As a new school year begins, JMU Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Tim Miller (’96, ’00M) and Kathryn Hunt (’25), Student Affairs Presidential Engagement Fellow, offer some tips to help students get the most out of their Madison Experience.
Episode Transcript
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Then I also think about your faculty members can be some of the most powerful connections and people in your life.
[Andy Perrine]
Indeed.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And so many students just never engage. They sit in the back row, they come late, they leave early. The faculty at JMU are some of the best I've ever seen, not only at their field, but as humans. And if there's one piece of advice students take from every single class, sit in the first three rows before class starts, introduce yourself.
[Narrator]
Welcome to Being the Change, the official podcast of James Madison University, brought to you by Madison Magazine. Each episode brings you stories of how members of the JMU community combine intellect with action to live lives of purpose and meaning. That's Being the Change.
[Andy Perrine]
What's up JMU? Andy Perrine here. Welcome to Being the Change. This episode is the first in a two-part series about helping students to thrive at JMU. And we've got a very special couple guests with us today. Dr. Tim Miller, who's the Vice President of Student Affairs at JMU. You probably know who he is. If you don't, just dial into some JMU social media and you'll find him. Dr. Miller, welcome.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
[Andy Perrine]
Great. And with him is Kathryn Hunt. Kathryn is a recent JMU alumna. She just graduated last year in 2025 in May. And she's an Engagement Fellow, which is a really cool one-year program that's available to JMU alumni to pick up on leadership skills, learn a little bit more about how the university operates. And she's got the wonderful privilege of tailing Dr. Miller for a year. And she's going to go along this ride with us. Welcome, Kathryn.
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
Hi, thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
[Andy Perrine]
Glad you're here. All right. So this is the beginning of a two-part series. The first part, and this is aimed at helping students, parents who are just beginning their semester at JMU to really get some tips on how to thrive at the university from really who is known as an expert almost nationally. Dr. Miller speaks at conferences all the time. He's quite well known for his grasp on the elements that help students thrive at the university.
But he's also a presence at the university. He's always out and about. He's everywhere.
And this morning, when we were talking earlier, I said that his presence is avuncular, which means like an uncle. So he's like everybody's uncle at the university. Isn't that right?
[Dr. Tim Miller]
I mean, it's a nice thing to be thought of that way is to be thought of as an uncle means a lot. And I always tell people there's nothing more that I want to do than to be at this place and do this role. And it's really, I think it's what I was sort of built and born to do. So I love it. And to be thought of as an uncle feels like a great compliment.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, and he's also a double Duke. He got his undergraduate and master's degree here, went on to get his doctorate, came to us from GW where he was for years. And we were really lucky that he decided to apply his trade back at his alma mater.
So anyway, let's dive right in. So this is a two-part series. The first part we're calling Finding Your Place at JMU.
And there are a whole bunch of dimensions to well-being at a university that Dr. Miller knows like the back of his hand. And I'd love for you to begin spooling this out for our so that they can get a feel for all the different ways that people can find their place, find their people at the university.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, and one of the things that I think about is we talk about health and well-being and talk about being a health promoting campus, and that's really going to guide our work and will guide our students' experience here. So when I think about when a student arrives and Kathryn actually talked about this just earlier today, this process of coming to a brand new place you've never been before, you're going from a very secure, comfortable place that for many of our students they've been in the same place for 18 years, same schools, same family, same environment all around them. They're not coming to a brand new environment.
So it's our job to create that environment so that it can feel welcoming to them. And I don't want to steal your thunder, Kathryn, but I want you to lean into the fear stuff we talked about before. But that can be a really scary experience to come to that.
So we really have to go out of our way to send our students the messages of put yourself out there, engage with lots of things. And we're asking them to find their people and their places. And that's going to be in your residence hall, maybe, maybe in your classroom, maybe in one of the 450 student organizations, maybe in a research lab, all these different places.
But you've got to put yourself in all those places to start. And the thing I want students to think about is for many of them, the last time they made friends was kindergarten. The last time they had to start over like this was when they were four.
And now, 14 years later, they've forgotten how to do that from scratch. And they're doing it in a new place without all the support systems. And that can be scary.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, especially now with some of the technologies that are kind of isolating young people from each other. You really got to puncture that reality.
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, and get off of, you know, I get it. The phone is a good start.
[Andy Perrine]
Sure.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
But it's not the beginning, middle and the end. It might be, you know, oh, I talked to my roommate. Did you?
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Or did you text with your roommate or Snapchat with your roommate? Actual human interaction, person to person, face to face has real value in this time, but also for the rest of their lives. So start with the phone, maybe.
[Andy Perrine]
Yeah.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
But then put it in your pocket and then engage. And that's what we really want to help them sort of identify.
[Andy Perrine]
And what was your experience, Kathryn, when you were a freshman coming here from Stafford?
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
Yeah. You know, coming into college, I was honestly someone who had only really I've been a dancer my whole life. That was really the only thing that really got me involved.
And I was super nervous coming into JMU. I was actually a transfer student. So I was coming in my sophomore year.
So already I kind of felt a little out of place. I was like, I don't know if I'm going to fit in here.
[Andy Perrine]
At least not be in pace with everybody.
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
Yeah. And the only person I really knew here was my roommate. And because we were from the same hometown and it was just it was comfortable to roommate with someone there. But, you know, as she was kind of stepping out of her shell and joining new things, joining a sorority, getting involved in different organizations, I was like, I really need to put myself out there in some way.
But of course, what comes along with that, like you were talking about, Tim, was fear. It can be really scary to, you know, being in a new environment and trying to get involved. But JMU just makes it so easy to and comfortable for people who are living in that fear to just like go out there and join organizations or go study abroad, join a club.
There's so many opportunities here to be able to get yourself out there and find, you know, where you feel like home and where you feel like you can fit in and belong.
[Andy Perrine]
And you found your people with the dance club, right?
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
Yeah. I was a part of a dance club here. That was the first club I joined.
And after a year, I wanted to get involved even more and meet even more people. So I joined a sorority and I had a great time there. I was in Alpha Sigma Tau and I met so many people doing that.
And through that was how I eventually ended up studying abroad. And I did a two week course. I went to Spain and I went to Czech Republic and it was amazing.
Yeah. And I met so many people there too. Just like Tim was saying earlier, putting yourself in so many different places, that's key.
I mean, that's key to really feeling like you're involved here and building a community.
[Andy Perrine]
And studying abroad in countries where you don't speak the language, once you figure out your way around and you don't get on the wrong bus, you feel like, I can do anything.
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. It definitely was a big confidence booster in that way. It made me feel really comfortable just being able to put myself in new environments and things like that, for sure.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And if I can jump in, one of the things I think is really important from what Kathryn's saying is that students seem to think that if it doesn't happen the first semester, it's not going to happen. And it's just not true. It's not an accurate reflection of what life will be.
I remember for me, the thing that one of the most defining experiences of my JMU time was actually coaching women's club soccer here. I got into that my junior and senior year when I sort of thought, oh, I'm done. I've done all the things I'm doing.
I'm involved in the things I'm involved in. And then that opportunity with my best friend, Stu, came along and it's like suddenly most of my time was spent doing that. The other thing I thought was interesting is I learned and connected the most also through jobs.
I worked my whole way through. I was an RA for a year. I worked for catering for three years and I did summer conferencing every single summer.
Those were also where I made lots of connections in community. So just realizing that lots of different things can be the way you connect and you've got to be open to them all the way through graduation because you never know. When did you study abroad, Kathryn?
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
I studied abroad my junior year over the summer.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Right. So that allowed you to have, you were here a couple of years, then you did it and you probably made friends there that you're as close with, if not closer than other people, but it was two years in. Those, you never know when that connection and that moment's going to happen.
[Andy Perrine]
We'll be right back.
[Commercial Break]
Eight time Grammy nominated comedian, actor, writer, producer, two-time New York Times bestselling author, three times Emmy-winning performer and multi-platinum recording artist. The comedic mind responsible for the Hulu special, The Skinny, Jim Gaffigan, will be making a stop here in Harrisonburg as part of his Everything Is Wonderful tour. Join us September 26th at 8 p.m. in the Atlantic Union Bank Center. Give them a Duke's welcome. Doors open at 7. Free parking will be available in the Ballard parking deck.
For more information, visit AtlanticUnionBankCenter.com.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, and Kathryn is confident and outgoing. And so, you know, there are a lot of kids who show up who don't have those abilities and large organizations oftentimes overvalue extroverts over introverts. What are some of your suggestions for students who show up that don't naturally have that skill?
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, one, I always recommend the book Quiet. I didn't know you were going to go down this road, but this is an amazing book. It's about how introverts can rule the world, essentially.
And as actually might surprise you, I'm actually an introvert. When I've taken the test, I'm an introvert, just barely, but I am. So I'm pretty uncomfortable in a lot of those spaces myself.
And I remember for me, I got thrown off because I actually came here on crutches as a freshman. I had torn my ACL senior year, came here, and I thought a marching band was going to be how I was going to get my community, because that's what I did. I actually came here as a tuba major, and I was going to be in the MRDs, but I couldn't.
So my one planned way to build community disappeared three months before I got here.
[Andy Perrine]
And also, you're forever going to be that guy on crutches.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Correct.
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Yeah. And then suddenly, first night, how do I go to a dining hall and pick up a tray on crutches? So I had to rely on people right away. So it was almost my own version of already being introverted, already being a little scared, not sure if this was the right idea, because I could have taken a semester and waited.
But as I think about students, just find that first person. If you're feeling overwhelmed, find that person, lean into them for a little bit, and then you'll slowly build those new people. It also is harder, right?
I mean, this is the first events you do, student org night, which can feel overwhelming, 7,000 people on the Atlantic Union Bank Center. And then you go to the play fair, which you need to go to, but it's a massive, like, all first-year students are all in Bridgeport Stadium running around. That can feel overwhelming.
Find that one friend, find someone that you can feel good with, and then go to those things. There's also lots of events we do that are a little bit more low-key. So if you're like, God, that was a lot, let me recharge.
So go recharge, but then go to the next smaller event. But I always want students to remember that you get one shot at orientation, one shot at weeks of welcome, one shot at those beginning things. So go to all of them, even the ones you're like, oh my gosh, this is really overwhelming.
Tell your frog, hey, I'm kind of overwhelmed by this event. Can you help me feel more comfortable? They'll get that.
[Andy Perrine]
Yeah, and they're trained to get that.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Right, right. And they're just other normal human people, many of them who are also introverts who are like, I know this is a really overwhelming event, but I've got you.
[Andy Perrine]
And for our listeners who don't know what frogs are.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
So the first-year orientation guides is a group of several hundred current students who volunteer to come back and serve the new students coming in and help them get used to this place and get used to this experience over the first few weeks of the semester.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, you know, I talked to a lot of parents and a lot of parents who have multiple college students who have gone, some kids go elsewhere and then one of their students come here and they're blown away by the frogs when, I mean, just on move-in day, they can't believe the operation because everything is taken care of.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, and they're just, I mean, you have these students who have, you know, not given up, but invested their time and their lives in this new class and their families. And that just feels strange, but it's such a JMU thing. You know, we talk about holding the door and holding doors as a thing.
I know we talk about the doors, but it's really a mindset that we're here to be of support, period. And that's what this community does for you in every step of the way as you go through the JMU experience. And then after, I mean, I think it was, you talked about being anywhere else in the world wearing JMU things.
When someone says, Go Dukes to you in another country or on a trail, that's holding the door too. That's saying you and I are from a place that we have something in common. I have no idea who you are, but we share a common thread that matters.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, you know, there's, as you said, 450 student orgs. You know, Kathryn showed up and she was already a dancer, so she knew what she wanted to connect with. What about students who might not have, you know, an interest that is that consuming?
I mean, there's lots, I mean, there's the Lego club. I mean, there's things that, all kinds of clubs that students can get involved with.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, and the cool thing is, and I often use the Lego club as an example, I wondered why we didn't have one. And as an adult fan of Lego, as we're called, AFOLs, as we're called.
[Andy Perrine]
I didn't know there was an acronym.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
AFOLs. I put a note out because I saw a bunch of students moving in on move-in day with a bunch of Lego stuff that they were putting in their rooms. And I put a post out.
I'm like, why don't we have a Lego club? Wouldn't anyone want to do that? And then students reached out and said, oh my gosh, if you do that, I'm in.
I'm like, well, you have to do it. And I'm in.
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And so they reached out and they created a Lego club.
[Andy Perrine]
That's cool.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
So that's the other thing is we've got to 450 because students didn't see what they wanted and created it.
And our team in student life has done an amazing job creating systems that are easy to go through and they give you templates and everything. So create your own group. Talking sports is another good example.
There's a group of students who were like, I love sports, but I don't really love playing sports all that much, but I love watching it, learning about it, talking about it.
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
So they created a group called Talking Sports.
[Andy Perrine]
Cool.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And they meet every week on Wednesday night and it's a great group. And I'm their advisor and I get to sit with them and I never know what they know.
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
But they're talking about the most obscure data from 1984 NBA finals. And I'm like, I don't even know who was in those. And they know who scored the most in that game.
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
But that's their community. And so that's the thing that's great is that they can create these things.
I mean, we don't have one dance club.
[Andy Perrine]
Sure.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
We have multiple dance clubs.
They have different styles. They have different approaches. They have different members.
And that's the value of this is that students can find or create one of their places that will be where they're going to be here on campus.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, and describe for our listeners, you know, we're an educational institution. So the academic side of the house is, you know, really the primary function. But student affairs is a big division and personal development and academic assistance is really what the division that you run is all about. How important is personal development in support of academic development?
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, it's all learning.
[Andy Perrine]
Yeah.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
You know, one of our pillars is learning. And we want students to learn what they learn in the classroom, learn about themselves, learn about their future, learn about their lives.
You know, I mean, Kathryn might have some thoughts on like her own learning outside the classroom, but it is an integral to what you get out of this place.
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
If not, you would just sit in your room at home in Stafford and take online classes for four years. There's a reason why you spend all these other hours every single week doing everything else. And that's intentional.
Like we have a curriculum in student affairs that we call the curricular approach that helps you learn these things you need to know.
[Andy Perrine]
Sure.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
But also how do you apply what's in the classroom?
That's great. I'm taking a physics class and I'm learning these things. But how does that apply outside of that class?
We're hoping that you'll do that. So then when you go and do community service outside of JMU, maybe there's a thing where you apply a classroom thing. That's what we think happens.
Service learning through the community engagement volunteer center is a way students take their academic learning and apply it in a real world setting. And that's what we want them to do is learn not only about themselves, but learn to apply what they're learning in the classroom.
[Andy Perrine]
Can you give us an example, Kathryn, of when you did that?
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
I mean, yeah, I feel like there's so many valuable skills that you learn just from doing things other than the academics that you learn through doing your school work and things like that. But like Tim was saying, you get to apply it to the real world. Honestly, my number one big thing was time management skills.
If you don't have, you look at your weekly schedule and you have a bunch of gap time, a lot of the times it makes it harder to actually get your school work done. So if you're involved in two, three clubs or organizations, even just one, and you have that filled up in your schedule, it actually makes it easier for you to block out time to work on things like homework and the things that you need to do for your classes. And it helps you just apply what you learn through the connections that you make at JMU and like dance for me and things like that.
You're allowed to apply that to school work and then going into the real world for your future career and things like that.
[Andy Perrine]
You got to be disciplined to be a dancer, right? Yeah, exactly.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, you got to make it all fit, right? And you might be going there.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, there's only 168 hours in a week, right?
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Yeah. And one of the things I always love talking to students about that and their families that these 168 hours is actually the most valuable thing you have. You can make more money.
You can do all these. You can never get back more time.
[Andy Perrine]
It's all you got.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And if you think about it, and I talk about this at orientation, but if you assume 12 to 18 hours of classes, fine. But that's not the only time you're spending on school. I always encourage people to spend 40 hours a week on school.
That is your full-time job. And you should think about that. I don't think everybody ever gets to 40 hours except for maybe senior year when you're in a thesis and all that kind of stuff. And then you're really doing it.
[Andy Perrine]
You're staring down the barrel of graduating.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Right. But you should be thinking about this as your full-time job. Your time should be spent there.
More important than that is foundational for everyone is sleep. And I will admit I'm not always the role model for this, but I always want students to get seven hours a night. And I always call that seven normal hours.
And those are the hours that start in the PM and end in the AM. So, you know, before midnight is when you go to bed and you wake up sometime in the morning. And, you know, going to bed at 4 AM and sleeping until 11 is not what we're looking for.
That's not a normal sort of sleep pattern. And so if they get those 49 hours and then they have 40 hours of the school, that's 89 hours. But that gives them just under 80 hours left for the whole week.
You'll never have that kind of freedom. Like when I look at my schedule now, I can't find those 80 hours. Those don't exist for me.
And I don't have school, but I have work, which is, again, sometimes 40 hours, but usually more than that. Sleep is sometimes a sacrifice that I make. But if they start with 89 hours committed, you know, that's how you're spending that.
Those 80 hours gives you enough to do anything you might want for these four years that you're here. And that's what we really want them to think. But they don't know how to do it.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, they're new to it.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Right. Because Bell's controlled it during a certain period of time when you were at school.
[Andy Perrine]
Mom and dad.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
The family environment made sure you probably got up. Students are always like, oh, no, I got up on my own. Like, did you? And even if you did, I'm pretty sure someone made sure you woke up if you weren't downstairs in time to get on the bus or go take your ride. And then when you get home, that's usually scheduled out by family. Someone else has managed that for you.
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
So I always want students to get a planner. It might sound old school, but it's a great way to start to learn, just like anything else.
Go back to crutches. It's a time management crutch to start with. Once you get into it and you know what you're doing, you might not need it after a year.
But it's such an important tool to start with, to have that that sort of planner to be that crutch for you as you start planning out your time.
[Andy Perrine]
I don't think that this perception is out there, but the student affairs team is always seen sort of like celebrating and being excited and getting students excited. But there's a lot of things that your team does that are really intentional about some of the as a young adult. I mentioned technology earlier.
And you were talking about sleep. How important is it for students and your team to understand there's some real dangers? I mean, talking about going to sleep at four and waking up at 11, that's a direct road to depression sometimes.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Sure. Right. And I want to get the most recent student feedback here in a second.
But one of the things, we talk about digital thriving. And we're doing a lot of work on that. That's actually going to be in Gen Ed.
They're working on installing it in there too. And it's already there some. But we didn't talk about digital thriving when I was in college.
I don't know what that was.
[Andy Perrine]
It wasn't digital when I was in college.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Right. Exactly. It was just thriving.
But it is not an additional part of your life. The phone and its interactions and computers and games and all that stuff and all the streaming services is just part of life. It's not extra.
It is just embedded. How do you manage that versus it managing you?
[Andy Perrine]
Right.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
So helping students think that through. And when I meet with students one-on-one, time management, but also phone management almost always comes up as an area to work on. So I always tell students, go through and look.
How much time have you been on your phone? And I had a student once that was spending 12 hours a day on their phone.
[Andy Perrine]
Oh, yeah. And there's apps that can help you with this.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Correct. I mean, even just limits just as a warning. You're going to ignore it.
But still, it says you've been on for an hour. Did you know you've been on? Because the doom scrolling just goes and goes and goes.
And I've seen, you know, it's 4 a.m. And you've been on the phone for seven straight hours.
[Andy Perrine]
And it's hard to get to sleep.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And the thing I want people to think about is you're not actually living.
You're watching other people live. That's all you're doing there. And are other people's lives that interesting?
Because nothing's real. No one's actually as cool as they come across on TikTok or Snapchat.
[Andy Perrine]
Although I think you kind of are, Tim.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
I'm pretty normal there. But as my wife would tell me, I'm not that cool. But I don't know if you have thoughts on how you manage this or what you've seen.
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
I mean, I would definitely say it's a huge problem in the sense that, you know, iPhones do have those settings where you can limit yourself from, you know, watching too many TikToks or being on Instagram for too long. And personally, I have like setting limits that like only limit me for like an hour a day. I can watch TikTok like at all or like something similar.
But it can just be distracting, especially like for people who are trying to meet new people. Like you're not really meeting people over the phone unless, I mean, like texting a roommate, texting a friend. It's not the same as going and organically meeting somebody in person and having real conversations.
It's not the same thing at all. And it's definitely a problem in our generation. And I think it's something that we don't think about enough.
And I think we need to think about it a lot more.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And if you think about it, the first thing they usually sacrifice because of the phone is the The second is the school. That's why I always talk about those being first. Because that's, you can't afford either one.
You're in college. You need both of those first school and sleep together. But what I find is usually when someone's on their phone, it's impeding one of those two things or both.
And that's not what we want. And it's generally not a great mental health strategy to watch other people's lives for 10, 12, even five hours a day.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, and speaking of digital thriving, I mean, it can be a great enabling tool. I keep in touch with my adult children with my phone. But when we're together, the phone is off the table.
And sometimes when I go through D Hall, I see kids sitting there across from each other looking at their phones rather than talking. I mean, they're not making connections.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
And adults. I mean, when was the last time you were in a restaurant and at least one of the tables didn't have people there together, but not actually together. Physically together means you should actually engage together as well.
[Andy Perrine]
I'm always sad when I see couples like that in restaurants. Well, what are some of the tips that you want to leave listeners with at the end of this episode in terms of persistence? And, you know, don't be patient. Be excited. Go for joy. Be audacious.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Well, it's funny you said that. I always talk to students about, I don't believe in patience. I believe in persistence.
Patience means you're waiting for something to happen. Persistence means you're going for it. You've got to be persistent.
I think you've got, and you've talked about this, you've got to be open, stay open all four years because you never know. Like that next person you might walk by could be your new best friend. But if you're on your phone looking down and not engaging with the world, you never know.
If I hadn't been open and my buddy Stu and I hadn't sort of heard about this women's club soccer thing, that defined the next four years of my time at JMU because I stayed here and worked and got my master's. I did it through that time period. That was junior year when no one's doing new things, right?
You're just, you're on the tail end, you're going down, you're about to finish. So you're like, Oh, don't add anything to your life. But we added a thing that dominated our lives at that point in an amazing way.
Then I also think about your faculty members can be some of the most powerful connections and people in your lives. And so many students just never engage. They sit in the back row, they come late, they leave early.
The faculty at JMU are some of the best I've ever seen, not only at their field, but as humans. And if there's one piece of advice students take from this is every single class, sit in the first three rows before class starts, introduce yourself. If you have something that you don't understand or something you want to know more about, talk after class, go to office hours.
They can transform your life if you let them. And they're dying to. Faculty, they do this for a living.
They love this topic so much that it's what they've decided to spend their entire life doing.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, and JMU attracts faculty who purposefully want to engage with students as people.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Right. That's why they come here. They could just sit and they could be in a research lab, but instead they chose to take a teaching job to be in a space with you to tell you about this thing that they are passionate about enough that they do it for 15, 20, 30, 40 years. If you show passion in it too, you're going to make a connection that's going to matter.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, you remember the Gallup Produce Index from a couple of years ago and the tagline for the press release when it came out was, it doesn't matter where you go to school, it matters how you go to school. And they measured 35,000 alumni from schools all across the country and asked them how satisfied they were in five different aspects of their life. And the number one correlated feature of their life in college was that somebody took an interest in them as a person. And that's what leads you to living a life of meaning and really realize your goals.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
Yeah. And the last advice I would give, and then I want to see if you want to share a couple, is there's more resources here than you're ever going to need, but when you need them, you need to go for them. A lot of times students will wait until it's too late and they have to drop classes.
The minute you hit sort of a bump, go. The minute you think a bump is coming, go. Go to the Student Success Center, go to your faculty, go to these places.
We need students to have this sort of mindset of, I can ask for help. The help is there. It's just sitting there waiting for you.
And we'll tell you a lot about it. And it's in your email, so please read your email. But the help is there.
So you have to have this help seeking behavior and not wait until it's December and you're like, oh gosh, I'm going to fail all my classes. Not a lot we can do in December. There's a lot we can do in September.
So as you get that maybe first not great grade or you get behind, you're not sure what's going on. As someone who finished freshman year with a 2.0, 2.2 and a 1.8, which just got me to 2.0, which was not on academic probation, which was my dad's rule at that point. And he was like, I was not a good student either, so I'm going to give you another year, but we need to do better than this.
I didn't even know to ask for help until I got a 2.0 and I'm like, oh gosh, I don't know what I'm doing. That's a great learning moment for me to learn that and know how I have to move forward. But I could have gotten help faster and earlier because it was sitting there waiting for me.
[Andy Perrine]
Well, and asking for help is actually a sign of strength, not weakness.
[Dr. Tim Miller]
So have that strength.
[Andy Perrine]
Yeah, exactly.
Well, as we're wrapping it up, Katherine, how do you feel about your experience at JMU?
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
I've loved my experience at JMU. I was so nervous coming in, especially as a transfer student, as I said before, but as soon as I came here, it immediately felt like home. You know, even through orientation during the summer and even choices when I was still deciding between different colleges I wanted to go to in the state, I immediately knew when I toured here.
I was actually very against coming here before, not for a particular reason against the university, but I just always saw it as like, oh, this is not my vibe. This is not, this isn't really something I imagined myself going to. But as soon as I went to choices and I did just like a campus orientation around, or what are they called, the tours, just a campus tour.
[Andy Perrine]
The person walking backwards in front of you.
[Kathryn Hunt ('25)]
Yes, exactly. Immediately there, I just, everyone is so welcoming and so kind here and everybody here, the community, like you've said many times, just makes you feel like you're welcomed here and that.
