Hey, hey, hey. This is Lisa A. And you're listening to Who's That Star? On LCC Connect at Lansing Community College. Who's that Star? Is a behind the scenes show where I sit down and talk with the employees at the college. This is an inside look at LCC where you will have a chance to learn about their passions, projects, what inspires them both at work and in their personal lives. I'm your host, Lisa Alexander. I'm so excited to get a chance to talk to all the people who make LCC great. This show is for you to to get to know the people that work at Lansing Community College a little bit more and see what makes them tick. Are you ready? Okay, let's go see who's today's star. Today on Who's That Star, we have another Lansing local. He has lived in the Lansing area all of his life and graduated from Haslett High School. He attended Michigan State University where he received a bachelor's degree in psychology and and secondary social studies education and Eastern Michigan University for his master's degree in educational leadership. This star has worked for LCC for over 10 years in various roles, but has always enjoyed the various ways he has been able to support students in each of them. Outside of LCC, he has a variety of interesting and sometimes unusual jobs and including student teacher, postal worker, custom historical interpreter, but I gotta ask about that. And professional girl scout. This star currently lives in Lansing with his wife Brittany and their two dogs, Katie and Lily. Okay, are you ready to learn who's today's star? Audience, welcome Andrew George from Student Access.

Hey, Lisa, thanks for having me.

We're so glad to have you. Andy, I've known you for quite a while and I think that you're a cool dude. But I want everybody else to get a chance to learn about you and what you do here for the college. So you ready to get started?

Yes, ma'am.

All right, so can you tell me a little bit about who you are and what's important to you in your life right now?

Sure. So, I mean, you kind of gave my intro to say I'm an educator at heart. That's really my passion. Obviously I trained to do it in a couple of different schools and I work in an educational capacity here at LCC. What's most important to me at work would be helping to support students. And like you had mentioned, I've had a variety of different roles. Presently I work in the center for Student Access. So my primary work is with students with disabilities, which is really awesome. A Lot of what it is that I do is clearing the way so that they can be successful. Now keep in mind they're doing all the hard work. I'm the one who's just kind of getting accessible formats and various other things, but really helping to support the those students who in a lot of cases haven't traditionally been well served by the education system in general, not just higher ed. But.

Yeah, no, no, I get it.

And so it's important to me to be able to support those folks outside of work. I mean, it's family. I love my wife and my folks and my siblings and stuff. And our dogs are basically most of our attention when we're at home.

Right. They do, they take pet stake a lot. Okay, go ahead and tell us a little bit more about your role here.

Sure.

So you say you support students and how do you do that?

In lots and lots of different ways. So my actual position is access consultant, which is not terribly instructive day to day. I could be working with a student to approve accommodations for a class or for helping students work through a physical access issue on campus. I do a lot of work with alternative formats. So providing electronic versions of textbooks for students who may need to use those in a text to speech program or students who may be blind or have a visual impairment who need a screen reader. They need things formatted in such a way that it works with the technology that they're using. I also directly support students, particularly students that have higher needs or maybe more barriers than your average student with disabilities. Why help with reading and scribing and doing those things for those certain students in classrooms and in their test, depending on what the situation is.

So would I self identify as a student? Would it come from high school? I know there's a difference in services provided from when you're in high school and you receiving some services versus when you're in a higher education setting. How does that work?

Everybody comes to us from kind of a different place. And higher ed students are required to self identify as people with disabilities. And so if there are students who've received accommodations in high school, it's pretty easy. They've already got a 504 plan or an IEP, an individualized educational plan that we can use to set up accommodations here at LCC. Like you mentioned, there are some things that sometimes occur in high school that we can't do, like making significant modifications to like an exam, you know, instead of 20 questions, you have to answer 15 questions, which again is something that can happen in K12 it just can't happen in higher ed.

Right. And that's a difference that I think that a lot of times people don't really understand, and I'm glad that you talked about that, because it's different. I think in high school, they. I forgot the terminology that they use, but there's one like, they try to customize it for your success. Whereas when you're in higher ed, like, it's, we'll give you some accommodations, but you gotta still.

Yeah, the. Really. With the law under, like, in K12, the goal is success. Students must be successful, and schools have to do whatever they can to get that student to a place where they're successful. In higher education, it's a little different. The law changes, and so our mandate changes a little bit in higher ed. What we're required to do and what we strive for is ensuring that students have the same access to courses, materials, environments, experiences, whatever it happens to be in roughly the same way without making huge changes to what's being assessed or what's being asked of a student to do. Students with disabilities in higher ed do the same work. There may be things about it that are different. Extra testing time is something that's pretty common for accommodations in both K12 and higher ed. I mean, it's very common in higher ed. But that change, having double time or something like that doesn't really change what the instructors are assessing.

Right.

Opening up the time so that student can work through whatever process they need to work through or whatever kind of roadblocks pop up. The ticking clock syndrome is something I hear from a lot of students, particularly students who might have ADHD or anxiety. Just focusing on the clock itself can be really distracting, and that can derail folks. And so things like extra time don't change what the instructor's assessing. The students still have to answer all the same questions. They are just given some more time in light of the fact that it may take them a little bit longer or they may get pulled away by distractions like that. Ticking clock.

Yeah. And that's interesting, and I think that's a good distinction. Right. People need to understand that, and I know you guys explain that. What about people who have never been identified in high school?

It's actually more common than you think. There are a lot of folks who, you know, when they come to think about disability and accommodations, it's really that kind of high school to college kind of pipeline. But there are a lot of folks out there that, I mean, they may have come up in a time before the ada where there weren't as many rules and schools weren't as good about diagnosing folks with things and getting them services or people who might have an acquired disability because of something like a TBI or another situation like that. In those cases, obviously, we're not going to have a 504 plan or an IEP, but we can accept evaluations from psychologists, letters from doctors. We've got a little form that we give students if they're not sure where to go, that they can take into their doctor and be like, hey, this is the information that we need. But yet people who aren't high school kids or didn't have accommodations in high school often will have disabilities for a lot of the reasons that I mentioned before. And so for us, it's about figuring out how we can get documentation of that so we can provide services.

Because I would say even I'm not trying to get you a whole lot of business, but in the sense of if someone is struggling, right. Like, it's still a place that they could stop to see, like, if. If that could be the. The reason why they're struggling.

Right.

Like, if they need some assistance and don't know and never have been identified, I think it's a positive place to start, you know?

Yeah. And that's a conversation that myself, my colleagues, have pretty frequently with students. If they're like, you know, you know, I'm 35. Like, I didn't have accommodations, but I've always had this problem. You know, we can kind of help them work through the documentation piece and help get things figured out in the long term so they have the accommodations that they need.

Yeah.

One of the things I do want to mention, too, because we're talking about how accommodations can help with students who are struggling. One of the things that I see a lot with students that I just want to call attention to is that many folks feel like getting accommodations is kind of getting something over or like, not really doing the job yourself, like, not getting it done in the same way that your classmates are. And I always want to take some time to address that, because accommodations, like we had mentioned, aren't like, fundamentally changing the curriculum or what you're being asked to do as a student. We're just adding in some things to allow for some understanding and really to level the playing field, because we all learn differently. We all have different levels of ability and disability depending on what our situation is. And so what we're trying to do is figure out where those barriers are because of a disability and then how can we minimize those without changing your curriculum? So again, you're doing the same thing, you're completing the same work, but we're giving you some allowances, like extra time or being able to test someplace that is distraction reduced, like the testing center, that really are just mitigating those barriers without again trying to get something over on something.

Right. Yeah, no, I understand that too, Andy, because I'll see students that come in the office and what really hits me is that students that had some struggles in high school, then they wanna come to college and automatically think that those struggles have disappeared. Right. And I'm like, we're here to give you some help. And it's not like you said, it's not different. You still doing the work, you still doing them. 25 Problems that everybody else doing. You just may have a little bit more time to do it because of circumstances that are individualized to that person. But yeah, I think it's a great place. I think the staff over there is great. I think when people meet with you, they feel better. Right. Like the anxiety. You're a good person for this spot because you. I think you got a calming effect.

I try. It's. It can be really anxiety producing.

Yeah. You know, and you need somebody that's like, hey, cool, I got you. We gonna figure this out. So I think this is a good thing. So can you tell me how you got started here at LCC?

So I actually was a. A master student in Eastern Michigan at the time. And I was looking around for work. I was planning on moving down to Ypsilanti, but I was applying for some things here because I was still living in Lansing. And I ended up getting a job with the. It was the assessment center. It's testing services now. It was 10, like 10 years ago, like literally last week.

I know.

And I. Like you'd mentioned, I attended MSU right out of school, which I. I continually regret every time I open up that student loan bill, you know, But I hear you. I really came to love even in that kind of. I mean, testing was a great supportive environment and it still is. They're actually really great over there. But I learned a lot about what it means to be a professional, what it means to work with students who are coming from a variety of different backgrounds. Really. I fell in love with community colleges because universities are important and they're an important part of an educational system. But the sheer breadth and width of folks that I get to meet and their experiences and the ways in which I can help, it just, you know, it catches you. It does. I didn't know that I would fall in love with it, but I did. The work is meaningful. Not that it's not meaningful other places, but it's the right place for me.

No, no, I agree. I feel I found home when I came to a community college, and just for the variety of people you meet, and it's just a different setting. I forgot that you had worked in testing, that you started out in testing and then went to school and worked your way into another position.

Yeah, I worked for Matt Lemon when I first got started here.

Right. Yes. Yes. Matt Lemonade. That's a good guy. What do you like most about what you do here at LCC?

I like that it's a little bit different every day and that I get to learn so many different things that I don't know that I would have learned otherwise.

Right.

With the nature of the work that we do a lot, basically all of it is based on what the student's experience is. What barriers are they experiencing? What kind of countermeasures, accommodations, can we put into place? So there's a lot of kind of strategic thinking. There are some accommodations that are pretty common across things like the extended time for testing. But, I mean, we sometimes get into situations where we're working through a problem with the student and their instructors, and it. You know, I don't want to say it's like a brain teaser, but, like, we're just trying to. We're trying to figure out how to find a solution that meets everybody's needs.

Yeah. You know, and that's where that job becomes so interesting, because everybody different, and you're working with a different instructor, a different student, different issues and concerns, and you have to try to see how you can make it all fit together. So. Yeah, that is. Would be like a puzzle.

Yeah.

I think that's cool, though. And it's a way to, you know, keep you coming back. And that's my next question. Maybe. But it's like, it says, tell me about why you work at LCC. And you kind of have explained that, but, like, what is it that keeps you coming to work and so passionate about it?

Well, I mean, there are certain moments, and I know. I know you've been in education for a while, Lisa, so you know about this, too. But there are times when, like, for instance, last spring, I was in Gannon. I was in the break room or something, and there was a guy who came to the door, and he was knocking on the door. He saw me go back there, and I Came out and I recognized him. He was a student that I worked with before, who was one of the students we mentioned before. He was an older guy who's coming back to school after a little while, who had always had problems with schoolwork and had just recently figured out, like, oh, it's because I have a disability. It's because I have this thing. And so I went out and I said, hi, hey, how's it going? He's like, you know, I just wanted to let you know, like, I'm graduating, like, next week. Like, I'm graduating like, last spring. And, you know, your help was really important to being able to have me do that.

Right.

And it's nice being. I just like being a small part of people's success.

Yeah.

Like, and again, I'm not going to claim more. More glory than. Than is due. Students are the ones who are doing the hard work. Right.

But. No, it is. But you play a role.

Yeah.

And that's the thing that I realized that, nope, I'm not doing the work, but I'm supporting. Right. You know, and then come back to me and we'll problem solve and we'll figure things out. You get to see how you play a role. Right. And a lot of people don't always get that opportunity, so it makes a difference.

Yeah. And it's, you know, with the work that we do, it runs the gamut. I mean, there, there could be a student who. Having that little bit of flexibility on attendance because they have a chronic health condition, like, that's what made the difference for them, or even something that, you know, we're going into a semester knowing that we're going to be doing a fair amount of work to get things ready, to make sure the student has them when. When they need them. And like, for. For me, both of those things are cool. Like what? Like, you know, we. We got something out of the way for you.

Right. We don't have to worry about it.

Yeah. Like, we've got you the things that you need when you need them, and it's. It's just really cool to be a small part of that.

I think so, too. Okay, well, let's learn a little bit about you from outside of work. Like, what is a subject you geek out about that as a topic that you love to learn about.

Oh, man, I'm a huge dork, so there's a lot of things. I was a history major in college, and so I've always been kind of fond of that. And I know, I think you had a question about that before.

Yeah, I wanted to know about that job.

Yeah, so I was a costumed historical interpreter at Fort Mackinac on Mackinac, Michigan. Michigan. And so if you've ever been up to Fort Mackinac, there are these crazy dudes who wear like blue wool in the summer and they fire the cannons and the rifles and do like court martial reenactments and that kind of thing. And so I did that for a summer.

Oh, really?

Which is really cool.

And what's that called again?

It's a historical interpreter. Wow.

Okay. See, you know, you just got all these different names. So like. So do you do like the time periods, like Civil War? Do you do that, like in reenactments and stuff like that?

I haven't really. I have some family members who do reenactments. My uncle's really big into that and I've gone with him a few times when I was younger with this. It wasn't so much reenacting like a particular battle or a particular event. It was. We weren't even really portraying people, like actual people who lived. We were ourselves. And we were using the fort and artifacts, like the rifles and our uniforms to connect people to the history of that place.

Got you. Okay, that makes sense. Cause I was getting. I thought you were doing reenactments and that's different. Totally.

But yeah, I mean, some of it would look similar. We fire like, we'd fire rifles every couple of hours. We'd fire the cannon off. Like if you've ever been in Marquette park on Mackinac island and the cannon goes off. That was us. Oh, okay. But.

But that's interesting though.

Yeah, I mean, really, it was just a license to sit around and talk about history with everybody. Like. And like.

And you enjoy that?

Yeah, it was great. I'm also a huge video game nerd. Oh, retro video games. Huge fan.

And like Donkey Kong. Retro or.

Yeah, like Donkey Kong. And like, I came up with like the. The original Nintendo and like the Sega Genesis and all that way back. Yeah, I've actually been doing some reading and things, and there's actually a lot of work in that community kind of dovetailing with history, focusing on making sure that things like video games, which are part of our culture are still accessible and still open. And it's a huge challenge, but there's a lot of people doing really cool work about making sure that games and things are preserved for future generations.

I know I'm so old that, like, I remember the first PlayStation and the Nintendo.

Yeah, me too, man.

What's the little game. What was them?

The Game Boy.

Yeah, the Game Boy. And then we even had, you know, it was like the little football and it was a little.

It was like the Mattel football.

Yeah,.

Yeah, we had the. We had the original Nintendo and we got it because my mom wanted shoot ducks because they had Duck Hunt.

Yep, I remember. So funny that they would think those games are not even fun now probably.

But, yeah, you never know.

Yeah. But I'm glad that's something that you enjoy doing in preserve. And those to me are the real games. So let me ask you, do you live by any piece of advice or a motto there?

I always like. And I'm not sure I'm going to get it quite right, but the Socrates. If I know one thing, it's that I know nothing. And I know that that's probably apocryphal to you. It's probably just not legit at all. But it's the same kind of thought behind. You don't know what you don't know, which is also another good thing. And for me, it's helpful personally and professionally. It's helpful because you can avoid the Dunning Kruger effect and all that. I think it's important to not really to, I guess, underestimate the things that you know, because there's always more out there that you don't know.

Right. Yeah. You can be a learner. Like, you're still open to learning. And just because I've done this for 20 years doesn't mean there's an aspect that I still can't learn from and learn about.

Absolutely. And I mean, it's helpful even working with students, too, because, you know, you have students who come in who might have the third piece of ADHD documentation that I've seen today.

Like, what I like about what you just said, Andy, is like, you know how sometimes they talk about implicit bias?

Right.

That's a way to combat implicit bias. Agreed. Because when you don't think you know something about a person or a subject or whatever, you're open to see what it is you can learn about it. And so I think that's a great model. I'm gonna keep that in my head. Whether it's quoted right or wrong, I think it's cool.

Yeah. And it's. I mean, great work with students, too, because even though this may be a student who has documentation I've seen before, who has similar kind of barriers, those students are all different.

Different nuances.

Exactly. And that's really what makes all the difference. And so Having an open mind to that, you know, fighting against implicit bias goes a long way.

It's important. That is so true. So do you consider yourself an introvert or extrovert?

Introvert, for sure.

And you do this job.

I don't know what to tell you, Lisa. I don't know. I enjoy the work, but definitely at the end of a long day, like, I need to go and shut my brain off.

Right. No, I get that. That, too. I think that I'm an introvert, kind of. Like, I can show and talk and do everything, but I still need that quiet time. Like, I need to just shut stuff down. Okay. So that's good to know. So we're almost done. We keep. I can talk all day. So I have a lot of questions. But I do want to ask you two more questions.

Sure.

I want to ask you who inspires you and why?

You know, and it may be a little corny, but I'd have to say my father. My dad is probably even more introverted than I am. For him, family is always something that's been very important. And I think whether he'd admit it or not, he's been a lifelong learner himself. Like, he ended up taking a management position from a technical position in his late 30s, early 40s, and, like, learned to be a manager and did an excellent job with that sort of thing. So there's lessons and things that I pulled from him, but he. Like I said, whether he admits it or not, he's learned all sorts. Like, he's learned how to do every sort of thing that needs to be done around the house.

Yeah, you just admire his.

Yeah, he's like, you know, he's like, he's gonna figure it out. And, you know, that's something that I've always kind of admired, that. His devotion to family, his willingness to learn and try and do things, and then taking on challenges and whatever kind of lessons I can take from him about managing, like, being a manager myself, A lot of my approach is kind of lifted straight up from what we've talked about and the way that he works with people.

That's great. I mean, I think that's a wonderful person to have inspire you, you know, and you can see the lessons, you know, so that's a good thing. Well, I already know. I probably know this question, but I'm gonna ask it. Cause I like to ask this question to most of the guests. Are you go green or go blue?

Oh, go green for life, my friend.

Okay. Cause I thought for a minute you might try to Trick me and say go blue. Like, I don't know. But I'm. I'm glad to have the time to talk with you today, Andy. I think that you do great work.

Thank you, Lisa.

And I think that you help a lot of students, and I think your department is important, and people need to, you know, hear about it. So I appreciate you taking the time to come on who's that star today?

Yeah, I appreciate you having me out. I was happy to talk about this, and I'm happy to talk to it or talk about it to anybody who might be interested in talking about accommodations at LCC. But I also wanted to say thank you, too, Lisa. I mean, in addition to being a wonderful host, you are also an excellent academic advisor. So thank you.

I'll pay you to fight. No, thank you, Andy. I appreciate it. I like what I do, and I feel like I'm helping, and I make a difference. So it's a great job, and I think we both do that well together, so. So I'm glad you took the time, and I'm glad our audience got a chance to learn about Andrew George. And if you get a chance and you feel like you have some questions about, maybe you could benefit from some accommodations or maybe you want to figure out how to get that process started, please check the department out. Because it's not just Andy that's good over there. It's a lot of other people that maybe I can get to come on here as well.

I'll try and talk them into it.

That's why I talk them into it for me. Audience, I will see you next time on Who's That Star? And thanks for listening. You've been listening to Who's That Star? I'm Lisa A. and you can listen to this episode of Who's That Star? And other shows from LCC Connect anytime online at LCCconnect.org thank you for listening. Catch me next time to find out Who's That Star.