Tuesday Novemeber 11, 2014
Volume 28, Issue 6
Sitting Down With Jeff Wahl Written by Koa Avery Overseeing the College Hill Library, a dual use library that serves both the Front Range, Westminster Campus student body and the Westminster community, requires a mix of vision, flexibility, communication and persistence. Though FRCC students will often make use of only the second floor of the building that serves the students directly, the library’s leadership works in concert with both branches of the library to capitalize on the strengths that each community’s expertise provides. Jeff Wahl, newly appointed Lead Librarian at College Hill, brings with him a wealth of experience well suited to the position. Already an eight and a half year veteran of FRCC, Wahl grew up near Akron, Colorado, a small town in the northeastern part of the state, about 30 miles south of Sterling. “I grew up on a farm. And the town I grew up near, not in the town, ‘cause there are town kids and there are country kids, had less than 2,000 people. There’s possibly more cattle than people out there,” Wahl said. But farming never bit as Wahl’s calling. “I’m a musician. That’s what I’ve been the most passionate about all my life.” Attending CU-Denver and accepting a work study position at the library, a prophetic first step, Wahl would graduate in 1994 with a degree in music composition, being quickly introduced to the realities of striving to be a professional musician and its hit and miss nature. “When you’re a
Photo by Koa Avery
musician, you have to take every gig that’s offered to you, and teach every lesson,” Wahl explained. Regularly working birthday parties, weddings, and funerals, and having to learn the music specific not only to each category of events, but also the specific selections of the person footing the bill for each gig, the hours were considerable, yet making ends meet was proving difficult. Taking on a part time job at Denver Public Library as a shelver and circulation clerk, Wahl would spend about three years balancing the life of a musician and a part time librarian before realizing, “This is not what I got into music to do, and I no longer enjoy this.” Unhappy with the situation Wahl would enroll at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, with the intent of pursuing a degree in music therapy.
Eventually realizing, again, that the realities of the situation weren’t living up to the initial expectations as job prospects in the field of music therapy weren’t exactly a hot commodity, Wahl would switch degrees, transferring his credits and obtaining a music teaching license in 1999. “I still couldn’t let go of the idea that my career had to be music. That was all I could see,” Wahl said. Now working on the other side of the table teaching guitar lessons, Wahl would accept another position at a library, this time at the Fort Collins public library. “It just kept happening. Ever since I was in college, I always kept getting these jobs in libraries. I never considered it a real thing, it was my thing on the side to keep music afloat. I loved it, but I saw it as a survival job.” Though still set on music as his life’s work, finding a full time position in music was still proving difficult. Not, however, in Skagway, Alaska. “I heard they really needed teachers in rural Alaska. So I went for it, applied for the job, and they flew me up to Skagway. There’s one road in, and it’s almost always snowed over during the winter, so it’s mostly either by boat or by plane. I taught there for a year when I admitted I probably wasn’t cut out to be a public school music teacher, and probably not cut out to live in rural Alaska,” Wahl said. “I have failed at so many things. But that’s what life is. There’s what you think life is going to be, and then
there’s what it is,” Wahl would add. Returning to Colorado and, you can probably guess by now, upon almost immediately falling into a part time job at a library, seeing an advertising poster in the break room one day would provide the necessary perspective to shift gears. “The years of working in a library, all of a sudden it hit me. It was right in front of my face the entire time. This is what your career is going to be, and has been trying to be,” Wahl said. That poster was from Emporia State University, out of Emporia, Kansas, advertising their online master’s program in library science. At the time, the only school in Colorado that offered such a degree was the University of Denver. DU, however, had just lost their accreditation from the American Library Association, a key element when considering eventually needing to find a job, though the school would later regain their standing. Upon completing his master’s degree from Emporia State and embarking on his post-musician career, Wahl would work for two different law firms in downtown Denver, first Sherman & Howard, followed by Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, “which is now Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber & Shreck, but I don’t think it’s the green Shreck,” Wahl said. Downtown Denver is home to several of the biggest law firms in the area, and nearly all of them have their own libraries and librarians. “It’s like a
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In this edition... Identity Theft
Spotlight on Alana McCoy
Math Lab
Student Debt Reduced
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