And the conversations we had, it wasn’t, “here is the feedback, here’s the paper.” It was, let’s talk about this and deepen our thinking. I appreciated that in a way…and I’ve expressed that to her as well. That was one of those stand-out moments for me. And you know, Bill Sharp, who passed away a few years ago, chair of my doctoral committee. Terry Wiedmer and former Dean John Jacobson. And then you think about people like Tom Kinghorn, who just had a tremendous legacy on Ball State University and who influenced students in a way that perhaps he didn’t even see at times. It’s those types of people who have built a great foundation for the university and influenced me. And candidly, President Mearns, I’m just grateful we have extraordinary leadership of the university now that can continue to build on that legacy and take us into the future. We’re grateful that you’re at the university.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, you’re kind. I’m thinking about that experience of yours with the professor, and one of the things that I share when I’m talking to prospective students or legislators is that our faculty view themselves as learning partners. And that’s what you described with that professor. Not just, here’s the feedback, but let’s talk about this together. Because we can both learn from each other.
But in that last response, you talked about being a coach. Of course, you were a basketball player, and so I wanted to take just a few minutes to talk about some coaches—whether, when you were a player, there were any coaches who had an influence, and then I’m going to ask …I know you had some up close and personal moments with a couple of pretty famous coaches.
Why don’t we talk first about some coaches who influenced you and then we’ll talk about Coach Wooden and Coach Majerus?
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Yeah, when I was considering coaching, I tried to be a student of the game, and just learning from everyone. Observing how people interacted with the players. There were times I found that emulating certain behaviors were not necessarily the direction for positive success, right? And I learned a lot from those who I thought were doing a great job and others who I questioned. I learned a lot, not just about the Xs and Os but the mental aspects of the game. The strategy around how to prepare and how to go into competition. I’ve also found that so much of that has been the foundation for the work we do today. And so, I appreciate that. But there are a lot of coaches and others, I really spent a lot of time not just analyzing but trying to learn from. And I was very fortunate. You know, I said in an earlier statement, having people enter your life who perhaps you didn’t deserve at all, and I found the same with coaching. I just found there were relationships I had that I step back and I’m really in awe of them. Not just their presence and what they stood for, but the fact they embraced me in the way they did. Those are things you’ll never forget and always be grateful for.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
One of the things, having been an athlete myself, the best coaches have some kind of instinct to know you as an athlete. When you need a pat on the back, and when maybe they need to tell you, in pretty direct, and perhaps with Coach Majerus, some colorful language, that you disappointed them.
You got to know a little bit about Coach Wooden, you were a grad assistant with Coach Majerus. Why don’t you tell us something about Coach Majerus? He’s certainly, perhaps, one of the more colorful figures that have ever walked the sideline at Ball State.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Yeah, it was interesting, but let’s take a step back. When I was still in high school, I met Kent Benson. Kent was a star at Indiana University in the 1970s, a first-round draft pick for the Milwaukee Bucks, and he was from New Castle, Indiana. And I met him while I was in high school. Late in high school, he had asked me to work his Fellowship Christian Athlete basketball camp and I did, in New Castle. Then I went to Bradenton, Florida, with him to help run his camp there. And he had some connections, and he said, “Do you want to learn and continue to learn how to run camps. And I said yes, and he said he was going to hook me up with a couple. And it just so happened the first one was with John Wooden. He had obviously retired at the time, but with his legacy, I was just in awe. So, I show up in California, Sherman Oaks, and I’m walking across the parking lot, I’d just gotten off the bus, had a backpack on, and I see a figure walking out of one of the building. As I got closer, I realized who it was. Coach Wooden walked up to me and said ‘You must be the young man from Indiana, I’ve been waiting for you.’ At the time, I didn’t realize he was from Indiana. And we just built a strong bond. It was my second year, I believe, working his camp. I said Sherman Oaks, sorry it was Thousand Oaks Community College. And one day at dinner, he looked at me and said, ‘Young man, I’ve been thinking about this, and if you really want to learn the game of basketball, you need to study Rick Majerus.
And I was kind of embarrassed to say, ‘Who was Rick Majerus?’ He was watching games and he was really impressed with Coach Majerus. I goth on the phone that evening and called the basketball office at Marquette, and just said, ‘Coach Wooden said I needed to study you and is there any chance I could come work your camp? And I got a call back from Coach Majerus and he said ‘Yes, when can you be here?’
A year later, he left Marquette, and went to the Milwaukee Bucks as an assistant coach, and then I was walking across campus, and picked up the Daily News, and there on the front page: ‘Majerus: Ball State Basketball Coach.’ So, I had the good fortune of meeting him a couple years before that, engaging with him at summer basketball camps. He was just a remarkable human being. There were some things people didn’t know about Coach Majerus. He had tremendous empathy for people in need. Here I am, 19 years old, and him embracing me in that way. It really set off a career. And then, meeting Dick Hunsaker, and the 1989-90 season, I had the chance to join the coaching staff there. And then, to be a part of the Sweet 16 run, that was just a remarkable experience. Those types of experiences continue to influence me in many ways.
Coach Majerus, he was an incredibly colorful guy. I remember one story, he had come out, and he was late for an engagement at the Flamingo Restaurant in Muncie.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
I have not been, it was not here when I arrived, but I understand from Muncie natives it was quite the hangout.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Yeah, that and The Ribcage. You had both those places. And obviously, he could eat. And eat a lot. But we go into The Flamingo, and I don’t recall the group that was there. But we were late, and he gets up on stage, and he blames me for being late, and I had nothing to do with it, but I got him there. But of course, you never say that. ‘Yes, Coach, it’s all on me, sorry about that.’ He gets up, and I’m just paraphrasing, but he said, ‘Listen, we just came off one of the best seasons in Ball State history, and really national history … the team was 29-3, we had a nice run in the tournament. And this group, I’d say the average age was middle to late eighties, and the room was full to hear him, and he looked across the room and said, ‘The reality is, we’re never going to see another year like this … these are like, once in a lifetime things. But, by the looks of most of you guys, if we don’t do it in the next two or three years, you’ll never see it.’ And you had these men just rolling in the aisles. He had that way of, one, he was self-deprecating. He was marvelous with that, putting people at ease. But he could say things to people, and they received it in a way that was really good. And he was able to build those kinds of relationships in the community and people loved it. Anyway, that was a great experience. Working for Dick Hunsaker, who was just an amazing, amazing coach and strategist. I remember something from Coach Hunsaker, we were in practice one day, we had a player he asked me to work on his free throw shooting with him. I get up there, and I’m watching him, and he hits three or four shots in a row. And then he missed one. So, I stop him, and I go correct him on the shot, go back, and hit three or four in a row, missed again, and I go back. Finally, Coach Hunsaker called me over and said, ‘Hey Vince, come here,’ and he put his arm around me and he said, ‘Sometimes, they just miss.’
And it really stuck with me, that people just make mistakes. People are going to miss. And you don’t have to correct every error that people make. They learn and they self-correct. Those are things that you learn through that experience that serve you well for a lifetime.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Yeah, that coaching of, knowing when to pat you on the back, and when a mistake is the product of not paying attention or a lack of effort. So, let’s move from basketball now to teaching.
You were a teacher, and then you were a successful administrator. Why did you decide to leave the classroom to become a principal and then a superintendent?
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Yeah … there are these defining moments that … practice the epiphany of certain things that happen. I’ll give you one example, when I was coaching. I was at Angola High School, and we ended up having lots of success, and the program was doing well. And we had won a conference championship and I was watching the players on the ladder, cutting down the nets. And I sat down, watching them, being very happy for them, but realizing that it really wasn’t the game of basketball I was in love with. It was meeting the needs of students and helping them grow. It really started me thinking, ‘Is this the limit, right?’ Is this what we can do, having a team of 12? Or even a classroom, several classrooms, 150 students? Or is there more? And I worked for a principal who was Indiana’s Principal of the Year, a Ball State alum, former distinguished alum of the year, Rex Bolinger. And Rex was an amazing school administrator, and he was my principal. And we sat down one Sunday evening, which we did on a regular basis, and he really started challenging, ‘Is this it for you? Are you going to end your career as a basketball coach, or is there something more?’
And it was after that that I started this journey in school leadership. And I went back to Ball State to get my administrative license, and superintendent license, and then doctorate. So, every move I’ve made has been, in my own mind, to extend that reach. Not just to get to a better position, but to be in a position to make a difference for more students. And I think about that … being a high school principal, getting to a large urban high school as a principal, and then Indiana’s third largest school district, to making the move to Project Lead the Way, where I have access to 56 million students across this country.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
So yeah, tell us about Project Lead the Way. I suspect some of the folks who are listening today aren’t familiar with the organization. So, tell us a little bit about its fundamental mission and what its key strategies are. As you say, Rex it sounds like, saw something in you about how you could scale this up now to a national level.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Yeah, you know, it was interesting, and I remember, not in a boastful way, I was interviewing for the position at PLTW and I was superintendent and things were going well, I think. I really loved Evansville and the people there and the schools. And during the interview, the one board member asked me, toward the end of the interview … I thought everything had gone very well, and I had been contacted by a search firm about the job. And he said, ‘Before we leave, there’s this one thing I’m having a difficult time with. He said, you’re running one of the largest school districts in America, you have a 200 plus mission dollar budget, over thirty three hundred employees, and you want to come run a nonprofit organization out of the state of New York with an eight and a half million dollar budget and 30 people. Why do you want to do that?
And I remember perhaps, just a moment of boldness, I said, ‘Well frankly, if those are your goals to be an eight and half million-dollar organization with 30 people in upstate New York, I have absolutely no interest in doing this. But if we can figure out a way to scale this, and enrich the lives of millions of students, I’m all in. And that’s really where we started. How do we think about our work differently? Not as an education program … in fact, we don’t need more education programs. What we need are more experiences that help students understand what the possibilities are for careers and lifetime fulfillment.
So, what we do, we have pathways in engineering, biomedical and computer science. And in those pathways, we start as early as preschool through grade 12, it’s all activity problem and project based. So what we want students to learn to do is to apply learning. So, as they learn engineering, how do you apply math and science? So, we want to bring those subjects relevancy. We want students to understand in this country, you don’t learn math because you need to take a test and you need to do well on it. It’s just not very inspiring for our students. We are not going to test our children to excellence, we have to inspire them. We have to help them understand what they’re learning really matter, and then we need to teach them what matters.
And we have found it’s not just necessarily on content knowledge, but on skill development–the ability to problem solve, to think critically, to communicate, to collaborate, ethical reasoning. All these skills that we try to develop at an early age, and then we bring a lot of components of career learning to this.
Not that we’re asking students to pick careers, we’re asking them to understand the careers that are possible and the skills necessary to pursue those pathways.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And it’s that exposure that, as you say, moves them from studying to pass a test to learning to do something significant after they pass the test.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Exactly. It’s that relevancy, right? That really drives student interest. Think about, and I give this example often when we’re thinking of how we inspire students. I watch students play Fortnite, and they will sit in front of a screen for hours, strategizing, navigating, getting blown up and going right back at it. Learning from what just happened from a moment of failure and building on that to avoid it again. But in education, we don’t do that with them. We give them a quiz, and we grade it, and then we just calculate the number of points at the end of a class and tell them what a grade is. We penalize them for where they started and not where they end, But in Fortnite, you become an expert if you get to the end. You win, no one goes back and tells you, well, it took you 43 attempts versus this person. So, I think that’s what we are trying to create in the classroom. Students can build on learning. They learn to fail. They learn to experiment and have confidence to do that. And then we want to help them create pathways to what those careers look like, whether it’s going to Ball State university, other four-year institutions, or community college, technical colleges…or some, they go directly into the workforce. And the other thing we have really found incredibly valuable for students, regardless of the pathway, four years in college or two years, does not define the next four years. It gives you a great foundation, but you have to have a growth mindset. You have to continue to learn, otherwise you will become irrelevant.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And you’re taking these principles, and bringing these principles, into thousands of schools all across the country. But you’re also doing it right here in Muncie, Indiana, as part of our partnership with the Muncie Community Schools. Talk to us a little bit about how on the ground here, in our partnership with Muncie Community Schools, Project Lead the Way is helping us achieve our ambitious goals.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Yeah, I think there were two things with this MCS and Ball State partnership that were really significant. One is, I believe that, on a broad level, you made one of the courageous moves I’ve seen from a university president. You did something that most would observe you didn’t have to do. But you did it. And I do believe you needed to. And, you made that step, I think to create this kind of partnership, to see this as part of a broader community, not as institutions operating separately. And just for the growth of Muncie, the preservation of the community this was absolutely essential. It was a bold move; it was the right move. Just that governance structure I think is something that is being viewed all over the country and I think it will be outstanding. Another great move that I think was made as hiring Le Ann Kwiatkowski as CEO. She’s a great leader. So, you put all that together, and then we wanted to be a part of this. And how we can continue to expand these kinds of experiences from pre-K to 12, to train teachers, and ensure that we are working collaboratively to help students succeed. We want students to come out of Muncie Community Schools and aspire to have great, enduring careers. And those pathways are set for them. And I’m really excited to continue to work together in how we build on this partnership.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And well, we appreciate your role, and your colleagues working with us. As you said, taking on this responsibility was both in our institutional interest but really it was a calling. It was driven by our commitment to those values of Beneficence and our responsibility to serve people who have done so much for us here at the university.
In our final few minutes, I want to talk then about the future of education. Certainly, as we record this, we are still in the pandemic. I believe we are capable of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And I want to talk about what happens when we get to the end of the tunnel. We know that many children, in cities and states all across our country, will have been set back … they will have lost ground during the pandemic. Any thoughts on how we, in this community, or in our state, or in our country—what do we need to do to help those children catch up?
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
It’s a great question. And there are a number of things. But here’s what has struck me. In all the conversations we’re hearing across the country, I hear people say, ‘Well, we need to ramp up summer school. I’m just questioning why is time as zero-sum game in this? Why is August to May the bookends? We have missed an incredible amount of learning time because of a global pandemic. I don’t think we need to look at this as we just lost this time. We just need to extend it. So why do we believe the school year has to start in August and end in May? If we need to start the school year in February, then start it in February. Or if we need to say, we just lost the year and we’re going to come back in August and you’re back in fourth grade. Why do I believe that word is we’ve missed and now you’re a fifth grader and now you don’t have the skills you need to perform. Then we’re going to have a lot of loss. I just think we’ve lost a lot of valuable time, but I don’t think it’s lost forever. I think we can make it up.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And for those learners, using that analogy earlier about playing the video game, they don’t care what month it is or even what day of the week it is. If they are inspired to learn and experiment and learn from their failures, they’ll do it seven days a week.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
They will. I think we’re making a mistake if we say, ‘Well we’re going to make up all this learning time in the summer, let’s cancel summer break.’ Maybe we should, but I don’t think we make it up. And so, we just need to be intellectually honest with ourselves and say this is not the same. And schools by and large were not prepared to deliver this kind of instruction for students across the country. The inequities have been exacerbated across the country. And fine. This is not an indictment on K-12. There are a lot of people not prepared for a global pandemic, from government to K-12 schools to a lot of people in higher ed. My guess is, at a university level, if students had to miss certain amount of time because of COVID, you don’t just say, hey we’ll forgive that, and you can start next year, and we’ll give you all the credits you missed. You still take the classes, you still advance. You might give them different opportunities to accelerate. They might take advantage of those opportunities. I think from my standpoint, that’s one of the things we need to reconsider in all of this. If you think about the question prior to COVID around advancement of students and academic advancement … well you say, they need to be reading by third grade and many states have laws that don’t allow them to progress unless they’re on reading level and so forth…but then we’re going to take a global pandemic and let them miss a year and they’re still going to progress? And we’re going to give you a wavier for high school because of COVID? I don’t think that’s wise.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And I believe here in higher education, we need to recognize that for students who are going to arrive on our campuses over these next few years. We need to be even more focused than we are in ensuring that if they’re not quite fully prepared for the entire curriculum, we need to be prepared to provide some transitional support for those students. So, we’re trying to be good partners with the K-12 system to ensure that students, when they arrive on our campus, they’re going to continue to retain and persist and graduate.
So, a couple final questions. You mentioned government leaders. Governor Holcomb just got re-elected to another four-year term. You know Governor Holcomb, who has a connection to Ball State through the First Lady. She has two degrees from Ball State. Let’s assume Governor Holcomb and his wife, Janet, are listening today and you have two or three minutes with his ear. What would you tell him to do? Our state is fortunate, we have some resources to invest in the future. And he has spoken about the importance of using those resources to invest in the future. What would you tell him to do with K-12 education?
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Yeah, several things. First of all, I think very highly of our Governor and First Lady. They are remarkable people, and they believe in education. They believe in teachers. I think all his actions have demonstrated that. So, I feel grateful to know him and to have served on the state board of education, as him being governor. There are four or five things that are really important moving forward. One is just how we give schools flexibility to meet the needs of students. And when I think about charter schools, and the whole purpose of charter schools was to provide that kind of autonomy and flexibility. How can we give it to school leaders? And traditional public schools? The other is to continue to align our accountability system with workforce expectations. Not just getting to some outcome with standardized tests, but rather thinking about the outcomes of students, post-K-12 and post- higher education. And I think we need to really focus on assessing things that really matter for our students. At the end of all this, certainly formative assessments and getting students to stay on track are really important, but we need the kind of assessment that really signal workplace readiness and college readiness. Not just a single measure, and I think that’s going to be really important. I hope we continue to give parents choice on meeting the needs of their students. The last two things I would share with the governor … I want us to keep a really sharp eye on the Muncie Community Schools—Ball State partnership and the governance structure. I am optimistic that this can be a governance structure we may want to expand across the state. I think it’s a great model. And finally, I think we have to stop ignoring the law of supply and demand with respect to teachers. And, you know, we look at shortage areas within education … like how we do we attract more people to this. I don’t believe we’re going to do it by just saying people come with this inspiration of serving children. There are other ways to do that. You can be a pediatrician and serve children. We have to start paying our teachers. I just think it’s an injustice to continue to pay teachers what we pay them and expect that we’re going to dramatically increase demand for teaching. Those are just some areas that I would share with him.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
And we of course, President Biden was recently inaugurated as the president. He has an educator in the White House with him. And one of her first events in the White House, in the first 48 hours, was a virtual event to honor teachers.
So, you are passionate about education, I sense that you are optimistic about the future of education … So if you were actually speaking to a 19-year-old Ball State freshman or 20-year-old Ball State sophomore who was wondering whether she or he should become a teacher, what would you say to that student?
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Great question. There are few careers that you can get to the end of it and look back with amazing pride and fulfillment of how you’ve affected people’s lives. There are also few professions that your legacy is enduring. That people will take the lessons they’ve learned from you and continue to influence other lives in a meaningful way. Just like today, when you asked me the question, ‘Who influenced your life and how did you get where you’re at today?’ It’s about people. No one talks about Algebra 1 being that driver. It’s about people. It’s about teachers. And the opportunity and privilege of teaching our children is something that not many people get. I would encourage anyone to take advantage of that opportunity.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
Well, thank you, Vince. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for joining us today. I certainly enjoyed the conversation, as I always do when I get to spend time with you. You are an example of the enduring legacy of a teacher, that principal who spoke to you many years ago. You make us all very proud to call you a Ball State Cardinal. Thank you very much.
[VINCE BERTRAM]:
Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity and thanks for all you’re doing.
[GEOFF MEARNS]:
I wish you continued, not just success, but professional and personal fulfillment as you continue to serve children all across the United States.
And to you our listeners, thank you also for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the conversation, and I hope that you will come back for another podcast. That you will answer our call to Beneficence. Thank you all very much.