Matt Harmon:
Busy month of March on campus, and we're back on our Monmouth Weekly podcast. We talk some historic events on this latest episode. And catch up with Urban Coast Institute Director Tony McDonald with University President Dr. Patrick Lehe. I'm faculty member Matt Harmon. It is time for episode number 46 of our Monmouth Weekly podcast. Thanks as always for listening.
It is another episode of Our Mama Weekly podcast. A pretty nice Thursday afternoon at the end, part of March, the semester flying by Spring Break has come and gone, and kind of the stretcher under the semester with university President Patrick Lehe, faculty member Dr. Matthew Harmon, president Lehe, a very good afternoon to you. I, I, I, I mean, listen, we're gonna cover a lot in this episode as I talked about in our open, some, some really good, some pretty stressful. And then we're gonna have Tony McDonald come in and leave with everyone. I'll have a smile on their face talking about the Urban Coast Institute. And, and, and going through with that, I, I, I think probably the best way to do this is, let's start with the elephant in the room, which about a week ago was the shelter in place that took place on campus. I know you've talked about it and you met with faculty, staff, administrative people, students, parents, literally everybody. But I, i, if we can just go back to things that took place almost a week ago. And w walk me through what was probably one of the most stressful days I would imagine you've had on this campus since starting, which is including a worldwide pandemic,

Patrick Leahy:
Two and a half years of a pandemic. Good afternoon, Matt. Good to be with you as always. So, I'm, I'm Wednesday night. I'm here you know, at the house, residents on campus, and I get a call you know, from our vice President for Student Life, to whom our police department reports telling me that one of our students, one of our female students thought she saw someone on campus with an object in this person's hands. And she was fearful that it was a, a, a firearm. So she did the right thing, which is, we always say, if you're uncomfortable in any way, please report that so that we can investigate it further. So she did that, and then our investigators did the right thing by investigating and assessing the, the level of threat. We couldn't rule out at that point that it wasn't a firearm.
So the safest thing to do in, in the interest of our students and our faculty and staff was to issue the shelter in place. I believe that was the right thing to do. Then it, it, it triggered the mutual aid arrangements that we have with the other police departments in the area. They all descended on the campus and closed down the campus and started searching the campus. I think they all did the right thing. We finally identified a subject, if you will, who was another currently enrolled female student. I think this was all public information. We found her, she was quite cooperative gave us all the time that she needed to, to convince us that it was not a firearm. She did the right thing. <Laugh>, my point is, everywhere along the way, I believe Matt, everyone did the right thing around, first and foremost, student, faculty and staff safety.
And then we determined that it was not, in fact a firearm. It was a curling iron, and it was much ado to do about nothing. So we lifted the shelter in place order about three hours or so after we first initiated it. And tried to convince folks that there was no threat in fact, and that the campus was in fact quite safe. I do appreciate the traumatic experience for individuals who were sheltering in place. I mean, I, I get that, that's a very scary time. We were trying our level best to communicate information out. We identified some holes in our communication systems, but you know, communication is a two-way street. People need to be signed up to receive those alerts. So there's a whole effort now to try to get a higher sort of enlistment rate on our emergency notification system.
So I'm really grateful in the end that there was no harm to anyone on the campus, other than I know some emotional shock to admittedly those students and, and, and faculty and staff members who were sheltering in, in place at various spots around the campus. So it's unfortunate in many respects, but I've said publicly overreacting in the name of student safety is a forgivable offense. I hope underreacting to a serious situation is not a forgivable offense. So I'm hopeful that we can agree it was the former this time around.

Matt Harmon:
So, so, I, I know you've spent so much time over the course of the last week going through this. We're not gonna relive it here on the podcast, cuz you've done that in, in many different forms already. What I would ask you though is that you know, as we were getting ready to record today, it kind of dawned on me, we've been doing this podcast in essence for just about three years. We started in the spring of 2020 when I sent you an email and said, Hey, I'd like to try and help get communication out. That being one of your themes that you just talked about and in, in our recordings we have talked about some of the other situations that have taken place on college campuses. Like what everyone thought this could be happening at Monmouth. Is, is that for a university president, I'm just guessing, like that's gotta be, in a way worst nightmare coming true in front of your face.

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah, it's up there. It's the, it's probably the number one concern. I always tell people when they ask me, w w when they ask me what keeps me awake at night? And I say, well, first and foremost, it's ensuring to the extent possible the health happiness and welfare of all of the members of our community. That's, that's the most important thing. The next is enrollment <laugh>, that's the next most important. But first and foremost trying to do our, our level best to ensure that when a, when a family drops their son or daughter off at Monmouth, they have as much confidence as possible that their, their child's gonna be taken good care of. So, yes, that is, and I was fortunate that I was here. I mean, I'm traveling a lot, as you know, in the early stages of this capital campaign that were engaged in. So there are a lot of nights where I wouldn't have been on campus. I would've been plugged in via phone, but fortunately last week I was here. So I was able to head on over to the police department and spend the duration of the incident there trying to be supportive, but to stay out of the way quite candidly and allow the experts to do their thing.

Matt Harmon:
This is, this is one and the last thing on this, and then we'll move on to some other stuff. And we've got Tony waiting in the wings and wanna spend some time with a big event that UCI has coming up as well. The Urban Coast Institute a as you said, a couple of holes in the communication system. And th this is one of those things to me and, and someone who works in essence on public safety. You know, I work on the beach. I've been a lifeguard for 30 something years. I work in the wintertime ski patrol. So you're dealing with all this public safety stuff and sometimes as well as you might be trained until it actually happens. And I always make the analogy whether it's something like this or even in a classroom, calling games and doing broadcast, every situation is different and you never really know, are you missing a piece of the puzzle until you need to put that puzzle together. I know you're ex extremely proud of everybody that was involved in it, but, but it does then provide a case study for potentially something, hopefully not that situation, but some sort of catastrophic sit, sit situation happening again on campus at some point.

Patrick Leahy:
I, I think, and, and you, you probably know this from your experience, Matt, that's why all the, these agencies, including our own police department, they conduct comprehensive after action reviews to assess how things went where there's room for improvement, how we can ensure, God forbid, if there's ever an incident in the future, that we can even, even enhance further the response and the safety. I, as you said, I, I was on open calls with our faculty and our staff, and then I decided to host an open call with the students and their families the next day. And you can imagine the energy in a call like that. And I spent 90 minutes on the phone. Over a thousand people joined our, our Zoom call. And I did that. I did my level best to answer questions, I'm sure for, for, for some, you know, my, my questions, my answers were unsatisfactory, but I tried my best.
Cuz as you know, I, I have one, I have one sort of principle as the president here, which is try really hard, never to be accused of ducking anyone or anything. You may not like the answers that you hear from me, but I'll try to stand in there and address things head on. And, and we did that. We learned a lot. We responded to every single email that came in some with a lot of energy as you might imagine. And just want to try to send the signal to the campus community that we take these very seriously, we'll learn from it. And and that I take responsibility as the president of the university.

Matt Harmon:
We'll make the transition into that situation into much more positive news to talk about before we get to our guest today on our Monmouth Weekly podcast. And that would be something that, that happened on Monday. President Lane sent out a a, an email four o'clock. I'm going back and looking at my emails right now, an anonymous donor has committed 21 million to Monmouth University to support high achieving students facing financial hardship. I'm gonna stop there and let you continue the dot, dot dot of just how I I I would say historic something like this is,

Patrick Leahy:
It's it is historic. I, I don't, you know, maybe that's an overused term. It is quite appropriate in this case. It's the greatest show of pure philanthropy that I've ever been a part of in this regard. Matt, first of all, it's a huge gift for us. Four times larger, four times larger than the, the largest gift to date. It's gonna be paid in cash in the next two years. So it's not one of these structured gifts that, you know, when my grandkids pass away, you might get whatever's left over, you know what I mean? This is paid up in cash in two years. This particular person allowed us to come to them with a proposal that we felt really moved Monmouth. And, you know, you and I have talked at great length about our strategic plan and the integration of excellence and access.
So we identified a whole pool of students in every class who are high achieving by virtue of an incoming G P A of 3.75, but high financial need, you know, mostly Pell Grant eligible students. What do we do to aid those students, to bring them to Monmouth and to keep them advancing so that we can burnish our excellence and our access at one time? They, they, they bought that and, and funded that. And then the last thing, if all of that's not enough, this particular person said, I don't want any recognition. I don't want you to name anything for me. I don't even want you to mention who it's from. And I just can't imagine more pure version of philanthropy than that. And I'm just really proud that, you know, this came together while I was a president.

Matt Harmon:
More information on that is can be found. If you wanna read up on it on the Monmouth website, I'll transfer into our last piece of kind of our news and notes segment here before we bring our guest on. And that would be using the word historic again for a women's basketball team, which made the NCAA tournament for the first time in, in 40 years, you'd have to go back to 1983. A great run through the c a a tournament, winning four games in four days. And you know, I I, I sent a text during the course of the week that that happened to Jeff Stapleton, the director of Athlet Athletics, and I said, well, I, I guess the idea of hiring g bogus just got kind of put a bit explanation point at the end of it. A a source of pride Athletics is, I know for you, but this kind of takes it to a whole nother level on, on so many different aspects and areas.

Patrick Leahy:
Well, first of all thank you for mentioning Jeff. It was Jeff's first decision as the new athletic director. It was actually, we hired Jenny just before Jeff, I think, had been named, but hadn't started yet. But Dr. Mcneil gave Jeff total responsibility to lead the search for our new basketball women's basketball coach. So I give Jeff a ton of credit for identifying Ginny and bringing her to Monmouth. It was so much fun because I had a chance to go to Towson, you know, which is my hometown, as you know. So to be able to, to go to Towson University and to watch the women. Now, you know this, but for, just for anyone who's listening, we go in as the seventh seed. And in four successive days, we beat the College of Charleston, the 10th seed. We beat Drexel, the two seat.
We beat Northeastern the three seed, and then we beat Towson the number one seed. It's not just to me that historic athletics run, but listen to the schools I just mentioned, the College of Charleston Drexel, Northeastern, and Towson. The reason we joined the c a a in large part, as you know, was so that we could compete against other really fine schools like those. And to beat them in the tournament and to get that bid that we hadn't gotten in so many years was just a ton of fun. And was a great, great experience for, for me, it was the first time in my 12 years as a university president that I actually got to cut down a piece of the net <laugh>. So I hope it's not my last, but it was the first time.

Matt Harmon:
Yeah. Fantastic, Ron, and, and huge congratulations to Ginny Boas. I saw Ariana Vander Hoop, who's a, who's a huge member of the team. She's actually one of my advisees and I bumped into her the other day in the hallway. She was getting ready for registration and, and just kind of had a quick conversation with her. And you can tell th those players are just carrying themselves differently around campus. The smiles, despite losing in that playing game, they still have smiles on their face and know what a, what a great run it was. We are a couple of weeks away from kind of the highlight event of the Urban Coast Institute. One of the centers of distinction here on the Monmouth campus, starting back in 2005. And the director since that date, 2005, is Tony McDonald. He joins us here on our Monmouth Weekly podcast, and I say a couple min a couple weeks away from the big event.
April 13th, the 16th annual future of the Ocean Symposium and Champion of the Ocean Awards reception. It'll take place on the Monmouth campus. You can go to monmouth.edu for, for more information. Tony, thanks for coming on and giving us a couple of minutes. The level of excitement we, you and I were talking before we started the podcast. I, I can tell this is a really big event for you and you say 16th annual, that's pretty impressive, number one, but it hasn't happened since 2019 because of covid, so to now bring it back to campus. A lot of excitement.

Tony MacDonald:
Yeah, I, I think we're really excited. And I, I guess before I just get into it specifically, I just did wanna pass on that. I'm teaching a class this semester on Introduction to Global Sustainability, and I just wanna let you know that every student in that class the next night, really nobody thought we overreacted. Everybody was very grateful for what it was. It was upsetting to a lot of them. We gave them the space they needed, but I just wanna let Pat know that just if you ever think that, that everybody, every student I talked to and work with was really pleased that, that we were on the game and, and responsive. So again, it upset some of them. Thank you them, the space to think about it, but did wanna acknowledge that from the get go. Cause it's pretty important. And since it's about the students, you know, one of the things we try to do at the Urban Coast Institute is really try to really give them opportunities to get exposed to some of the issues that are really important right now in our world.
And really, this Ocean Future Symposium has really been an incredible event for UCI and the campus. We have really been, over the years some of the leading national and international voices on Oceans the campus. We have had Michelle Castow, we had lots of folks who really may have made a difference in the world, and this year is no difference. So on the 13th, we're having a, a, a huge, really fantastic panel. Jack Ford has agreed to moderate this, and anybody from campus know that he really is a great friend of Monmouth and does a wonderful job in and really bringing out some really cutting edge issues. So we have five leading experts from the country. We have the head of Noah coming in, Rick, spin Rad. We have you know, Monmouth University. Here we are. We have the, the president and Vice Chancellor from Scripps Oceanographic Institute and the Vice President from Woods Hole coming to campus to talk to us about really an issue that's on everybody's mind, which is oceans and climate.
Really, we, this is where we live. I like to say UCI and RAMAT is really about this living, this experiment. How do we live at the beach? How do we live with offshore wind? How do we really think about the way we live right now in New Jersey? So this is an issue of international importance. It's an issue of local importance, but really one, I think the students will get a lot of benefits. So we have this event, it's four to six on the 13th in the Great Hall Auditorium. There's information about it, it's free and open to the public. So we're incredibly excited about having this event back on campus. And I do need to acknowledge that the generosity in this case. Pat mentioned it in this great news that we had, but also one of our trustees, Leslie Hitchner and her family have endowed this forum. So we're very happy that this is another example of the university stepping up to help support really what I think really creates a lot of benefits for us. So very, very excited about bringing this to campus.

Matt Harmon:
Tony, I figured I gave you a good platform. You, you were gonna ask for maybe some of the 21 million to see if we could even get the, get the event to be a little bit bigger. But I mean, you, you, you bypassed on that. So full, full credit to you,

Tony MacDonald:
Pat, pat knows I probably might ask for something along the line, but not today. But I would say I do wanna acknowledge that really you know, some things that UCI does. We do a lot of these sort of convening events, but we also do give out, we have four of my advisory committee members have set up scholarships of their own. And so we know firsthand that the UCI scholarships that a student who comes to us, three to $5,000 makes a big difference. And this will really change that. It's a game changer, but we've seen it at uci. We also give out funding specifically to students to do summer research projects. So we really recognize the value of this and we see the benefits of that. You know, we also like to acknowledge our local leaders. And so in addition to this symposium, we do have an ocean Champion reception that evening, which is an event that we actually raised money to support some of the students here at Monmouth.
And in addition to Margaret Lek from Skip's oceanographic Institute, Rick Spink from Noah, we're beginning state Ocean Champion awards cause a lot of people out there working. And we have Senator Bob Smith, who is the head of the Senate Environment Committee. Really a great leader in the environment and a great leader for the state. So we're happy to acknowledge the work that he's done for the state. And Tim Gillingham, who's the president and c e o of the American Little Society, somebody who's been out in the field working on the ground level for New Jersey for a long time. So really a great opportunity for us to, to bring what we do to the campus.

Matt Harmon:
That reception also taking place on April 13th that one you, you by tickets for. Again, you can find information on this on the monmouth.edu website. President Le I'll, I'll ask you this because we've had on different people that have been part of the different centers for Distinction on campus in our time doing the podcast. This is I, if memory is serving me correctly, this is probably one of the, the older ones, I would say within the Monmouth campus, going back to 2005, when you first became president and you reimagined some of this, w what did you envision the Urban Coast Institute as and, and what it could potentially be?

Patrick Leahy:
Well, a couple things. I mean, I, I knew about it when I actually, I was applying for the job and it was, you know, one of the many things that attracted me to Monmouth. You know, we have to be so savvy because we are a medium size private university. We, we are not a big research university, and nor do I envision us becoming so anytime soon, but we want to make original contributions to the big issues of the day. And we have to pick our spots carefully because our resources are constrained, right, Matt? So if you look at our centers of distinction, that's what we've done starting with the U C I, I mean, given our unique location here at the shore surrounded by a bunch of coastal lakes, I'm gonna impress my colleague here. My understanding, Tony, there are 16 Coastal Lakes up and down New Jersey, and 13 of them are between like Red Bank and Belmar. Am I

Tony MacDonald:
Right? Monmouth County? We're, we're the center county. Our students are working there almost every day. Pat, thank good for paying attention. So

Patrick Leahy:
Because of that unique location, we are the right place to be studying coastal issues and climate change on the oceans and what that means, the coastal lakes. And, and because of our Real Estate Institute, I hope that we talk about how the way in which changes in, in, in the coast affects real estate <laugh>, you know, so you're now, you're putting a couple of our centers together because of our unique location. We've talked at length about why are we the right place for the Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music? Why are we the right place for a Center for the Arts as you I think know, we want to take our center for entrepreneurship to another level so that this private university can be a force for, you know, public good in Monmouth County. So it's a long way of saying we have to pick our spots at, at Monmouth based on our unique set of assets and our location and experts expertise that we have. UCI is, is, you know, one of the few that really allow us to be really distinctive. And, and let's be honest, and Tony's heard me say this, I mean, it's one of the great issues of our day, maybe by some, the great issue of our day is global climate change and what that's gonna mean for, you know, succeeding generations. And I just love the fact that, that our medium size university is making its contributions to that big international global issue.

Matt Harmon:
Tony, on the Urban Coast Institute page, on the Monmouth website I, I'll read directly from it. The UCI builds on mama's program in marine and environmental pol biology and policy and interdepartmental strengths in environmental sci, business, economics, real estate, public policy, the arts and social sciences. This is something you and I talked about before. We even hit record today. I think anyone would say U C I, urban Coast Institute, you have to be involved with marine biology. That's not the case for any student who wants to have some kind of role with uci.

Tony MacDonald:
No, a absolutely not. You know, as I like to say, it's not only about the environment, it's about how humans live in the environment. And, and that goes from everything. We have given funding to history professors, he Williams to work in Aspirate Park to really understand how those communities relate to the place in which they live. As Pat said, it's really about the place in our sense of place and how we relate to that. We've had a we had a wonderful, the, the provost supported a an artisan residence, Kimberly Callis, who's doing an incredible job interpreting and working. She's worked with, with, with young students to discover their ecological self. She's had created art around some issues. We've worked with psychology professors who are really thinking about how we think about nature and doing psychology and how we relate to the places around us.
So we know, we think there's pretty much a place for everybody at the university to work on these issues. You know, it's not just a question of, of getting the environment right, which is important, but understanding what motivates people to sort of live sustainably understanding really what are the social networks for the diverse communities. We've got some funding thanks to Senator Booker and, and, and congressman and others to work specifically in environmental justice communities to think about planning for the next, next storm and how they can plan for sustainability. So really think we have a responsibility of the communities all the way from, you know, the individual level to thinking more broadly about some of these questions about climate change.

Patrick Leahy:
And, and we too, right, Tony, we, we lead the coastal Resilience Consortium across the state, right? So,

Tony MacDonald:
Right. So, so we partner up with

Patrick Leahy:
A lot of other fine schools, but I, I, I think I'm right in saying I'm proud that we lead that effort,

Tony MacDonald:
Right? So I think that's kind of our model here. As, as Pat said, we need to pick our issues and we need to bunch above our, our weight class from time to time. And that's what we try to do. So I have a fantastic associate director, Tom Harrington, who's a coastal engineer, and he facilitates other research universities who do much more research than we Rutgers and others. But we have the focus in trying to really take that research out into the field. So that's our idea, and that's the way we, we kind of, I like to say leverage our position here at Mammouth to bring people to the table around a whole variety of issues. So we facilitate two consortiums. I'm actually the coordinator of the Mid-Atlantic Council of the Ocean, so five states in the region. I'm the facilitator for that process that's bringing the five states to think about de conflicting offshore wind, not only off New Jersey, but New York and Maryland and Virginia. So that's the kind of way we, even though we don't have large PhD programs in science, that's the way we can bring the science to the table around some issues right in in our neighborhoods and also in the region.

Matt Harmon:
Couple more minutes before we wrap up episode number 46, president Lehe. I'd ask you this, and I think I've asked you this when we've talked about some of the other centers for distinction on campus, what's next for the Urban Coast Institute? What's the next step in the evolution to make it even even bigger and broader? As Tony said, sometimes at Monmouth, you have to punch above your weight class a little bit. H how do these centers for distinction, specifically the UCI, keep moving forward?

Patrick Leahy:
Well, my, my goal is to continue to try to support Tony by generating outside resources. I mean, there's only, let's be honest, as a medium size institution, there's only so many resources that we can allocate to it. But that doesn't mean that any limit to the, to the individuals. We can bring into this donors government grants, foundation grants. And I've committed, one of the ways I can be supportive, I hope of U C I is to continue to try to generate resources that Tony and Tom and, and others can put the good work. So I wanna resource it as well as we can let Tony do his work because as he does his work, it shines a spotlight on Monmouth University in general. And one of the residual benefits of all of our centers, in my view, is how do we try to shine a spotlight on this jewel that we have at the Jersey Shore that not enough people know about? And I'm talking about Monmouth University in general. So I hope that's how we can continue to work together to not only to to enhance what UCI does as an institute, but in the process burnish the reputation of Monmouth University.

Matt Harmon:
Tony, tell, tell me if you can continue that, like give me, give me the future for the UCI in the next five, 10 years.

Tony MacDonald:
I think I appreciate the, the comments Pat. I think that's exactly our, our number one strategy. We've been working on that to bring in those additional resources and elevate our presence a across all the things that we do. But I also wanna give a shout out to the provost panel, Scott Johnson, and she's doing a really good job to think about how we bring in, and you had mentioned this, Matt, we work with the Marine Environment Program and other people, but really look across the curriculum to see ways without that create attractive programs to, for students to come to Monmouth and also work across these issues with the Urban Coast Institute. So we like to say we're value added for every student at Monmouth if they wanna take advantage of us, if we can figure out how to, how to get into their programs.
 We work for the faculty, we give research grants out the faculty to enhance their programs. So we think there is a growing partnership with the academic side, which is already pretty strong. We definitely think we have expanding partnership on sea level rise and coastal resilience directed community levels. We have a partnership of funded partnership with Naval Weapons Station, Earl, cuz they really think about all of the communities up and down Monmouth County, that they need to have workforce readiness to get to the, to the base in the event of a storm. So we are really building those outside funding, external funding sources to partner with us. But I'd like to say those are also pathways for internships for students. I would say that if I would set kind of a objective for us over the next five to 10 years is to be sure that the work we're doing also creates those real world experiences for students to work with some of the partners that we're working with outside the university.

Matt Harmon:
Let me I'm sorry, president Lee, go ahead.

Patrick Leahy:
I just wanna say, and let me just reiterate some of those collaborators, I mean, Rutgers and all the other fine institutions in New Jersey, but you know, Tony just talked about Woods Hole, Noah Scripps. I mean, we're, we're, we're, we wanna be you know, a player in in that world with those fine institutions and, and it's pretty clear that that Tony under his incredible leadership is, is getting U UCI positioned that way.

Matt Harmon:
I'll finish with this and I think maybe on, I'm on record. One of the coolest things about uci, you guys have your own boat, right?

Tony MacDonald:
<Laugh>? Well, it's actually an asset with the vessel, so nothing Oh, you say doesn't own anything. Well, you do everything on behalf of the university, and this is something that supports

Patrick Leahy:
So I have my own boat. Is that what you're saying?

Tony MacDonald:
Z boat. He doesn't really like to be on the boat though. I won't say that he gets a little squeamish, but, but I would say we <laugh>, maybe I shouldn't say that, but we, we do have really the experience that we, we help, we have a marine scientist who is associated with uci, who operates that vessel and make sure it's runs. We bring in our grants and the research we do help support the funding to actually keep it the state-of-the-art equipment and all, all sorts of students get a benefit of that. That's an experience that kids never forget. So it's fantastic.

Matt Harmon:
30 something years as a lifeguard. Tony, I've never been asked once to go out and be like the head of security or safety on that boat. If you need to, we can,

Tony MacDonald:
We can get you out on that boat, Matt, and we can get out, out on that boat if you take me on one of the ski trips that you're apparently doing in the winter. So we can figure that out. We have a trade off though. You

Matt Harmon:
Got, you got a deal. That's great

Patrick Leahy:
Trade. Yep.

Matt Harmon:
Got a deal. Tony, thanks for coming on, giving us some time. Best of luck on April 13th, 16th, annual future of the Ocean Symposium, champion of the Ocean Awards reception to follow. Starts at four o'clock the event goes four to six, and then the reception six to eight. You can go to monmouth.edu. Look up Urban Coast Institute. Tony, best of luck and again, thanks for coming on today.

Tony MacDonald:
Thanks for the conversation. Appreciate it

Matt Harmon:
President Lehe, appreciate you coming on. Talked about a, a wide variety of things today. A a lot of good 21 million deal. Great run, historic run for women's basketball, a UCI event. So, so much happening on campus. Can't wait to talk in in more length about whatever is coming up in the month of April when we record again,

Patrick Leahy:
It's the, the longer I'm here at Monmouth, the more impressed I am with, with what we do. So Tony and the work he does at UCI is one shining example. So I'm appreciate really glad we were able to, to have Tony on to talk about this upcoming event

Matt Harmon:
For comments, questions. Feel free to reach out to myself, president Lehe again, we do our Monmouth Weekly podcast once a month. We'll be back in April. For our next broadcast. For our guest, Tony McDonald for University President Patrick Leahy. I'm faculty member Matt Harmon, episode number 46 of Monmouth Weekly in the books.