Marie was Number 3

I turn my attention this week to Marie Lawrick, who graduated from the EdTech master’s program last May. There are two reasons why I’ve spotlighted her on center stage.

First, most of our online students live outside of Idaho and Marie lives just down the road, just a few miles west of Boise. Second but much more important is the revelation that Marie Lawrick is the third generation of her family to graduate from what is now Boise State University.

Number 2
Her mother, Jean Crumb, was Number 2. She graduated in the early ‘80s from what was then Boise State College with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and has worked with special education students in the Boise School District for more than a decade.

Number 1
Marie’s grandmother, Mary Dixon, was Number 1. She married in 1929 and worked as a secretary and bookkeeper to put her husband through a master’s program in divinity and then, as so many women do, put herself on hold until her mid-fifties when the kids were in their teens and she had time on her hands. By then, the family had moved to Boise, so she attended education classes at what was then Boise Junior College until she qualified for a state teacher’s license. She started teaching at Cole School, which was then way out in the country. The old brick building with its iconic bell tower was razed a few years ago.

And so that’s how Marie Lawrick became Number 3. Unlike most other EdTech students, Marie is not a classroom teacher; instead, she uses her ed-tech skills as a program evaluator and grant writer for a couple of nonprofits, one working in the performing arts and the other with refugees.

“Everything I do, everything I write reflects what I learned (in EdTech) from John Thompson (in EDTECH 505) and Janet Worthington (EDTECH 551),” she said in a recent telephone conversation.

I’ll remember Marie Lawrick for quite another reason.

In more than a decade at Boise State, I have often been thanked for my help as an adviser, lavished with appreciative words, and often hugged at graduation, but only Marie Lawrick has demonstrated her appreciation (or was it simply joy for being finished?) with a quick kiss on the cheek.

Check out Marie’s short video on the three generations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCkK8nbodoA&feature=player_embedded >.

FYI
Boise Junior College was initially called Boise College when it became a four-year school in 1965; it became state-owned and was renamed Boise State College in 1969, and gained university status and renamed Boise State University in 1974.

The link below provides a picture of the Boise Junior College campus, circa 1950s. The campus then consisted of two buildings. The building in the lower center at the time was the classroom building but is now the Administration Building. The campus today is crowded with buildings. The land north of the river is still a city park, but University Drive is no longer the southern boundary of campus, which is now twice as long (left to right) as shown here. PHOTO courtesy of Albertson Library Digital Archive.

http://digital.boisestate.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/archives&CISOPTR=485&CISOBOX=1&REC=3