VT Stories Oral History with Neal Henshaw, April 13, 2017 (Ms2016-015)

Brady Hess: Good afternoon this is Brady Hess for VT Stories, today is April

13th, and it is 3:50 p.m., we are in Newman Library on the campus of Virginia

Tech. Can you introduce yourself to us please?

Neal Henshaw: My name is Neal Henshaw, I'm faculty here at Newman Library, my

title would be--it's a long title--Educational Technology Consultant and

Instructional Designer. Been here at the library for about ten years, it'll be

ten years this fall. I'm from Buckingham, Virginia which is a county in the

middle of the state, it's just south of Albemarle County. Closest town to where

I grew up is called Farmville, that's where Longwood is. But I was actually born

in Richmond, at VCU, I was raised there then we moved out to a farm in 00:01:00Buckingham, that's where I pretty much grew up.

Brady: So what years did you attend Virginia Tech and when did you graduate with

what degree did you major with?

Neal: I came here in 2007, we bought our house--my wife took a job here--we

bought our house and then went back to Illinois where we were living and two

weeks later the April 16th shootings happened, so we saw that on the news going,

that's our new hometown. And we moved here in July. I took a job at the library,

the first job I could find. Found out that I could take classes as a tuition

waiver as full-time staff. Started in 2008 because I had been an instructional

designer at a previous job but I didn't have a master's in it, so I started in

the master's program here in 2008. I think it was 2008. It's been four years

since I graduated, so that would make it 2013, so it took me about five years to

get it because it basically took one class a 00:02:00 semester.

Brady: Now where did you get your undergraduate degree from?

Neal: Undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in Spanish education. I

spoke Spanish and I wanted to be a basketball coach, high school level and

figured I'd have to teach classes. I could teach Spanish because I already spoke it.

Brady: Tell me a little bit, you said you grew up in Buckingham there, that's a

long way to BYU. But before we get to that, tell me about where you were raised

and how you were raised, and about your family growing up in Buckingham.

Neal: So my dad is a World War II veteran which is odd for someone, I'm only

forty-four, and my dad's a World War II veteran. He's from Richmond, he was born

and raised in Richmond, when he was sixteen he signed up for the marines.

Sixteen? Eighteen? I can't remember. Eighteen. And he was waiting deployment

when they dropped the bombs, so he never got in any 00:03:00fighting. So he came back

from Japan and he grew up on a farm. My grandparents were sharecroppers and he

was professional, he was in the marines for years and decided to go to college

in his late thirties. Went out to BYU, met my mom, came back, decided they

wanted to raise their kids on a farm and we lived in Richmond for a little while

but then he bought a farm in Buckingham and moved us out there in 1980. I was

raised on a farm in Buckingham because my dad was raised on a farm and wanted

his kids to learn how to work. So my summer jobs were picking corn and raising

calves and that kind of stuff. And he still had his business in Richmond and

he'd commute everyday to Richmond, it's about an hour drive. So, on the farm

there was not much to do other than work on the farm or play basketball and that

kind of stuff. So I grew up running through the woods, fishing in the creek, and

playing basketball outside with my brothers. That's why we did that too, that's

what my dad wanted.

Brady: So did you play basketball in high school and growing up in middle 00:04:00 school

and things like that?

Neal: I actually didn't start playing basketball until I was probably about

thirteen but I made the JV team my sophomore year of high school. I played

sophomore and junior years, I didn't play my senior year, didn't try out, didn't

get along with the coach. I ran cross country for three years, so yeah.

Basketball's always been a big part of my life. Can I say that I was a Virginia

Cavalier Basketball fan growing up?

Brady: Uhh I guess so, I guess we won't hold that against you too bad.

Neal: Sorry I just grew up outside of Charlottesville too.

Brady: Well that's true.

Neal: Go Hokies.

Brady: There you go. So you talk about your mom and dad met at BYU, and then you

talk about you spoke a little bit of Spanish, and basketball is a big part of

your life, when did you first start thinking about college and how did you pick

to go to BYU growing up in Buckingham and then going across the country to, I

believe, Utah?

Neal: Yeah so, college was, in my house it wasn't: if you go to college, it was: 00:05:00when you go to college. It was never a consideration to not go to college and it

didn't occur to me it was never a consideration to go to college. I wasn't the

best high school student, but I got in by the skin of my teeth. BYU because my

parents went there, which is funny because growing up in Virginia there's so

many great schools around and I had friends that came to [Virginia] Tech and

friends that went to UVA, and VCU, and Longwood, and Radford, and all these

things, and it just never occurred to me that I could go anywhere else. So it

was a BYU house, so I went to BYU and loved it. Met my wife there and had a good

time there. But it's a religious thing, that schools owned by the church that we

go to, so that's where we went.

Brady: Now you talk about growing up in Virginia and you had friends going to

[Virginia] Tech, did you ever think about coming to [Virginia] Tech for

undergraduate at all?

Neal: I didn't. But my dad who did go to BYU says that it would have been, when

he looks back, he would have been better suited coming to [Virginia] Tech

because he was a horticulture major and BYU was kind of a private school with a 00:06:00focus on liberal arts and it's very much an undergraduate university. But it

doesn't have the focus, it's not the land-grant university and Virginia Tech

would have been better suited for him, but he never would have met my mom. Had

he come to [Virginia] Tech.

Brady: You talk about there's a little break between your undergraduate degree

and when you started to get your graduate degree here at [Virginia] Tech, what

was life like for you in those eleven years there?

Neal: When I graduated from BYU, my wife was two years ahead of me because I had

taken a two year break to go to Guatemala, which is how I learned Spanish. We

got married before I graduated BYU and she was getting a master's degree,

basically waiting for me to finish up. She decided she wanted to go to medical

school. We were literally weighing the options, I looked at divorce rates.

Divorce rates for doctors are high, divorce rates for coaches are high because

the time involved in those professions and there was no way we could make it 00:07:00work with us both doing those things. So I shelved my desire to get into

coaching to put her through medical school. So we graduated BYU, we moved to

Tucson, Arizona where she went to the University of Arizona and did five years

of medical school. And then for residency she chose Springfield, Illinois, and

we lived there for five years. And then we made our way here. So life was pretty

busy, medical school is hard, residency is really hard, especially if you're

doing surgery or something like that. When she was a graduate student at BYU she

had our first child, a son. When she was in the middle of medical school she had

our second child, our daughter, our oldest daughter. Then in the middle of

residency she had our third child. So she's going through all these things and

having children along the way and so I'm taking care, but I'm also working full

time too. I taught high school in Tucson, I was a corporate trainer for a

private tech learning company, I taught networking classes 00:08:00and server

administration classes. After I was a high school teacher I got a job, I was a

waiter for three weeks, trying to get another job, and then I got a job for an

internet service provider back when it was dial up. That's how old I am. First I

was tech support then they moved me into supporting the sales people then they

moved me into the systems division where I was one of the guys programming the

routers and stuff. I had CISCO certifications and Microsoft certifications. Then

we moved cause my wife had finished and we moved to Illinois. Springfield is the

state capital, so basically if you work in Springfield, you work for the state

government. I got a job working for a government subcontractor, and I hated it,

and after six months I got a job at the hospital. And there is when I got back

to teaching and they had me teaching classes at the hospital to the staff,

teaching like software. I taught a lot of Microsoft Office classes and then

specialized software training stuff for the things they did in the hospital,

taught a lot of the 00:09:00nurses when we hired new nurses how the systems work.

Basically that's when I got into instructional design, was I had to create a lot

of those online tutorials that people take when you're in jobs like, oh you have

to take this annual training on service animals, or you have to take this annual

training on sanitation. So I developed those which is what a lot of

instructional design is. So when we moved here, again, I took the first job I

could find. But found out there was actually a master's degree in the stuff I

had been doing for years in Illinois. So that's what my life was like. I was

putting my wife through her career and then when she got here, I found out I

could further mine, so I got a master's.

Brady: Before you get here, what is your first memory just all together in your

life of just Virginia Tech?

Neal: When I was a kid, I don't remember how old I was but I had to be ten or

eleven. We drove out 00:10:00here, and it's about two and a half hours, and we drove out

here because my family received some kind of family of the year award from some

organization and that award dinner was here at [Virginia] Tech. And so it was

here on campus, and I don't have much memory but I remember it was here at

[Virgina] Tech. I couldn't tell you what building it was hosted in, I couldn't

tell you anything else, but that's my first memory of [Virginia] Tech. And then

when I was a junior in high school, every summer our church has a youth camp, we

call it a youth conference, and it used to be a lot of the church youth from the

region would get together and we'd go to a college campus somewhere and it was

here at [Virginia] Tech and we actually stayed over I think the dorm was Ambler

Johnson. And I remember that cause I remember it was shaped such that we could

look out and see across to the other side, like it was shaped like an H, so we

could look out and see across the other side and see the students, or the kids

in the other windows. So I remember that. So those are my memories of [Virginia]

Tech growing up. Sports wise, it was the [19]80s and there wasn't a lot to hear

about [Virginia] Tech. Academically, like my dad said, it was a good school for 00:11:00him, but he didn't come here.

Brady: Right, now what about when you first got here to start undergraduate when

you were living in Blacksburg, you're getting settled down here, and like you

said when you first get here it's just right after that tragedy on April 16th,

what's your first memories of being on campus here when you started your life in Blacksburg?

Neal: Umm, I was interviewing for jobs. I came here without a job, my wife had a

job, so I kind of came here to get us settled, get the house. First memory of

Blacksburg, it was July 4th and the reason I know that because literally we

drove into town, dumped our stuff at the house, and then went looking for a

place to go watch the fireworks. So I remember that it was July 4th. As far as

campus, after we'd been here a month or two I applied for jobs and there was a

couple of jobs on campus that I applied for and I got an interview here at the

library, so that was my first time really coming on campus. I came and I came

down to the library and I wandered around for a while so I had 00:12:00some sense of

what was here and what to expect and wanted to be somewhat knowledgeable about

the library and the services they offered and that kind of stuff. So walking

around the library.

Brady: So while you're taking that program, and like you said it was spread over

that from [20]08 to 2013, how often were you working as to taking classes?

Neal: I was working full-time, my classes were at night. So I'd work all day and

on Wednesdays, I think it was, I'd head down to War Memorial Gym and that's

where the School of Education is and so I'd go up to my class and take my class.

Usually one night a week in the evenings.

Brady: Who were some, I don't know, professors or mentors, any advisors here at

[Virginia] Tech while you're getting that degree, or just other coworkers that

were I guess influential?

Neal: Dr. Jen Brill, who's still here, Dr. Lockee, who's still here, and Dr.

Katherine Cennamo, who I think is still here, I don't see her as much, I see the

other two every so 00:13:00often. Those were the three that primarily shaped-- worked

with, learned a lot from. Dr. Potter, Dr. Ken Potter was my advisor but I never

actually had a class from him cause he tended to do PhD students and I was a

master's student. But Dr. Brill probably would be the number one, I had a couple

classes from her. I took an educational psychology class, and I can't remember

the guy's name. He's retired now and if we weren't talking about it, I could

bring it up. But that was an interesting class. One of the first nights we were

in class is when, and I don't know any names, is when the Chinese student killed

a girl over in the Graduate Life Center coffee shop and it came across, we were

in class, and it came across the notification board. It was very

sensationalistic, it said, murder in the GLC, with multiple exclamation points

after it, shelter in place. And 00:14:00that was the announcement they gave us and one

of the people in my class I guess had been on campus a couple years previously

when the shootings happened, and he freaked out a little bit, he's like I can't

be here, I can't be here, and he took off and we didn't see him for the rest of

the semester. Like that was it for him, it really affected him. But I can't

remember that professor's name. Educational psychology. But yeah.

Brady: Well since we kind of hit on so much, what was that like for you when

that alert comes across the clock like that? We mentioned before we got the

interview started you guys have committed to moving to Blacksburg and you're

back in your home getting ready to move and you're sitting on your couch and

you're watching TV and see thirty-two dead at Virginia Tech. What's that like

from, at the time an outsider looking in, getting ready to be a part of the

Hokie Nation and the Hokie community and get your master's and then work here

for years after. What was that 00:15:00 like?

Neal: It was a little surreal. When we were telling people we were moving to

Blacksburg, the response was always, where's Blacksburg? I'd say, it's where

Virginia Tech is, and they'd be like, okay I've heard of Virginia Tech. After

the shootings happened, people are like, oh where are you moving? Oh Blacksburg?

Are you sure you want to move to Blacksburg? That horrible thing just happened

there. I'm like, have you ever heard of anything like that happening before,

it's not like this is the murder capital of the world, right? It was just an

unfortunate thing. And then after we moved here, one thing I love about Virginia

Tech, like you are wearing a Virginia Tech shirt, so many of the students wear

Hokie gear everyday. And we bought some Hokie gear for our family and when we go

on vacation, we go to Disney World every year and we have a day where we just

wear our Virginia Tech clothes and people will all the time just be like, y'all

go Hokies, or whatever. Hokie Nation is out there. But the first year or two 00:16:00after we moved here, it was right after those shootings happened, if we wore our

Virginia Tech clothes people would come up to us and just say, God bless you. I

would just take it, I wasn't here when it happened, I didn't have an attachment

when it happened, I would just be like, thank you, thank you very much. And

they'd just tell us how horrible it was and how sorry it was and how much they

respected how the Hokie Nation came together and that kind of stuff. So that was

interesting, we had a lot of people sympathize with us over something that I

wasn't really a part of when it happened. But my wife is a surgeon and when she

was hired, she was the fifth surgeon in the practice. The other four surgeons

were on that day and they got a lot of the students that made it to the

hospital. So that was interesting. To hear it from the hospital staff and

doctors about how it was when the students were rolling in and that kind of

stuff. Then I have a friend who was an engineering professor who was in the

building when it happened and to hear him talk about it, his office was next to 00:17:00Dr. Granata who got killed that day. And Dr. Granata went out to go see, I don't

know if he went out to see what was happening, or if he was going to see how he

could help. But anyway, to hear him talk about it. So the day I was in class and

that came over the signage, murder in the Graduate Life Center, we were like,

really? Not really, again? Because it's not quite the same thing, but wow.

Didn't expect to see that happen. But anyway.

Brady: So you had mentioned a little bit about people coming up in years after

the shooting going, go Hokies, and I've seen that at airports and stuff as well,

what are the differences as a guy who attended undergraduate elsewhere and

attended graduate school and then worked here. What are the differences in being

a BYU alumn and then as well as a [Virginia] Tech 00:18:00alumn, what are the

differences in the two places?

Neal: Well whenever I wear my BYU gear someplace, and if I see someone else

wearing BYU gear I make a point to try and say something, go Cougars, something

like that. And I swear, and maybe this is just when we've been at Disney World,

but our experience has been, if we're wearing our [Virginia] Tech gear, other

people, even if they're not wearing [Virginia] Tech gear and they see it and

recognize it, it's like, go Hokies. They'll talk to us or just give us a sign or

something like that. When I'm wearing my BYU gear, I've never had someone not

wearing BYU gear say something to me like, go Cougars, and sometimes I do see

someone wearing it and I go, hey go Cougars, they will look at me like I'm gonna

steal their kids and just keep going. And I'm like, seriously? Come on, we have

a bond here! Can't you see this? It's like they're scared to talk about it, and

there's nothing to be embarrassed about. But the difference is interesting. I

know plenty of people who are proud to be BYU people. It's a different place,

but Blacksburg is Virginia 00:19:00Tech, right? To see people in town support [Virginia]

Tech, it's not quite the same. It's much more, Blacksburg is much more close

knit, and Hokie Nation seems to be much more close knit, which I love. So my

wife always wears--she doesn't have any BYU gear. And she's not a [Virginia]

Tech alumn, but she has [Virginia] Tech gear. She is a BYU Cougar and an Arizona

Wildcat and she has more [Virginia] Tech gear than anything and she rocks that

proudly and she wears it when we go places and people talk to us about it. She's

a Hokie.

Brady: So we've touched a little bit on what life at [Virginia] Tech your first

year was like there, what was life like comparing your first year to your later

years such as now? Other than now you have a master's degree.

Neal: I don't know that it's that much different. I mean it was definitely

busier when I started taking classes, and it sure is nice to not have to 00:20:00 take

classes anymore. It's nice to not have to write papers anymore. And I've had

some people ask me, why don't you just go ahead and finish your PhD? One, I just

don't want to do the work, right? I'm good, I'm working, I'm producing, which is

what I wanted with a master's. It's almost like, at least in this field, if you

have a master's you go out and you make stuff. If you have a PhD you go out and

teach it. And I can't take a job somewhere else to teach it because we're here

because of my wife's job so I'm not really mobile and [Virginia] Tech's not

going to hire me as a professor if I get my PhD and master's here, cause then

it's inbred and that's not what they're looking for. That doesn't really answer

your question, but it was rough going back to school with three kids and working

full-time and my wife working full-time, so now it's much better cause I get to

go home and not have to study and not have to write and not have to read

articles and not have to do that kind of stuff.

Brady: Now what are some of your favorite memories and experiences you've had

being 00:21:00 here?

Neal: I love, I park on the Drillfield, and I love it on days like today's going

to be when I go out to me car and the kids are out there playing on the

Drillfield. I love it when kids are out there walking on slacklines or hanging

out in hammocks, throwing a football, playing frisbee, playing quidditch, that's

a little different I think, but God bless them, doing what they love. I love

that. I love the Corps. I love watching the Corps march. I love having the Corps

in the library. We used to give tours to the Corps during their first week,

during hell week, we'd get them in the evenings and show them around the

library, take them to special collections, show them the Civil War stuff we

have. Then we'd get them in the classroom and show them how the website works

and how to find materials and then we'd give them cookies and milk and they

loved us because it's hell week! They're getting their butts handed to them and

we're feeding them cookies and milk, so they love the library, we love them. And

then we found out one time that the Corps, when their companies were coming to

the 00:22:00library, before they came they actually had to file a battle plan for coming

to the library. Like it literally had things in there like, potential

oppositions, potential obstacles, and they'd write things like, tired feet, or

exhaustion, or tripping over something. Because it's the library, but they had

to file a full out battle plan and we got a copy of it one time and it was

hilarious. So I love those things. I love campus, campus is beautiful. Giving

people tours of campus, I've done that from time to time. Football games are

awesome. I have a high school buddy who came to [Virginia] Tech and he has four

season tickets and sometimes he can't make it and he's like, hey I got some free

tickets for ya. How can you not enjoy football games? I play basketball from

time to time at War Memorial Gym. There's a group that has been playing since

the mid 00:23:00[19]70s in War Memorial Gym in the middle of the day, they're called the

Noontime Basketball Association, or the NBA and it used to be no undergraduates

allowed. It was graduates, faculty staff, alumni, and I got invited to play

somehow. I don't know how I got invited to play, and it was great basketball.

Made a lot of connections, a lot of people who work in the community, people who

work in the athletic department, couple of coaches or former coaches, a couple

of former players playing this game. It's a great game, great basketball.

Happens up to three times a week depending on how often you can show up and I've

been doing that for about ten years and it's changed over the years and people

have retired or moved out or had hips replaced or whatever. So playing

basketball sometimes at lunch is a great thing I love about [Virginia] Tech

here. When I came to town here I was worried about where I was gonna find

basketball, cause before it was always like, oh some 00:24:00church in the evening in

town or some, the rec center but it was always spotty but this is, there's

always a game when I want it, now I know exactly where to go. Those are all

things I love about [Virginia] Tech.

Brady: So we talk about basketball a lot, how often do you get over to Cassell

Coliseum and catch the Hokies?

Neal: Sad to say it, I've only done it twice. I think it was three years ago,

BYU came to town and I had to go to that. Then this year I saw them play Georgia

Tech. I have a friend who now works for IMG, the marketing, and I was gonna buy

tickets that day and I called him or texted him to see if he was working the

game and he was like, yeah I got free tickets if you want them. I'm like, oh

I'll take that. So I got to sit courtside for the Georgia Tech game and we won

like in the last second which was cool. I need to go more, I grew up an ACC fan.

I grew up watching the great NC State and Georgia Tech and North Carolina and

Duke and Maryland had great teams and UVA had great teams back in the [19]80s,

and ACC 00:25:00basketball was the best. I went to BYU my undergraduate, I went to go

watch some games and I hated it. I could not stand BYU basketball and that's

where I was going. My freshmen year, BYU played the University of Virginia in

the NCAA tournament in the first round in Salt Lake City, which is only about

forty-five minutes north. And my brother was my roommate and we both went

wearing our Virginia gear, rooting for Virginia to beat the school we were

attending because we were ACC basketball fans. And of course BYU won for some

odd reason, and now I do like BYU basketball. But I like Arizona basketball, I

like Virginia basketball, I like Virginia Tech--I have like four teams I'm tied

to. But I need to go to more games, cause it doesn't cost much and it's ACC basketball.

Brady: And BYU beat [Virginia] Tech last year at the NIT I think.

Neal: I don't think [Virginia] Tech's ever beat BYU, they had a couple of games.

They played three or four times. BYU's had a pretty good team recently. But

[Virginia] Tech's getting 00:26:00 better.

Brady: That's true.

Neal: Buzz is the man.

Brady: He is the man.

Neal: He's a good man.

Brady: So, have you had, looking here at the list, we've talked about all the

really good experiences and the good memories, it just sounds like coming to

Blacksburg really everything just played out for not only you, but your wife,

your kids, your family. Have there been any difficult experiences you've had at

[Virginia] Tech and how have you learned from those?

Neal: What's difficult? My wife's from Arizona, I never said that, that's why

she went to the University of Arizona Medical School. She's from Mesa. Her

family all lives out there and my family all lives back here, so my wife brought

me home, not because I wanted to come home but because she loves Virginia. She

thinks it's beautiful, this is where she wants to live. Which is a blessing for

me, but her parents are pretty far away, so that's kinda 00:27:00tough. My dad died

while I was getting my master's degree. As a matter of fact, the day he died,

the class I was taking was philosophy of technology. I can't remember that

professor's name either. I still see him, he plays basketball with me sometimes.

I just can't think of it right now. But, in that class, there was one night

during the entire semester that you were supposed to teach the class. That night

was the night I was supposed to teach the class. And my dad died that morning

and my brother called me and said he passed away at home. My dad was

eighty-five, like I said, he was older. But my dad was always really proud that

I was getting my master's degree. So every time I talked to him he was always

like, how's your master's going? Are you going to graduate? Every time I talked

to him. And I knew he was going to pass away, and some people want to be there

when their loved ones 00:28:00die, but I didn't want to watch my dad die. I didn't want

that to be a memory I had. So my sister was there, one of my brothers was there,

so I chose to stay and teach that night. And then go up the next day because I

didn't want to be there, I didn't want to watch it. That was tough though. Cause

I'm teaching and my dad just died, so that was tough. Regarding other

challenges, I don't know. Good days at work, bad days at work, but not too bad.

It's been a good place to work, the library particularly. Yeah really hasn't

been that bad, not really. Just family things every so often and I'm raising

teenagers, I mean. There's bound to be bad days.

Brady: Oh yeah.

Neal: And drama. But yeah, not too bad.

Brady: What do you like the most about working in the library and getting to

interact with the students at [Virginia] Tech.

Neal: Getting to interact with the students at [Virginia] Tech. That's the best

thing. I used to be a little bit more involved with teaching, not so 00:29:00much cause

I'm not a librarian and we teach them library skills and I know some of it, it's

not really what i do. I actually miss when I used to do more teaching, but every

year, and I don't know if you guys know this or not, but every year at the end

of the semester during finals week we do free grilled cheese and stuff at the

library. You guys ever taken advantage of that?

Brady: No, I didn't even know.

Neal: If you come study in the library during that week, starting on reading day

night. The night before the first exam. We do free grilled cheese from about 8

o'clock on until we run out. This year we're doing grilled cheese, then

quesadillas, then grilled cheese again. Then one night's breakfast night, one

night's like dessert night. It's just food for the kids who are studying here.

You need something to eat, you come eat, and there's always free coffee and free

hot chocolate. Well that's all volunteers, and I've always volunteered for that.

So my kids come and as a family we come and volunteer and actually Dr. Warnick

has done this with me. We're cooking grilled cheese sandwiches, and flipping

them, we serve eight hundred grilled cheese sandwiches a night downstairs on the

second floor. The kids are coming through and they line up and the comments are 00:30:00like, this is the best day of my life! Or I've ran out of money on my food plan

two days ago and haven't eaten in two days! And thank you! And this is all this

kid's gonna eat, cause he's getting ready to go home so he's trying be cheap. So

he's like, can I have three? Yeah you can have three. That's always fun. Then my

daughters are handing them out and of course people are always interacting with

them, you're the cutest things ever. That's a lot of fun. Because what student

comes through a line to get a free grilled cheese sandwich when they're hungry

and is like, you guys are jerks. Everybody loves us when we do it, so it's very

gratifying. So there you guys go. Free grilled cheese, depending on the night.

Thursday, Sunday: free grilled cheese. Friday: Cinco de Mayo, quesadillas and salsa.

Brady: Alright we'll take you up on that.

Neal: Alright, come. I'm serving quesadillas this year.

Brady: Alright, if somebody just says Virginia Tech, what's the first thing you

think of. You've talked about just how beautiful the campus is, you talk 00:31:00 about

the friendships you've made whether it's being in the NBA in War playing hoops

or just here in the library flipping grilled cheeses, just what's the first

thing that comes to your mind when somebody just says Virginia Tech?

Neal: Go Hokies. That's the first thing that comes to mind. The Drillfield comes

to mind, Hokie stone, football. Pretty much.

Brady: So you said that you like walking about where you're parked on the

Drillfield and seeing everyone on the Drillfield, would you say the Drillfield

is your favorite place on campus?

Neal: Yeah probably. I think it's beautiful, I love having the Drillfield and

it's like an activity field and like a hub. And I love how its got trees that

line the top, I call it the top, I guess where it faces east or War Memorial

Chapel is and it's got the pylons and it looks like it was designed so that the

trees are like a wall and then they hit the pylons, and the pylons open up and

it's like a window out onto this huge wide 00:32:00Drillfield. As you come driving up

Alumni Mall and you come under the Torgerson Bridge, it opens up to the whole

Drillfield right there. I think that's really cool. And I love it when it snows

and they do the snowball fight, which they really couldn't do this year because

there was no snow. But I love coming in the next day and you see all the

fortifications that I'm assuming the Corps of Cadets have built on the

Drillfield for the snowball fight. That's just fantastic, I take pictures of

that, I post them online. I like photography, sometimes I'll bring my camera in

the spring and walk around and take pictures. Yeah, Drillfield is probably. Yeah probably.

Brady: Why do you think that so many [Virginia] Tech graduates, you talk about

the buddy who's got the football tickets and you talk about yourself and you've

talked about the other folks that you know, why do you think that [Virginia]

Tech graduates end up becoming such engaged and active 00:33:00 alumni?

Neal: That's a great question, I've wondered that. Having gone to two different

schools, and my wife went to Arizona and we have some experience with those but

medical school is a bit different than undergraduate. I don't know. I can't

really explain it. It just seems like it's really tight knit, and I've been

surprised how much people talk to me when I wear [Virginia] Tech stuff when I

travel anywhere. I don't know. Someone always comes up to me like, oh my grandma

went to [Virginia] Tech, or my aunt went to [Virginia] Tech, or my cousin Adam

who I love dearly is in Utah, married a girl out there, go to the wedding, finds

out her sister went to [Virginia] Tech. I'm like, seriously? I don't know. I

just can't explain it.

Brady: How has campus, we talk 00:34:00about--let me think about this. I remember coming

to orientation and they were like, there's always something changing out here.

When you said that about the seasons and seeing the trees and snow that made me

think about it. Just what has changed at [Virginia] Tech over the time you've

been here since 2008 and what do you think about it?

Neal: Lot of growth right? What's been built since I've been--the signature

engineering building, the Classroom Building and Moss Arts Center and new Corps

dorms. Lot of buildings have been built since. The Inn, I don't know when the

Inn was opened but I think it was pretty new when we were interviewing and came

here. I play golf, I love golf, I love that there's nine holes right here on

campus, but that's going away. Cause it's too valuable land, so in a few years

they're going to build on that 00:35:00too. What else are we doing? You guys probably

don't know about this, they're building a drone cage down there off of Oak Lane

for people to be able to fly quadcopters and drones in it. Cause the FAA has

regulations, you can't fly close to an airport, you can't do all this stuff. But

guess what? So we want you guys to be able to fly, they're building a drone cage

down there off Oak Lane, it's supposed to be about the size of a football field.

About fifty to eighty feet high. It's gonna be a netted enclosure where you can

just go fly drones which is kind of cool. So that's cool. Change is good, need

to update, especially if you're a university and our job is to provide students

and train them for jobs, and in a lot of cases jobs that don't exist yet.

Unmanned aerial vehicles is one of those things that there's gonna be jobs in

that that don't exist yet. Need to train students for that. So I think that's

great. The library has changed a lot actually, when I first got here the library

was, every floor was just full of books. The main entrance that you guys know

now, 00:36:00outside it looked like it does now, but inside those doors were walled off

and you could not use them, they were drywalled over. And the main entrance was

down in the coffeeshop down the face of the bookstore, that was the only

entrance into the library in and out, other than the Torg Bridge. They built the

coffeeshop down there, the first floor has been completely redone. The second

floor has been renovated and they got the books off of it. The fourth floor now

they're getting all the books off, they're gonna build some stuff on the fourth

floor. This office we're sitting in here is less than a year old. The new dean

in the library has done a lot to try and renovate the library and put more

student services and student space in it. It's kind of nice to see the

university spend money on making sure that we're meeting the needs of what the

students want and trying to grow.

Brady: We keep talking about preparing students for jobs that aren't really out

there yet and how you need to keep 00:37:00changing to keep up with everything. What

changes would you like to see here that's not already happened? Cause there's

always something happening it seems like.

Neal: More library space, we need more space. Build a new bookstore and give us

the bookstore building. That would be awesome. It's hard to really pick it out

because how do I know what ten years from now what's going to be important or

what's gonna be big? If you told me about cell phones twenty years ago I

would've been like whatever. If you told me about smartphones twenty years ago I

wouldn't have thought about it. My dad was born in 1927, he remembers when TV

was invented, by the time he died he couldn't believe I could be out in the

middle of a field in the middle of a farm, talking to somebody, or facetiming

somebody. That blew him away. My daughter the other day asked me, dad what was

life like when you were a kid? Well we didn't have the internet, we didn't have

cell phones. And right there she's like, how did you do 00:38:00it? Like when you don't

know these things, it never even occurred to us, there was no concept of this

stuff. Then you just do it. Here in the library, I feel like I'm evangelizing, I

don't know if you guys ever walked around to see. On the second floor we built

a--it's called the 3D Design Studio, but what it is is a 3D print lab with 3D

printers of different kinds of technologies and it's seriously just for students

to come in and use. Anybody can use it, and it's free. We don't charge you for

the stuff you make down there. So if you ever want to 3D print something, you

find a design, you come in, and we print it for you. And the idea is, people in

architecture or engineering or various places on campus, they have access to 3D

printers, but not everybody has access to 3D printers and you're not just going

out to buy one if you've never used one. How do we expose students to stuff they

maybe didn't consider could be part of their curriculum or their future. So

that's what the 3D Design Studio is for. On the fourth floor we're gonna open

up, it's not open yet, but we 00:39:00have a Virtual Reality Lab. It's got a couple of

those HTC VIVE headsets and a couple Oculus Rift headsets and we have a

Microsoft HoloLens for augmented reality. And augmented reality is something

that I think is going to be important. Again how do we let students who aren't

in certain specialized programs where they might have a class with that, how do

we have other students realize, oh maybe I could use augmented reality in my

interior design. So we're going to have a VR lab. You just book space and come

in and develop for this stuff. So that's what the library is trying to do, so

it's cool to have things like the Moss Arts Center and the Cube and ICAT that

are always looking ahead and trying to figure out what's the next thing that's

coming? What do our students need to learn about? And I love that Virginia Tech

does that. The library specifically, we really try to do that.

Brady: Now I'm backtracking a bit I guess. I know it's undergraduate versus

graduate and we talked about how BYU 00:40:00is a community and [Virginia] Tech's Hokie

Nation's community is different. What was different ways that classes were at

BYU compared to here?

Neal: BYU is a religious school and first of all, you have to take a religion

class. To graduate there's so many credits of religion you have to take and it's

not like indoctrination necessarily, because there's world religions classes

that study other religions as well as the Bible and other things like that. So

there can be some Mormon-centric classes as well as other classes, so that's one

difference. BYU has PE classes, I took a PE class every semester. It was only a

half credit, but it was like my, I'm going to destress. I took canoeing and

racquetball and tennis and basketball four times. Could never get into golf, it

was always full. They had skiing classes and bowling classes and you could take

karate classes as part of your undergraduate that counted to 00:41:00graduation which

was really cool. So I always had some gym time. Matter of fact there was a

required class called fitness for life and it was all about improving your

physical health and that was required at BYU. It would be nice to see something

like that at [Virginia] Tech because students need exercise. Rugby class would

be cool.

Brady: That would be cool.

Neal: That would be cool. So that was cool. Now regarding the other classes, I

don't know if it was a lot different. Your general education classes was you and

five hundred of your closest friends sit in a huge auditorium once a week and

you then had a lab you signed up for in other stuff. As you got into your major

you got smaller, more close knit classes. That wasn't much different. Graduate

school classes weren't much different other than the amount of writing you had

to do. Once you got into your major at BYU, it was pretty similar.

Brady: We keep talking about sports a 00:42:00little bit. How big of a role does sports,

growing up to now whether it's playing sports or watching sports, how big of a

role have sports played throughout your life?

Neal: Big role-- Huge, that was-- no internet, growing up on a farm. We always

were playing some kind of sports. My oldest brother got into it first. My dad

had played basketball and softball growing up and so he was a baseball fan. I

remember growing up and liking the Richmond Braves and the Atlanta Braves. Like

I said, UVA basketball. And then for some reason, I think I just fell in love

with Larry Bird and the Celtics, right? I liked the Celtics in the [19]80s and

we had one of those original satellite dishes that was huge, like ten foot

dishes, and you'd have to turn the knob and the satellite dish would go. And

literally at night we would turn the satellite and everytime it picked up a

signal we would stop 00:43:00it. And we'd scan all the channels to see if we could catch

the Celtics game, who was like an away game and being broadcasted by the other

team. And we would sit there and we would watch the Celtics games that way. A

lot of times we'd get it without the commercials when they'd cut to commercials

it would still be on because it was the feed that they were sending from the

location to the studios so we would--anyway. NCAA college basketball was really

my favorite, then I kind of got into football toward the end of my high school

and going to BYU I fell in love with football because Ty Detmer was a freshman.

Sorry I was a freshman, he was a junior, he won the Heisman. We beat Miami

number one, Miami. That was my first football game at BYU, we beat number one

Miami. So loved that and actually here at [Virginia] Tech right now, our

defensive backs coach, Brian Mitchell, played on that BYU--he's a BYU Cougar--he

played on that team. So I go back to watch it, and I'm friends with Brian now

and I'm like, it's amazing. A little bit of hero worship whenever I see him and

talk to 00:44:00him. So I've always loved it and then played basketball. I still play a

lot of basketball. I love football, follow baseball, gotten into golf since I

moved here. I like golf a lot. It's one of my hobbies, I don't know. I was going

to be a coach, my minor was actually coaching. I took coaching classes and

officiating classes and I won the library's NCAA bracket challenge this year. I

had Gonzaga and North Carolina in the championship game, I called it. And North

Carolina to win, I called it.

Brady: Wow.

Neal: Yeah.

UnknowNeal: That's pretty good.

Brady: Yeah that is good. How often do you hit the nine hole up on the other

side of campus?

Neal: [Pause] I played once this week.

Brady: Okay.

Neal: Right I mean, I don't know. A couple times during the summer, like between

when the weather gets good, I'll probably want to punt over there eight or nine

times, but I'll go over to the hills or someplace else. I played the country

club last 00:45:00week with Coach Mitchell. That was cool.

Brady: That is cool. So, what if you've not said anything that we've touched on,

what would you want people to know about you?

Neal: Well I don't know. There's not a lot special about me, I'm just a dude.

That's a tough question. I don't know. I like Virginia Tech, I love it here. I'm

a Virgininian, I love Virginia. It's a good place to be. Blacksburg's a good

place to be.

Brady: What would you like people to know about Virginia Tech?

Neal: It's a good school. It's a very good school. I hate buzzwords, I don't

understand all the destination areas and all that stuff they talk about, but I

love that they're focusing on, what's the term? [Pause] Oh God I can't think of

the term--interdisciplinary, there you go. Interdisciplinary research or the

focus on trying to get people from 00:46:00different disciplines to work together on

projects, that's really cool. We, going back to the Virtual Reality Studio, one

of the things we've talked about trying to do is a huge project if we can pull

it off. And this is--digital humanities is a great example of this. What good is

virtual reality in a library and could we maybe be a repository for virtual

worlds from great works of fiction and literature? Like if you're reading

Huckleberry Finn, it'd be interesting to be able to explore the town that it

takes place in and the river boats and land if we could build the virtual worlds

to build the world and go into the VR studio and actually experience it. The

Hobbit, right? The Shire, just walk around the Shire for a while and see what

that looks like. That kind of stuff, some of the great works of fiction. The

library, we collect and curate information and it doesn't have to be in a book.

So why couldn't we collect and curate that information and have it available 00:47:00virtually. But for that you need not just people who know the literature and

that, but you need GIS people and programmers and 3D designers, and that would

be really collaborative. And I love that Virginia Tech and President Sands are

focusing on that kind of stuff. That's one of the reasons that we have a print

lab and a VR lab here in the library, is we'd love to get people together who

have ideas for things, but don't know how to 3D develop and get them together

with someone who understands CAD drawings and 3D design but don't have the ideas

of business models or whatever to get together. We'd love to get those people

together to work on stuff together. That's important to [Virginia] Tech. I think

that's cool. ICAT, ICAT is exactly what that is.

Brady: How would you have thought back when you were working with dial up

computers that any of that stuff you just said would have been a reality?

Neal: No. No, it's crazy man. It is crazy.

Brady: It is.

Neal: But I'm not very 00:48:00 creative.

Brady: Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you thought I'd ask or

anything else that you'd like to talk about that we hadn't?

Neal: No, I was just hoping that you had questions cause I'm like, I don't know

what stories I have to tell, so I'm just gonna rely on your questions. I

couldn't know. We talked about more than I thought we'd talk about.

Brady: Well, good. We thank you for sitting down with us today and if we could

have you restate your name and the year you graduated.

Neal: Sure, Neal Henshaw, Hokie graduate, I think 2013. So there you go.

Brady: Alrighty, thanks so much.

Neal: Thank you guys.

[End of recording]