Pacific University

And so I continued to small farm, uh, c- and started, uh, taking on teaching roles for various community colleges, um, and other institutions.

Um, eventually, I s- I landed a job as a farm educator at Pacific University in 2013, and it, it was there that, uh, around the same time I had some, some, uh, you know...

I started to branch out a little bit and do some consulting 'cause I was being approached by, um, other folks in the Pacific Northwest that had heard about my work.

And, um, so I was approached by a few clients, and through that they started throwing pr- some significant challenges at, uh, that I had didn't really have any, uh, tools to deal with back then.

What was that like for your college experience as well?

So I spent two and a half years at Pacific University, which is in the hometown that I grew up in.

And here...

I was coached by Tim Boyce, who is like a family friend who now coaches at University of Hawaii.

He spends a lot of time with us on the third floor working with film and things, and he was somebody that he was really excited about.

Pacific, D3 transfer out of Pacific University coming out of the West Coast.

He's played some college football.

Yeah, Bison Vasquez got the start at nickel in place of Christian Turner, who I knew was going to be a game-time decision.

it Ann Arbor?

No, it was actually Pacific University in Oregon, which I loved because I had been on a bike trip once down the whole Oregon coast from Washington to California.

And I was like, this city is amazing.

I love it.

So today, we're going to talk about why that is on this special episode of the Batteries Included podcast.

I'm Dominic Chione, and I am joined today by Matthew Hunsinger, a social psychologist at Pacific University in Beaverton, Oregon, along with Lacey, better known to the world as Miss Go Electric.

She has 15 years of experience in the automotive sector and currently runs the Miss Go Electric Media Empire.

We also have Nikki Stern.

Kera is a Portland native with years of physical therapy experience and advanced training in pelvic rehabilitation, chronic pain management and orthopedic care.

She earned her undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Oregon State and her doctorate magna cum laude from Pacific University.

That's quite the feat.

She continued her training through Herman and Wallace, the McKinsey Institute and the Neuro Orthopedic Institute for Chronic Pain.

And we were very collaborative, helping each other through the dissertation process.

She teaches at Pacific University outside of Portland, Oregon.

At some point with the engaged philosophy work, we were starting to be like, well, we should be sharing this, you know, we should be publishing, we should be talking about it.

And so that's where I found my niche that I could be writing about things that I was doing.

The Opening was eligibility.

Two Notre Dame linemen, Ralph Dimmick and George Philbrook, had played at first at Pacific University in Oregon and then three seasons at Whitman College in Washington before two more at Notre Dame.

Seven seasons of collegiate athletics.

In 1910, the rules were a patchwork and nobody fully agreed on them.

Let me just say that we're gonna talk about your new memoir, Boys Without Fathers, but we first talked on my podcast and then everything changed about your upbringing and we were talking about your novel, The East End.

And prior to that, I have to share that you and I met via our MFA program at Pacific University virtually.

You posted very generously, and this is really important for writing community, everyone, You posted on the Facebook group for Pacific University MFA students, if I've got this right, that you'd had some success.

Your novel was about to come out or it was out and you would like to pay forward the good luck and everything that had happened for you with the book.

If anyone wanted advice or input or would like a query letter written for them, you were volunteering to do that.

So, I mean, it started a long, long time ago.

The first things I published were some short stories and poems in the 2000s.

When I started at Pacific University's MFA, that was from 2009 to 2012.