Office Hours

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi, everybody. My name is Giselle Kowalski, and I'm the digital content producer here at Texas State University, and you're listening to Office Hours. Today, I'm here with Tyson. Tyson, how are you doing?

Tyson Taylor:
I'm doing really well. How are you?

Giselle Kowalski:
I'm great. So this conversation was super cool because you got to talk with President Kelly Damphousse. What was that like?

Tyson Taylor:
It was incredible. I mean, if you go to Texas State, or if you just live in San Marcos, you know Kelly Damphousse is kind of like a celebrity in our community. But he was still super authentic, super cool, and really inspiring, so I really had a great time getting a chance to talk to him.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah, he's a very down-to-earth person with a lot of awesome stories, so we hope you enjoy this conversation between President Kelly Damphousse and Tyson.

Tyson Taylor:
To start us off, could you please provide your name and your designation within Texas State. Additionally, could you offer guidance on the correct pronunciation of your last name?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Thank you, Tyson. My name is Kelly Damphousse, I'm the president here. I'm the 10th president at Texas State University. And I always like to tell people that my name's actually pretty easy if you think about the word "Memphis." So "Damphis," "Memphis." Sometimes people will say "damp house," that's OK. I don't get really worked out. It's a hard name to say, and so if people get mixed up on it, it doesn't hurt my feelings or anything, but it's "Damphis," like Memphis.

Tyson Taylor:
Very good, thank you. All right, so at the beginning of our Office Hours podcast, we like to get things flowing with a little icebreaker. So my question for you is if you could add dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?

President Kelly Damphousse:
I grew up in Northern Canada, a little fishing village up there, and there was a national park up there called Sir Winston Churchill National Park. And I loved Sir Winston Churchill growing up, and so I thought it'd be really cool to spend some time with him. He was a little different from me, because he was a pretty heavy drinker and a smoker, and I'm not either one of those things. But I think he has a lot of great stories to tell, so I'd love to spend some time with Sir Winston Churchill.

Tyson Taylor:
Super cool. All right, you touched on already, but we're going to take it back to the beginning. You said you're from Northern Canada. What was it like growing up there?

President Kelly Damphousse:
It was cold, so it was the biggest thing to remember of that was always being cold. I grew up in Northern Alberta, north of Edmonton. So Edmonton is the capital city of Alberta, and I grew up north of there. And the town that I grew up in, the highway actually ended in my hometown, so you couldn't drive any further north than that. If you wanted to go further north, you had to take a plane or a four wheeler, or something like that. And this real small fishing village on this large lake, called Lac La Biche Lake, because the town was called Lac La Biche. It was about 1500 people or so in my hometown. Had about 45 kids in my graduating class, which means I graduated in the top 45 that way, so let people know that. And so just grew up in this little small town.
What was interesting about it, was some people from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and all immigrated to Canada, and many of them came to my small town. And so I just grew up in this very kind of eclectic little town that was surrounded by French-speaking people and native people. There was a reservation outside of our hometown. My mom and dad adopted me, and they adopted another girl who's my adopted sister, and they were foster parents. So I grew up kind of in a foster system, although I wasn't fostered, but my parents were foster parents. And it was very common for us on a Friday evening, for a police officer to be knocking on our door and talking to my mom, and saying, "Hey Edna, can you take care of this little kid who's in a situation going on at their home?" And the kid would just come and spend the weekend with us, and that's kind of what we temporary fostered them.
We had one pickup truck for the five of us in our family, but we had five snowmobiles, so it gives you a sense about how cold it was. It snowed every month of the year. I saw snow every single month of the year, so a little different from Texas.

Tyson Taylor:
Very different. Growing up in Canada, did you have any first jobs before you started thinking about your career in academics, what were your first couple of jobs living up there?

President Kelly Damphousse:
So a best friend and I had this idea of starting a paper route. There was no paper routes in our part of town. So we went around, we lived in a trailer court, like in a mobile home court. And so we went up and down all the mobile homes, and talked to all the people who lived there, and said, "Would you like to have the paper?" And they said, "Yeah, we would," so we got 30 or 40 customers. We went to the local paper delivery person, it was called the Edmonton Journal, at the city, about two hours away. And so we said "We got about 40 people that want the paper," and so he hired us on. So every day after school, we would deliver the paper. Then I got a job in a grocery store after that, as a stock boy. My best friend who was the paper route guy, he got a job at a gas station.
And so I get off work from the grocery store, go home and have supper, and then I come back and hang out with my friend Randy at the gas station. And I'm not kidding, my dream was someday that Randy would quit his job and I'd get to have his job, because I loved working the gas station. And sometimes a customer would come by, and we had to fill the car up with the gas, and this is back in the day when you had to go out there and fill the car up with gas. And so he'd run out there and fill the car up with gas, and I would wash the windshield, just to speed things up. And I would remember thinking, "Man, someday, someone else will be washing the windshield and I'll be pumping the gas." I eventually wanted to become a police officer, it was actually kind a dream of mine as well.
But I worked in construction as well. We built sidewalks and patio decks and basements and footings, and things like that, so concrete construction. And then when I moved down to Southern Alberta in February of my senior year, that's kind of like when things changed for me, because moved to a school where a lot of the kids in that school were going to go to college. In my hometown, where I grew up in, nobody was even thinking about going to college. So I was really just thinking about graduating high school, and somehow getting a job somewhere. But I didn't really know how that would work, but really it would've been kind of a laborer job, or just working for some business somewhere. Construction was probably the biggest opportunity for me, because that was probably the best job I had for money making. But I had a lot of other jobs too, I picked rocks at a farm, a lot of labor stuff. My grandpa had a farm, so I would work there in the summertime, things like that.

Tyson Taylor:
You had a lot of experience before you started picking a career. So you talked about how college wasn't necessarily a front-runner of career options for you, but you eventually did obtain your bachelor's degree in criminal justice, and then you pursued further academic endeavors, finishing with a Ph.D. in sociology. So could you talk about some pivotal moments during that time in college that affected you most?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Yeah, as I said, when I went to this new high school, a lot of my new chums were going to college. And so very late in my senior year, probably like May or June, I thought, "Well, maybe I should go to college like they are." And my parents didn't go to college. My mom went to grade nine, and then she dropped out. And then my dad went to grade 12, and they didn't really understand what college was. They hadn't saved up, they had no college fund. And when I told them I was thinking about going to college, they were kind of shocked by that because it really wasn't the plan. But there was a poster on a wall at the high school I was attending, that had a law enforcement officer on it, and it said, "Lethbridge Community College law enforcement degree." I said, "Oh, I guess that's how you become a police officer, is you go to college and get a law enforcement diploma."
And so I applied to Lethbridge Community College. I went there, and got my two-year, what you would call an associate degree, up there, we call it a diploma, in law enforcement. And so I graduated from high school when I was 17, and I graduated from college when I was 19, my two-year degree. And I was too young to get a police job, nobody would hire me to be a police officer. They're so wise, I was so foolish, I was so immature. They knew I shouldn't be a police officer, but I really wanted to be one. But I ended up getting a job as a prison guard, so I worked in prison for three years. And I had this chance encounter with one of my instructors from the community college, who saw me one day and said, "What are you doing? I thought you wanted be a police officer." And I said, "Well, I'm a prison guard now. I'll probably always be a prison guard. I'll probably retire."
I was like 20 years old already thinking about retiring. And he said, "If you want to still become a police officer, I've got a plan. There's a school down in Texas that has a criminal justice degree program. Go down there, get your two years of college from Sam Houston State University in criminal justice, come back, and I'll help you become a police officer. I'll help you become a Mountie, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer," that was an ultimate goal. And this was in 1984, and my life was in such a mess. I was so badly in debt. I bought a car that was not very valuable, and so I had to get rid of the car somehow. I had a girlfriend, I had all kinds of other problems.
So it took me a year to kind get my life in order, save up some money, kind of make my plans. I'd break up with my girlfriend, all that stuff. Actually, I didn't break up with her, she broke up with me after I left. She wrote me a letter saying, "Yeah, it's not you, it's me," kind of thing. And my buddy and I, that I talked into going into Texas with me, because I was too afraid to go by myself. He had a motorcycle, he talked me into buying a motorcycle. We drove down to Huntsville, Texas in '85, and I went to school, and that's the pivotal moment in my life, going to Sam Houston. First off, I got a four-year college degree, which gives me the opportunity that I never would've had otherwise. I met a girl who didn't want to marry a cop or Canadian, so I ended up staying in Texas because of her.
And that was the best thing that ever happened to me because meeting her changed my life, but also gave me encouragement to stay here in the States. And then I had a faith experience as well. So I wasn't really a religious person, wasn't at all a religious person coming down, but I started hanging out with some students who were people of faith, and they led me to this kind of religious experience. So those three things were very pivotal moments for me in my career. So, I get my degree in '87, I married — met this girl, we're going to get married, she's going to graduate in December of '87, and we ended up getting married in February of 1988. And she talks me into going into graduate school. So in fall of '88, I go back to school, mostly because I didn't have a green card and I needed to somehow stay in the States, but I had a student visa. So I stayed on, got my master's degree and Ph.D. from Texas A&M, and then that begins my career.

Tyson Taylor:
I mean, you talk about how important education is to you, and you ultimately made a move from Canada to Texas, which most likely entailed significant cultural adaptations on your part. Could you provide guidance for, let's say, a first-generation student like yourself, who is relocating a significant distance from home to come attend Texas State?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Just dive into the culture, learn about it. And so for students who are coming to Texas State, maybe from other towns, other countries, the first thing I'll say is just try to meet as many people as you can, your faculty members, your staff members, but your fellow students. If you're in a residence hall, get out of your room, go hang out in the common area, join an organization. Don't play video games all day, don't be on social media all day. Put your phone down periodically. Use your social skills to the fullest extent, and just meet people. And I really do think joining social organizations, sororities, fraternities, sporting groups, and so there's a group out there for you. Just find them, they're your people. And if it's not a group, just start one on your own. There's a group of students who wanted to start a quidditch club, and quidditch is like, I think they call it quad ball now, but it's based off the Harry Potter stories.
And they just get, there's like 30 or 35 of those kids get together, and that's their best friends now, and they'll be friends forever. Your college friends are the people that will be in your wedding, and at reunions, you'll come back and you'll meet up with them. The relationships you're making, your four or five or six years you're at college, are the relationships you'll have forever. The high school friendships kind of wax and wane, and some of them stick around, but the experiences you have at college are the life-changing experiences. And I think people just need to get out of their shell and go meet folks, and be accepting of other people's cultures as well.
One of the things I love about Texas State, is that it doesn't feel like you have to fit in here. You don't have to act differently, like you have to change who you are to fit in. You can just be yourself here. And so I feel like it's very diverse in so many ways, not just by race and ethnicity, but also in belief systems and values. There's no stereotypical Bobcat, which is one of the things I love about Texas State.

Tyson Taylor:
Well, like you said, you had early ambitions of becoming a goalie in the NHL, as well as becoming a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer. How did your initial aspirations of sports and law enforcement influence your decision to ultimately pursue a career in university administration?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Well, the reason I wanted to become a police officer was because of my experiences as a young person, of watching these police officers come to my house and help these kids out, who are probably facing the worst experience of their life. Maybe the police had gone to a domestic violence situation, and the police officer pulled them out, and then brought them to our house. And I just thought those police officers were all supermen. It wasn't uncommon for them, after they came to our house and dropped the kid off, that they would go to the kitchen and hang out with my mom and dad. And they were all young men back then, and they would smoke cigarettes and drink coffee in my mom and dad's kitchen. And I would think, "Man, these guys are so cool. I want to be like that."
But I want to be like them, not because they're smoking and drinking, but because I thought they were really helping other people. And I felt like that was really... That's been my calling my whole life, is to seek justice for people, and to keep people safe, and to help people out, help people get from here to there. And as I look back on my own life, I think about the people who invest themselves in me, people who were teachers, or advisors or professors who didn't have to do anything with me, but they did it because they felt like that was their calling. And I've always felt like my way of paying them back was to do that for other people. It actually came, I had a relationship with a professor when I was in graduate school, and he was helping me out, and I asked him one time, "How can I ever repay you for all you've done for me?"
And he said, "You can't repay me because you don't have anything I want," but I was expecting a little bit more of a kumbaya moment. But he said, "Someday you'll be in a position to help somebody out. I don't know where you'll be, but you'll be in a position to help people out. And when you help them out, that's how you pay me back." And so I think about him every single day. And so when a student says, "Hey, I need help doing this," or a faculty member says, "Hey, I'm trying to overcome this obstacle," or a staff member says "I need some help being successful," or an alumni comes back and says, "I want to figure out a way to help other people at the university be successful, creating a scholarship," I always feel that this is my chance to pay back Dr. Crouch and all those other people who invested themselves in me.

Tyson Taylor:
Yeah, it sounds like Dr. Crouch had an influence on your life that continues to resonate with you. And this brings me to my next question, similar to the question you asked him, how could you repay him, what's one question you think a student should ask their professors during office hours?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Yeah, so it's funny you mentioned office hours. I always call it the loneliest hour of the week, because professors are required to have office hours. So typically, they have three hours a week, and students almost never go to them. And I think that's such a missed opportunity. The professor is not just a teacher who stands in front of class and talks, and you have to write down word for word, what they're saying. The professor is someone who's first off, very, very knowledgeable in the thing they're talking about. Many of them have Ph.D.s, and they spent five or six years studying the craft, and they're doing research in the area, so they're on the cutting edge of that topic. And so they're real people, and they're really interesting, and so you should try to create relationships with them if you can.
In the olden days, faculty and students had very strong relationships. And if I talked to our older alumni, they'll mention that, "Oh, I had Dr. So-and-so, and we used to play softball against each other all the time," and they had these relationships that are a little harder to develop now because the university's gotten larger. And so what I always suggest is if you're going to go meet with your faculty member, first, go with a question about class, so there's something to talk about, but also do some research on your professor. Just Google them up, and find out what the research is about. And then when you go in there, maybe ask them about their research. And for a faculty member, getting asked about your research is like being asked about your kids, because that's what you spent a whole lot of time working on. And I don't mean to be insincere about it. Seriously, ask them, "What is it you're studying? I noticed you wrote this paper on this thing, and can you tell me more about that?"
And that allows them to talk about something that they're very familiar with, and it can actually break down any barriers you might have with the relationship. It kind of personalizes who you are. It makes them understand that you're sincere in wanting to know something about them. And you can really start to form a really strong relationship with someone who someday might be writing a letter of reference for you, or might be asked about, "Hey, do you know anyone who would like to work in my company," you go, "I know this person over here. I talk to this person all the time," not just interesting but interested. And again, not trying to be insincere, or trying to abuse people's privilege and their willingness to talk with you, but to really create strong relationships with faculty members. Staff members, the same way. It's good to know people who work here, first off, they can help you out, that's their whole reason for being here. But also they're just really interesting people working here, and why not add people like that to your life?

Tyson Taylor:
And you were an assistant professor at one time, at multiple esteemed universities. Do you miss teaching college courses?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Yeah. When I was a dean, I kept teaching, and I love to teach, and so I kept doing that. And when I became the Chancellor at Arkansas State, I didn't teach the first semester, but I taught every semester after that. And even during COVID, in fact, especially during COVID, because we were trying to get back in the classroom. And Beth and I had a tradition of living in the residence hall the first week of school at Arkansas State, and I was teaching as well. And when COVID happened in fall of 2020, after everyone moved out, but then moved back in, I actually moved back to the dorms, because I didn't feel right telling students it was safe to be in the dorm if I didn't go to the dorm. And so I moved in there. Beth didn't move in with me because I wanted to make sure that she was protected.
And then when I came here, I asked if I could live in the residence hall the first week of school. They said, "No, we have no rooms left," and so that was a done deal. And I'm going to figure out a way to get back in the classroom, maybe sometime next year, and teach. I love to teach freshmen. So I've got a great class I've created called Introduction to Sociology, and I teach it from the perspective of someone learning how to do college. And so we talk about race and ethnicity, and criminal justice, and the criminology and deviant behavior, all of those are great for learning about life at a university. I can't wait to get back there. I hope I can eventually. This job though is such a big job, and we had so much going on the first couple of years, I don't know how I could manage fitting in three hours a week.
It's not just three hours a week of class. It's probably five hours a week preparing for each class. And so you think about that, you're teaching two days a week, 10 hours of prep, six hours of class, then the grading and the managing all the emails and stuff. I used to teach when I was a dean, I was teaching 400 students at a time, so I loved the big classrooms. What I loved about that, is about one out of every five students at OU, where I was teaching at the time, went through my class, so I got to know a lot of students that way.

Tyson Taylor:
Yeah, super cool. So education has definitely played a pivotal influence in your life as a student, as a professor. So how has education shaped your life, and what does education mean to you?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Well, it's interesting. I mentioned that my mom dropped out after grade nine. She had a really tough upbringing. She was born really late in her mom's life, and so all of her brothers were fighting in World War II, in Europe, when my mom was born. And so she was raised by a woman who just couldn't handle her by the time she became a little bit older in her life. And so her mom actually put her in an orphanage. And she wasn't orphaned, but her mom just put her in an orphanage, she said, "I can't deal with this girl right now." And so my mom grew up in this orphanage, had a really tough time. In the ninth grade, she said, "That's it, I'm out of here." She ran away from the orphanage, and found her dad living in this small town. And then my dad actually had moved to this small town and gotten a job there, and that's how they met in this small town.
And even though my mom was relatively undereducated, she was a voracious reader. She loved to read. And when they adopted me and she was raising me, I spent a lot of time with her. Of course, my dad was working, my mom was a homemaker, and whenever she would read, she would sit me down with her, and we would read books together, and then learned how to read really young. So because of that, we moved from kids' books very quickly into novels, and she would be reading a novel, and I would just be sitting with her. And it was kind of funny, her favorite kinds of books were Harlequin romances. We'd be reading these books together, and they're kind of trashy romance books, and so we'd be reading together, and sometimes she'd turned the page real fast. I said, "I'm not done yet." And she said, "Well, it's not central to the plot. Let's just keep going."
But she taught me how to read and to write, and to do math a little bit, before I went to kindergarten. So I went to kindergarten, they said, "Oh, we got to put you in first grade." So they put me in grade one, that's how I graduated so early, because I could do stuff already. So that led me to always be the youngest kid in class. And what's interesting, in Canada, you're really grouped by age group, by what level of hockey you play. So the five and six year olds, the seven and eight year olds, the nine and 10 year olds, and so on, it didn't really matter what class you were in, because you're grouped by your hockey age, which was the vital thing.
But even so, I was always the youngest kid in my class, and so I got beat up a lot. I got sick around when I was 12 or 13 years old, and turns out I had a thyroid problem, but I gained a lot of weight. And so I became, like over summer, I gained like 50 pounds. So then from sixth grade, seventh grade on to 12th grade, I was always kind of like heavy-set, chubby. And I had a girl's name that rhymed with belly and jelly, and so I got made fun of a lot. People would make fun of me and beat me up, punch me in the shoulder all the time. And so I grew up kind of like education, the academic part of it was kind of my retreat. I was having trouble making friends because I was on a hockey team with kids who were my age, but I was in a class with kids who were older than me.
And so I discovered that it was actually pretty good at school. I didn't have to study very much, and got good grades. I was terrible at math, but I was really good at reading and writing, lots of imaginations, read a lot of books. I played Dungeons & Dragons when I was a kid, so my imagination was always going. At some point, one of my best friends and I decided we want to become writers, like write a book. And we started writing this novel together, and it just kind of crazy kid stuff. But what was interesting, was when I was in high school, in the first year of grade 12, one of my teachers was a repeat teacher, so I had him in grade 11 and I did really good. He was my English teacher. And so in grade 12, I had him again, but I was acting up in the back of the classroom, and he kind like right in the middle of class, said "Hey, Damphousse what are you doing back there? What happened over the summer that turned your brain to mush?"
And it really embarrassed me, and so I was going to leave the class, and get out of there and drop the class, and find somebody else. He called me over later, as I was leaving the classroom when the bell rang, and he said, "Kelly, I know I probably embarrassed you by calling you out like that, but you really have something, like you could really make something of yourself if you stop hanging out with those bad kids and stop acting like a fool." That was the first time in my life, someone who wasn't contractually obligated to do so, said something nice about me. My mom had to, right? But Mr. McNinch didn't have to say anything about me, and he did, and he kind of called me out, and it was some tough love. I wasn't very comfortable to have someone call you out like that.
But I remember going home that night, and said, "Maybe I can do something. Mr. McNinch thinks I'm smart, maybe I'm smart." And that kind of was a trigger for me. I'm not saying I immediately decided I was going to go to college, or anything like that, but it was the first moment where I thought, maybe there's something here, maybe I can use my brain for more than just getting from here to there, maybe I could do something. And it wasn't for several months, until I moved to a different town, when I started thinking about going to college, but that was kind of a trigger for me. And my sisters grew up in the same house I did, neither one of them went to college. And because of that, I always feel like they missed an opportunity that I did, because that gave them an opportunity to do something that my mom and dad could never do. So that's why I think college is so important, that I think that we really have an opportunity to do something that is life-changing here at Texas State.
We have so many students who are like me, first generation, who don't have a chance in this world otherwise, if they don't get their four-year college degree. And that's why I feel so burdened when students come here and they think about dropping out. Like I said, "No, don't drop out. Stick with this. What help do you need, is it tutoring, is it finances? Is it trying to find your people?" Those are three kind of big things we need to pay attention to, because I know the life-changing experience of getting a four-year college degree and the impact that it have on your life, not just your life, but also your children's lives and your spouse's life, and the happiness you have during your life, and the health that you have, and the ability to make a good living, and so on, all those things are the result of getting a four-year college degree.

Tyson Taylor:
It's kind of emotional.

President Kelly Damphousse:
That's a long story. I'm sorry, I went kind of far afield, but really, it's part of my story though.

Tyson Taylor:
Yeah, and I'm glad you shared that with us. Thank you. So you started your career here in summer of 2022. What are your biggest takeaways after two years serving as president of Texas State?

President Kelly Damphousse:
Well, I think that as an outsider coming in, I had a perception of what Texas State was like. And to be honest, it was colored by the success, or lack thereof, of the football team. And that's kind of an American phenomenon, where a university's value is based on the perception of the football team's success. Basketball can be the same thing for some schools, if they're successful in basketball, people can think something about it. But because the football team hadn't been performing very well recently, in the past 10 or 12 years, and that's when Texas State came to my attention, especially when I was at Arkansas State, which is a member of the same athletics conference. But because football wasn't doing very well, I didn't think much of the school, I didn't know how big it was. We're the 25th largest university in the country by undergraduate population, almost 40,000 students, 8,000 freshmen, we're huge.
I didn't know much about the town itself. This is the most beautiful college town in the country, one of the most beautiful campuses. We got this river running through it. We've got this great diverse student population, world-class faculty who are here from around the world, coming here and doing research. And that was kind of hidden because the football team wasn't doing well. And so I felt like it's my goal, my job as a president here, to reverse that idea here. First, let's get good in football, and all the athletics programs that we can. Let's get really good at that, because that'll help change the perception of the university. Let's just face it, being good in football is really important, so let's get good there. And we did. We went to a bowl game. We won the bowl game. We had a lot of fun while we were there. And so that was a big goal of mine.
But also, let's take advantage of opportunities when we have them, to talk about all the other things that are great about the university, so people know about the beauty of the campus, and all these other things I talked about earlier. The percent of students who graduate in the top 25% of their class has increased by 36% in the past couple of years. So we're getting really high-quality students coming here, our alumni are doing incredible things, owning big businesses, and having multimillion dollar corporations that they run, celebrating those kinds of things, celebrating the success rate of students who come here, graduating on time, getting jobs, and leave here, and so on, being fulfilled. Those are the kinds of things now, we need to make sure people are hearing around the state. And you're starting to see more and more of that, where one of my alumni mentioned it to me in a meeting we had recently, and he said, "I live in San Antonio and used to never hear about Texas State. And now I hear about Texas State all the time."
And we were on the front page of the Austin American Statesman a couple of weeks ago because this relationship we created with Austin Community College. And so trying to create those good stories out there, so people start thinking about Texas State differently. And when we do that, I'm actually increasing the value of your degree when you leave here, and all of our alumni's degree as well. Even if they went to Southwest Texas State, now they've got a bragging point. I heard it's had so many people who said, "I graduated Southwest Texas State. I didn't have anything up in my office about it because people would make fun of me because the football team wasn't very good." And after we beat Baylor, I put a pennant up in my office, and then we won the bowl game, like I walking around, it was Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, so I couldn't really brag about it.
But the week after, when everybody came back, I said, "Hey, did you watch that bowl game?" And by the way, that bowl game was the most watched sporting event on that day, 2.8 million people watch the game, which is the biggest crowd we ever got for watching it. That was the most attended event in that football stadium. And our alumni just packed out our tailgate, and packed up the stadium. So I think that there's, I don't want to harp too much about football, but football does play a role. And I think we just to keep plugging away at revealing, I'm not creating quality, but revealing the quality of this institution, is huge for us.

Tyson Taylor:
Well, your journey from a small fishing village in Canada to becoming the 10th president of Texas State University is quite remarkable. Thank you so much for giving me the time to talk with you.

President Kelly Damphousse:
Thank you so much. I enjoyed it so much.

Tyson Taylor:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Office Hours. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. Make sure you tune in next time to learn more about the experiences of our amazing Texas State faculty. Also, remember to follow us on our social media at TXST. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the hosts and guests, not of Texas State University. Once again, I'm Tyson, and I'll see you next time.