Oral History Program Dr. Yu-Jane Yang Interviewed by Jamie Weeks & Kandice Harris 8 April 2019 & 12 April 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dr. Yu-Jane Yang Interviewed by Jamie Weeks & Kandice Harris 8 April 2019 & 12 April 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Yang, Yu-Jane, an oral history by Jamie Weeks & Kandice Harris, 8 April 2019 & 12 April 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Yu-Jane Yang Circa 2000 Yu-Jane Yang 8 April 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Yu-Jane Yang. The interview was conducted on two different days. The first interview was conducted on April 8, 2019 and the second interview was conducted on April 12, 2019, by Kandice Harris and Jamie Weeks. Marina Kenner, the video technician is also present during these interviews. In these interviews, Yu-Jane discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Day I KH: The following is an oral history interview with Dr. Yu-Jane Yang that is being conducted on April 8th, 2019 in Yu-Jane’s office in the Browning Center and the interviewer is Kandice Harris. The subject of this interview is Yu-Jane’s time spent at Weber State University as a faculty member from 1992 to present. Also present is Jamie Weeks and our video technician, Marina Kenner. When and where were you born? YY: In Taiwan. I had my elementary, middle school, high school, and college even, in Taiwan. I did not come to the U.S. until I graduated from college and also finished two years of teaching in Taiwan. The reason I came was because at that time, actually, Taiwan did not have any graduate school in music, and so if you wanted to get an advanced degree, you had to come to the U.S. or some people went to Europe. But, more and more, people came to the U.S., and that’s how I came along. 2 KH: Would you talk a little bit about your early life and some historical background, like how many siblings do you have? What was growing up like? YY: I have a total of three other siblings: two sisters and my younger brother, so there are four of us in our family. Which was a very common number in our generation, and then two years later, it became to two. Not two years, twenty years later, it became two. And now, people may have one. My mom taught elementary school for forty-one years before she retired. That also has something to do, according to her, of my interest in teaching. She said that when I was like three or four, she took me one day to school, to her class. And in Taiwan, at that time, you have about 50 students in the classroom and one teacher. My mom said I just kind of imitated her and so I went on the podium in her classroom and I said “Everybody be quiet!” and they were all quiet. And so I thought, whoa, this is a great job, so that’s how I got started. She also talked about my study of the piano. When I was in Kindergarten, she took me to a movie, Sound of Music, and there were so many beautiful songs in that movie and my mom said I just remembered them and went home and tried to play on my toy pianos because it didn’t have enough keys, so I went to the school and talked to my teacher and tried to borrow her piano. So she said to my mom “I think you had better find her a teacher,” and that’s how I got started. JW: Do your siblings play? YY: My younger sister, actually is a professional musician in Chinese instruments. She plays the, it’s called… Chinese String instrument that you play with your fingers. But then, I was the one who, started it early, and continued with it. And 3 my mother said, in fact, that my brother, my youngest brother, went with me to the same teacher, but the teacher was too strict and he only went once. So, up to today, it was almost ironic that I’m a professional musician and my brother still claims that he doesn’t read music. KH: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? YY: Yes, actually, for Chinese people, that is a very, very important thing. A lot of the families, when I was young, even if the parents only went to elementary school, they want their children to go to college and they would do whatever they can to support their children. That’s almost like a common goal for all of the Chinese families; you want children to have a great education and whatever it takes, you push them forward. However, in our generation, it was actually very difficult to get to college. At the time, because of, the history, tradition, Chinese people were so used to taking exams; that’s how you get ahead. Even at my time, you had to take a very competitive exam to even get into good high schools. So, it’s an exam that everybody would take after you graduate from junior high. And very few percentage of the people would be able to get to their top choice of school in high school. And then, in college, at my time, now it’s totally different, but in my time, only ten percent of people who took the exam would get admitted to go to college. It’s actually a very incredible privilege to be able to go to college at the time. Now it’s much more popular, so now I think the percentage is much, much higher for people in Taiwan to have the higher education. JW: You said you did your education in Taiwan, so you got your undergraduate degree, right? 4 YY: Right. JW: You had a bachelor’s in? YY: Music. JW: But then to go on to grad school, you had to leave the country. YY: Right, right. And also, because the college that I went to, it was the first choice of school in music in Taiwan, however, it’s a very unique school. All of the students who got into the school are tuition free. I don’t think they’re doing that anymore. There’s some, but not everybody. But, at my time, it was everybody. And not only that, people who were from out of town, you’d get free housing at school, and even more unusual, you’d get a monthly stipend as a student. It was so incredibly designed, however, you have one obligation: after you graduate from that college, you are obligated to teach at junior high or high school for the duration of the time that you had education. JW: So if you had four years there you… YY: Then you teach four years, yes. And the thing is, according to the grade that you get in your class, you get to choose where you want to teach. It was really incredible. JW: That seems fair though, right? YY: It does. And, you know, they admitted only like 30 a year, so it’s not that many people and they rank you with your graduation GPA; you get to choose first, second, and third among all the jobs that’s available that year. So, the 5 government actually finds you a job. It’s a really, really unique and incredible system. I think it was a really smart thing, because coming to this country as a comparison; there are a lot of people here, they’re very brilliant but, out of that very brilliant group, not that many will choose to become teachers. And the reason is because if you are so smart, you know, you could do so many things, you don’t want to choose something that would give you the income that’s not as high. However, the government in Taiwan also does something to encourage those people who are from not so well off family, but they’re very smart. Number one, tuition is free. I mean, if you come, you can go to college, don’t spend any money. And, you know, you don’t have to pay for housing and then after they find you the job you also don’t have to pay taxes with your salary. So, it was really, a great system. I thought ‘wow, they were very smart. JW: And, are they continuing to do that now? YY: I think nowadays, a lot of things are not as complete as before, so not completely tax free anymore. Also, because nowadays the other kinds of jobs, they don’t earn as much money as before so salaries are much more equal. And that’s why if you only give the tax free to the income of the teachers, then the other people are, “We don’t earn that much either! Then how come we are not able to get that benefit?” So I think not as much as before, but at the time, when Taiwan was trying to develop, that was a very, very smart thing. They got the best people to be in the teaching profession, so they had very smart people teaching the second generation. So that was a really good policy, but it takes the whole country to be 6 able to do that. The college that I went to, because we all had to teach, therefore, it’s a teacher training institution. JW: They had pedagogy classes also? YY: Yes, they had classes to train you to teach junior high and high school. Also, during the last semester when I was in college, you had three months that you had to do student teaching. Here only the students who are doing music education need to do that, but when I was a student it was everybody. Everyone had to be trained to teach. JW: Even performance? YY: Yes. KH: Where did you get your undergraduate degree? YY: In Taipei, Taiwan. I think it’s a European influence name; it’s called National Taiwan Normal University. The word ‘normal’ was used for teacher training in Europe. Now it sounds really weird: normal university? Is there something abnormal? So it’s called National Taiwan Normal University. JW: When Weber State started out long ago, they were called Weber Normal, because they were training students to become teachers. YY: Really? JW: Because they were trying to do the same thing; everybody that came to school here in 1889; but we became Weber Normal in 1918. But it was to train students 7 to become teachers so they could then go out into the community and teach. So it makes sense to us that “Normal” would mean that you have to teach. YY: Yeah, and I wonder how they came up with that name? JW: I have no idea, because we thought the same thing at the beginning. YY: That’s so weird. KH: What year did you get your undergraduate degree? YY: Let’s see… they have the Chinese year, so I have to convert. I think 83; 1983, yeah. KH: Where did you end up teaching for your four years? YY: Actually, I only taught two years, and then I applied for an extension and then came to this country. You had to teach at least one year to really complete your degree, after the fifth year, after you were teaching the first year fulltime, they give you your diploma. After that I taught one more year. I taught at a girl’s high school; I think it was a Catholic School in Taipei. My students always talk about this: I always wear skirts, dresses, even in the winter and they will always say, “Don’t you feel cold?” and you know what? It was the rule at the time. You just wear skirts the whole time; students or teachers. So I got used to it and I never thought much about it till my students say, “You always wear skirts.” I taught there for two years and I also taught private lessons, I have a full studio of private students. At this school I taught general music classes, and again, I had 50 students in class. Also, I directed the choir at that school, it was really fun. One 8 of my professors at the Taiwan Normal University actually came back to Taiwan from UCLA; she was very ahead of her time. She was majoring in music education and she took back a lot of great new teaching methods. That was so incredible. So I got to know a lot of Kodály, Orff, or Dalcroze. Those are really famous teaching methods used in this country. And so, after I learned that, I thought ‘this is so cool that students are so involved’. So when I taught at that girl’s high school, I started to apply some of the things I learned. I thought, ‘It’s nice for them to get to know opera’. But where do you start? This is not in the culture. I knew that there were a couple of operas going to be done that year in Taipei, so I, somehow, got some tickets to take my students. But I wanted to prepare them; in every opera there are a few very famous arias; so beautiful, and you sing and everything. So I told my students, you can imagine 50 students, and you don’t have a lot of resources. First I got those recordings for them to be so familiar with those arias and then I told them about the story. The first one I took them, it was The Magic Flute. The story was great; then I told them: “Your assignments” I divided all of the students into like, five or six groups, “Every group is going to go on stage” and I did it like a play. I told them the story and they had to talk about the story in a really theatrical voice, the major things about the story. I only had two requirements: they had to tell their story, they had to somehow, with really minimum resources have their costume; they had to build it on their own. And then, during their story, at the most important moment, they have to play the aria. I remember, the students were having so much fun, to the point that all those windows in the classroom, outside 9 of the window were like hallways that people walk—it was all filled with people during our class; either students that were not in my class, or even some staff members in the school. They were all like ‘what’s going on in there?’ and the students inside were just doing their story. I remember they were having their outfit, they’d put like, Scotch tape with things—they were very creative. They had a great time. So I thought ‘hmm’, because before they were taught music with music theory and they had to sing. That’s all. Now, they did that, they did a lot of very different things than all of their friends before them and I think it made a really big impression on them. I even remember, I took them to a music library in Taipei and they had films, movies of ballet and just other things that usually you don’t see. I think those students- and now, come to think of it, they were only like five or six years younger than I was. It was a really wonderful memory and I did that for two years before I came to the US to continue my education. KH: What university did you go to here? YY: I went to University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I got a full scholarship to attend, and also, at that time, my husband—we didn’t get married until a few years later – he went to University of Illinois also on a full scholarship and so I didn’t have too many choices of school. So I only applied to schools in Illinois and University of Illinois was a really good choice, it was at that time, one of the top five music schools in the country. And plus, I got a full scholarship; that was so helpful to a foreign student. So I went there and I had really, really great training at that school. It’s a beautiful school, so big! Now, come to think of it, I still think it’s such a huge school; and it has the best library in all of the public schools in 10 the U.S. Their Library Science is so famous. The library was huge; even the music library. I also remember, even at the time, this was like 1985, they already had computers. University of Illinois also was famous for Computer Science. They had one of the first computers, I think, in higher education in this country. I remember they had personal computers at that time, that you can check out library books already – 1985! I remember, I was so amazed—I was searching things that I wanted to have for some of my classes and I would check out which university in Illinois had that. I think they only had the state that had that. So then, ‘Oh, ok this is the Illinois State University has that book’ and as a TA, they can send the book to your mailbox and you just type it. Now you think, ‘oh, that’s so normal’, but at that time, it was an incredible thing. In addition to that, I was also so amazed; you look for a book, right? Sometimes it said this is checked out from our library, oh yes, this other school has this book’, but then below that it also said ‘you might also be interested in’ and it listed a lot of others. This is more like Amazon, in the 1980s. I loved it. And at that time, I thought that I was going to come to this country only for a couple of years and getting a master’s degree and then I would go home. So anything I had a chance to learn, I loved it. And just like my American friend said, “How come you spend so much time in the library?” and I thought ‘you know, this I won’t be able to get when I get home.’ I just loved every minute of it. The other thing that was very memorable to me, for Chinese students, you respect your teacher so much and then usually it’s the parents of the Chinese student that will bring you lots of presents, gifts because they really want to thank you to really 11 seriously teach their children and provide them with the best education. I was absolutely shocked when I got my Christmas present from my piano professor the first semester. I thought ‘whoa!’ And I still remember today, it’s a green sweater that she bought for me. It was very, very different way of treating- JW: Different cultures? YY: Cultures, yes. KH: What did you get your master’s degree in? YY: I actually have two. I have two masters. You know, because of the teaching in the high school, even though I was a performance major, I thought that was such a great thing and I really enjoyed being a teacher. So I actually did my first degree in Music Education. I actually got a Master’s of Science degree in Music Education. That’s my first degree. Not in arts, and so I did that. The other thing that was so unusual; my advisor, who got me here in this country, after I arrived he said “I’m going to retire next summer. You have to finish your degree in one year. I was all “Oh my gosh, I just got here, I’m not even comfortable with the language!” So I did my master’s degree, my first one, in three semesters. That was really tough. But you know, I’m not like the students here; quite a bit of them actually, they’re working at the same time as going to school. I couldn’t do that; I had to put 24 hours in all of my studies in order to do that. However, during that degree, I continued to take lessons and I had a really wonderful professor that I met there; piano professor that affected my entire teaching career. So, I took lessons and I finished my degree in Music Education and after one year, I 12 thought ‘This is not enough. This is really not enough. I just got a taste of it and I started to just feel comfortable with the language!’ So I applied immediately for my second masters, which was in Piano Pedagogy. That’s piano teaching specifically, and piano performance so the two degrees had no overlap of classes. JW: They didn’t? YY: Not at all. The Music Education degree focused a lot on the large classroom teaching, and also music education, philosophy, history, and all those methods. But the piano teaching was just focused on the piano teaching. I did get to teach group classes for my teaching assistantship. I was so nervous before my first class, because in Taiwan, I had only seen once that piano was taught in groups. But my teaching assistantship for my second masters was I have to teach a group piano class four times a week. For my first class, I remember, I wrote everything that I had to say. It’s all memorized. It’s like, a presentation rather than really just teaching a class. So I got everything all memorized because I didn’t want to just have a time that I couldn’t think about what I needed to say. After another year, my second year, I started to feel much more comfortable with language and I really had a great time just, working with students. And most of the students who were taking the group piano class, they were music education majors or non-piano majors learning how to play the piano. JW: How many students were in this class? 13 YY: I think they had eight at that time. Now you can have so many—if you look at the picture of those pianos, you think ‘oh, that was so primitive’; just like how you look at the early computers, but at that time it was really great because you could wear your headset and, hear yourself, or you could unplug your headset and have the whole ensemble. It was really fun. Even up to today, the principles of the digital pianos, still the same. It’s just, they’re fancier, they have great sound, they have much more weighted keyboards, like the keys. They could have orchestra, like the one behind you, that’s the digital piano. That digital piano has more than 300 sounds in them, and some of them, very real. I can play a little bit of that for you. Some of them sounds like ‘oh really?’ like their flute sounds; wonderful. Really, really beautiful. JW: And strings, the strings are nice. YY: Strings are not as good. Because, I think, strings you have to control with the vibrato. It’s still not quite as the real instrument. But many of them, like the guitar, oh you will be amazed. It sounds like a real guitar and there are many of them. JW: What about an oboe? Can it do a good oboe? YY: Yeah. JW: I think a woodwind might come out ok. YY: Yeah. The only string that I thought sounded pretty good is the harp. You want to hear some of those? KH: Yeah. 14 YY: Ok. So this is – I’ll play for you and then you can tell what it is. [Demonstrates organ sound on Yamaha Clavinova keyboard.] KH: That’s beautiful. YY: That’s really quite amazing, isn’t it? And then flute, ok here. [Demonstrates oboe sound on keyboard.] Oh, that’s oboe, sorry. That says flute. [Demonstrates flute sound on keyboard.] KH: That’s amazing. YY: That’s quite real, right? JW: That’s amazing, how do they get that vibrato in there? YY: Yeah, exactly. And then, the guitar that I was talking to you about. [Demonstrates guitar sound on piano.] KH: Oh wow, that’s great. YY: Yeah. And then the harp I also love so much. [Demonstrates harp sound.] Very real, you know? And then they have this really fun thing. JW: So is this hooked up to your computer? Can you compose on this? YY: Yes, but you actually have to do some editing because a lot of times it doesn’t know which hand is doing it. JW: Oh, it doesn’t know which hand. YY: Right. Or rhythm sometimes is a little bit – 15 JW: That’s the thing I always have to re-edit YY: You have to do some editing. Yep, you have to edit. And here. [Demonstrates drum sounds.]So the students have lots of fun with this and you actually can record up to 16 tracks; it’s like in the recording studio office. And if I play for you some demo, you will see. [Plays demo track on keyboard. Demo utilizes piano, drum, and guitar sounds.] This is all recorded on the piano. Then you will be able to have things even like this. [Plays demo with drum beat.] Then you will be able to have all the beats. [Changes drum demo.] Then you will have all the beats. [Changes drum demo.] And then even this. [Plays another drum demo.] From then to this is already such a big difference! JW: But how often do you do this? YY: Actually, quite a bit. JW: You do? YY: Yes, because you can use this to stimulate the imagination of the students. If they are playing the piano piece, and I say, “You know, this sounds like the bass player doing the plucking “And then come play on this, they immediately get a sense for the sound. “Oh, and this sounds like a flute,” and you play that, before they can play. Immediately, when they go back to the piano, they can imagine so well. YY: The other thing I did was also very motivational for them. I had them first learn a piece. Then had them play on this piano, slowly, because they just got started. I had them play a section of it. Then I say, “Okay, listen to you”— 16 JW: You recorded it. YY: Yeah, recorded it. “Listen to you,” also they listen to the recording. But no, this is much more than that. So you speed up their recording. Then you say, “You play,” and then you said, “This is you three weeks later!” And they say, “Whoa! That sounds so good!” Then they can hear where they are going to go. It is so motivational. I do not know if I have anything here. Let me see. [Plays with guitar sound on keyboard. Flute chordal accompaniment starts after four measures.] This is a student who learned how to compose four-part writing and she did it one voice at a time. But then, just like a Bach fugue, that also has more parts, if you do that, then you can do this. Listen to what it becomes. [Demonstrates the same sounds at higher tempo.] I put it too fast, however, you can hear the final product, that they could not do physically yet. It is great motivation for them. JW: That is interesting. YY: Yeah. Anyway. I do not know how we got there, but we got there. JW: It’s because I came with Kandice. YY: Yes, you had all the wonderful questions. KH: She is a piano player. YY: Ah! That’s why! JW: I said, “I’m coming to Yu-Jane’s!” YY: Oh! Wonderful. How long have you been working here? JW: I have been here at Weber fifteen years. 17 YY: Oh wow. JW: Yeah. But in my other life, I— YY: You were a pianist! JW: Before that, for twenty years, I taught piano. YY: Oh! JW: I have done “The Magic Flute” in the grade school with my fourth grader. YY: Really? Yeah, so you know exactly! JW: The whole time you were telling that story, I was like, “Oh, I had so much fun teaching them!” YY: I know! JW: Just exposing them to opera, and we did costumes, and they performed “The Magic Flute.” YY: Yeah! JW: It was so much fun. YY: Yeah. By the time I took them to the real concert hall, whoa— JW: They knew! YY: They knew! JW: Yeah! 18 YY: And they were ready! When the aria was starting, they were like, “Oh, we know this one!” Yeah, it was so much fun. JW: Yeah. YY: We get to invite the students to bring them to something they had never heard before. Those were great moments. KH: Once you got your second master’s, what was your next step? YY: I took two years for that one. I thought, “Oh that was too hard!” Two years later, I got my second master’s in pedagogy and performance. I told you that I met my piano professor there, her name is Lydia Artymiw. She was a really, really amazing concert pianist. Also, she was a very gifted teacher she did not even know! I was among her first class of students. I remember how excited I was after every lesson. At that time, we didn’t have stuff like personal recorders, and you know, the pens, nothing like that! In your lesson, the teacher would share with you so many ideas about how to make your music sound better, how do you play better, and it was so fast, with my language skill also it was so many ideas, you could not possibly write down everything and she was waiting for you. She was like, “Wake up,” the whole time. I remember every lesson after I finished, I would go out the door, I did not even go to a practice room. I sat down on the floor, right away, right outside and write anything that I remembered during my lesson. She has a really amazing way to make things clear. She was a beautiful player, it is such a treat to hear her play. I remember one more thing: to train my sight- 19 reading, she always sight-read Schubert piano pieces with me, duets, every single lesson! I also remember one thing: during our exam at the end of the semester, we have to play what’s called “piano jury.” You go on stage in the concert hall, and all the piano professors were sitting there. One at a time, everybody played maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. It is an all-day event, maybe even two days. I remember it was my turn to go, and she came out maybe to go to the ladies’ room or something, and she saw me and she was so excited and she said, “Oh, it was so boring in there, they just have to wait to hear you.” And I’m like, “What a way to”— JW: To build up. YY: Yeah. I remember so many things about my lessons. All the musical things, she totally, totally changed my musicianship, and the way that I listen to things. I do not know how she did that, I just remember somehow, after like a year, one day I was thinking, “This is strange. I am listening to every single note like it is 360 degrees.” You hear so many things in that note. It is not 180 degrees, not the flat thing anymore, you hear so much about it. [Gestures a circle around her hand.] It’s like that. It’s hard to explain. But you would know when somebody else is not listening that way. It is so obvious that they are not willing to listen that way and you just don’t know how. My analogy was, “You were originally watching the TV that is black and white. Suddenly, you have color TV, and you are like, “Oh, this is amazing!” That training, since the first year of my master’s degree, it totally changed me as a musician. It changed my way of thinking about music, playing the music, and teaching. And I still kept quite close contact with my teacher. 20 JW: And you still hear her? YY: Oh yes! JW: All the time? YY: Oh yes! Later, when you ask the other things, actually there is a really amazing coincidence on this story. There is an ending that was so unbelievable, I just could not—at the time, thirty years ago, I did not know, that is what is going to turn out and have this ending. I will talk about that. KH: You mentioned your professor, were there any other mentors or resources that were available to you in your program? YY: You mean when I was a student? KH: Yes. YY: Yes. I finished my master’s. At the time, it was a master’s program from the U.S.—of a really famous university. You can easily find a college teaching job at the time. I thought that was what I was going to do. But then you know, I just love learning in this country. And I was like, “This is just the best thing.” JW: You still only have three years of learning. YY: That’s right. And I just thought, “I didn’t think I came to do this, but I think I want to go for it.” Out of the two degrees and the three areas that I studied, I was interested in all of them. I wanted to find a program that I can do all three. I talked to my teachers, and then you know the recommendation, they mentioned about the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan has a really great music 21 education program. Also started to be very famous in piano pedagogy. At that time, there was no doctorate in piano pedagogy yet. They also have doctorate in piano performance. So if I want to have training in all three areas, at the highest level, that is the school I should go. Also, the University of Michigan is the most expensive public university in this country. This is thirty years ago: the tuition for out-of-state was twenty thousand dollars a year. This is thirty years ago. You could probably buy a house with it. I just thought, “Okay, I am going to apply for it.” But I also heard, their tuition, even if you have a scholarship, it doesn’t cover the entire tuition. You will be given some part of the tuition waiver, but then you have your teaching assistantship, and your teaching assistantship, you would have to put that money into tuition and still not quite enough. I thought, “Well, we will try it and see.” Then I applied for it. I had a wonderful, wonderful impression about the school, I mean the music school is beautiful. It is in a very private section of the University, and it has so many trees around it, but then there is a man-made lake, and the music school is by itself. They have a building that is L-shaped, and this part of the third floor [gesturing with hands] is the library and has all the windows looking out on the pond, and then all the trees surrounded it. It is such a beautiful setting. I fell in love with it, and I thought, “Oh, I really want to come here.” Yeah. It was such an amazing good fortune, somehow starting from that year, 1988, they had changed the way that they awarded scholarships, so at that time, if you get what they call the twenty percent TA, you would be able to get full tuition paid plus a stipend. I 22 got that teaching assistantship with all the tuition paid, which is $20,000, they also gave me $8,000 additional money for my work, my teaching. JW: So you could live and have cost of living. YY: Yes! It was so wonderful, so fortunate. They had a union of their TAs, apparently the teaching assistants were very powerful in that school. They have a union. The TAs, you know their benefits, they were as good as the faculty! I remember my dental was just like the faculty! It was so fortunate. Before I applied to Michigan for my doctorate, my grandma said, “You know, all of my friends that have granddaughters that went to doctorate, none of them was able to get married.” Yes, she was very worried. I had known my husband. JW: Right, because you were both in Missouri together. YY: Right. If it were not that. My grandma said, “Okay, it is very important.” Somehow I found out, the family housing at Michigan, they are not only so good, but much cheaper than any outside housing. Get this, in their family housing, there is a living room, a dining area with kitchen, a bedroom that is separate, and then a huge bathroom that you can put a washer and dryer. Is that incredible? Also windows all around. It was just so beautiful. It’s called Northwood. It was in the woods. I remember our apartment. Outside the apartment was a huge hill. This is another funny thing: during the springtime, it was all yellow and green. So beautiful. I was like, “Oh, this is just incredible.” I did not know until I got my first house, those were not flowers. Those were weed flowers that you were 23 supposed to get rid of. I just thought, “Oh!” They were so yellow and green, so beautiful!” JW: Dandelions. YY: Exactly! My husband and I, we said, “Okay, we will get married so that we can apply for that married housing!” That is what it is. So we got married right before I went to Michigan. By that time, my husband was already in the doctoral program in Illinois. He finished all his coursework and exams. He moved to Ann Arbor with me to write his thesis and to give three recitals that he had to go back to Illinois to give, solo recitals. Northwood is a little further away from the music building, I mean you can wait for the school bus, but you cannot walk, it is quite far, especially during the winter, so his biggest, important job was taking me to school. Do you know why? Because the parking was so expensive. Get this: thirty years ago, to get a whole year of parking, it was three hundred dollars. Thirty years ago. Now we do not even— JW: Students, they cannot afford that. YY: I know. It was amazing. They probably were in debt. Others, maybe their family helped, but yeah. Anyway, he would take me to school then he would drive the car home. I had friends who are actually teaching at big schools. One friend who is teaching at University of Toronto now and one friend is teaching at University of Wisconsin, Madison. The two ladies, when we had our reunion at the national conference, they always remembered one thing. Because they were all single at the time, and I was married. They all remembered my husband brought me lunch 24 to the computer lab. And they were so envious. Then, at the University of Michigan, that is another really incredible thing, the school—yes they charged the most expensive tuition, however, they also have the best facility. They have, even thirty years ago, a room full of Apple personal computers. They had thirty Apple computers in one room. You know how much that cost? I bought one eventually, a year or two later. I still remember: $2,400 at that time. You know how expensive that was. This is what happened: before that, I was only typing on a typewriter for all of my papers, articles that you have to turn in. I actually learned how Music Note Processing that you play the keyboard, enter one note at a time and then it appears on the screen. I learned that before I did the word processing. I did not know how to do word processing at the time. So I started from music. That also generated my interest in technology. A lot of the musicians are totally afraid of technology, like “I do not know that, I do not want to learn that, I have nothing to do with it.” I was so intrigued by it. This is another of the funny things: I told you that I wanted to go to a place where I can do those three things. I do not want to just major in one thing. I went to the office, and I told them, “I am now in music education because that is the one that has the doctoral degree,” not the piano pedagogy. “I am in music education, and I am a doctoral student, and I want to also do this, in pedagogy, and I also want to do this, to take lessons every semester so I can continue with my playing.” So the lady, the tech secretary at the school, she said, “You are crazy.” Because all the requirements are different, and I have to fulfill them. But to me, again, at that time I didn’t think I was staying. That’s why, everything I 25 could learn in this country I wanted to. I remember this other requirement: it is a language requirement. For the doctoral student, in music education, you were required to take two foreign languages. I was doing French at that time. It has to be a year of French. And I thought, “I am only going to spend three, four years tops in my doctoral degree, and I have to spend two years learning a basic class on language?” I thought, “That is not the best use of my time.” I told the secretary, “I am already doing French.” She said, “Oh, but you need two foreign languages.” And I said, “But English is my foreign language.” She said, “Oh that does not count.” I said, “How about Chinese?” She said, “Oh, no.” She said, “Well, you have to do either German or Italian.” JW: You could not test out of Chinese? YY: No. They did not count that. I did not want to give up, because I thought, “I really want to make the best of my time.” I said, “Is there anything else that is possible to be a substitute?” She looked at her chart, and then she started to laugh. She said, “I do not think you want to do that.” Then I said, “What?” She said, “You can take one computer programming class, one statistics class, one research design and data analysis, and the last one,” she said, “Oh, your music and personal computers,” that I took, “Oh, that one would count!” So you would do four classes instead of another two semesters of another foreign language. I said, “I will do it.” I was there, very fast, in the School of Education, in their lab learning how to do the computer programming. The language at that time is called the basics. You can type this up on the Internet to search. It’s called “basics,” that is the computer language. That is how 26 I learned. I remember the mid-term for the class. We were required to design a gambling program. You have forty numbers that you can guess, and you guess four numbers. If you are right, it depends on how much you have to wage, your money accumulates, and if you lost, you know—You have to decide all of those. People will randomly select four numbers and then what happens here. I had a great time. I really did. I told my husband, “If I were not doing the music, I think I would do this so well.” I probably should have changed right then, knowing how it developed later, you know. I think this is what got me so intrigued: with your computer programing language, what are you doing as the designer? You are trying to fix bugs. You let it run and then see that is not working. I am looking at where that has any little thing that is not making that run smoothly. To find the bugs, to fix it. I just loved it. For the final, we had to design something that would move, with color, around the screen. Now you think of it like, “Oh my gosh, that was so absolutely primitive” with the thing that we have on the computer. But at the time, even that was really tricky, and you have to write your programming language to do that. So I had my flying horse across the screen. It was really fun. I also got to take a statistics class in the doctoral program of the school of education. It really is amazing now to think back. I do not know why I got the courage to even say yes to those things. Probably because I did not know how hard it was. However, as a foreign student, I think all the struggle and all the challenges during my early time as a master’s student really helped. At that time, during my master’s, I remember, in order to survive, I recorded every one of my lecture classes. And 27 after each class, I would borrow my classmates’ notes, then I went home to listen to the lecture, with the other peoples’ notes, then take my own notes. I do not know how I thought about that, but that experience just amazingly helped me with so many ways that I did not have any idea. First of all, those professors at the University of Illinois, they were such amazing scholars. One of my professors in piano literature, all the statements that came out of his mouth, were so beautiful and so well-crafted. It is almost like things that you read from your books that it took people so long to think and to put it so beautifully, but to him, it was just so natural. I had the recording for every lecture. To write the complete sentence from the lecture, every single sentence I probably had to listen to that ten times. In order to write down completely. Even with my friends’ notes. However, all those underlying benefits that I didn’t know: first of all, my listening got so much better because every phrase I could hear ten times. Second, at the end of the semester, I had the most complete notes in the entire class that my American friends came to borrow my notes, that’s the second one. Third, because of the way that he was talking, with such beautiful language, I also learned from writing down all those sentences how to write well. All those things that I did not know. I remember this particular tape. It was tape at the time, cassette tape. Every tape would take me three hours to finish. In a one hour lecture class, I need to spend three hours to transcribe. I did that. I did that entirely for two, three years every single day. I remember one lecture in particular that is so memorable to me. The professor was talking about French music. He was talking, pronouncing in French about all the titles and everything. 28 It was like having a double whammy. I remember listening to the particular cassette, it took me eight hours. It was a Saturday, and by the time I finished that cassette tape, I was ready to scream. Somehow, one little bit at a time, it all changed me so much, with my language skill and everything. By the time that I went to Michigan, one day, this was three years after I came to the States, I suddenly realized that I was not doing the translation anymore. Before, when you hear a sentence, you translate that into Chinese. And then you have to answer that back in English. I was doing that constantly. Then, that day, I just realized, I am listening as it comes in. I was not doing the Chinese translation anymore. It was like, “Oh!” An amazing day! I thought, “Hm, maybe now I will start to dream in English!” How all of this relates was it came back when I went to take the statistics class. I thought, “Okay.” That is how I knew to survive. I should just do the leg work, make sure that I spent that much time studying something that is foreign. I recorded my statistics classes again. It was such a heavy class. We met four hours for the lecture. Another three hours for the lab. It is incredible with the heavy load. Then I have so many hours of the day to listen and to transcribe. I still did that. I remember, it was like the whole semester, I never went to bed before 3 A.M. JW: How did you even stay married? YY: This is what I did. Every night, I would go home to cook. At about six o’clock. That is my break. Then after that, I went back to the school, and practice. I went to the library first because the library closed at 10 P.M. Then I went to my teacher’s studio. She gave me a key so that I could practice there from ten to 29 twelve, every night. Then my husband picked me up, and I went home and I started my tape with statistics. Every night. There were nine people from the doctoral program in School of Music who went to take that statistics class. I was the only foreign student. By midterm, everybody gave up because it was so hard. But I was so familiar with being frustrated. I was so familiar with that feeling. It wasn’t something foreign to me. But it was to them. They had never had that kind of frustration, not knowing what is going on in the class. You cannot understand what the teacher was talking about, even though they are talking in English! I knew that is where I was supposed to be, so I was just keep going and keep doing it. By the end of the semester, I was the only person among those nine doctoral students who got an A in statistics. That is only because of the time that I spent and also because of the really “dumb” experience that I had, I had to listen to the tape again, treat it like a foreign language. I remember finishing that class. I told my husband, “Take me somewhere. Just go.” I had enough of those intense things. We drove from Michigan to Florida. We went to Disney World. I thought, “I deserve this!” Seriously, as a student, every bit of notes is helpful for my teaching. When the students are thinking, “Oh, this is so hard, I cannot do that,” then you have a real experience, how you survive, how you overcome, how you get your victory to share with them. It is not something that is just talked about, it is something you totally experience. Share it with them, some of those things, especially with the students that I thought that, “You really are not working hard enough.” Every bit of it really, really helped. 30 KH: When did you finish your doctoral program? YY: Okay, that is another funny story. My husband finished his doctorate in 1990. He got a job the same year he finished his doctorate. There are not too many violin-teaching jobs that year. He got an interview at Central Michigan University, which is in the middle of Michigan, and I went to the campus interview with him, and I said, “Not this school.” Do you know why? JW: Was it ugly? YY: No! Their biggest department store was J.C. Penney. I said, “Not this school!” That year, he got a job at Weber State. I was still at Michigan. I was at least one, one-and-a-half years away from my degree. He moved to Utah. He started teaching in the fall of ’90. By the end of ’91, that fall semester, I was ready to move here, because I am done with all the classwork, and the only thing left for me, and I finished my recital, the only thing left for me to do was my dissertation, and I thought, “I could write that anywhere.” Then, I was already planning on it, and just amazing, they have a new position open here, in the same department, for piano. I applied for it, and eventually got the job. They were trying to be so fair with all the candidates that my husband was not on the committee. He did not know what they were going to give me as the assignment to prepare. Anyway, after all those, this is the funny thing, my colleague, Mark Henderson, who is the choir director, at first Mark told me, this is all after I came. He said, “At first, I thought, ‘Hm,’” you know, that he wanted to make sure and try to know what I could do. He said he went to see my resume, and he saw my 31 transcript, from the University of Illinois, and there was a class that was required for all the graduate students. It is called “Problems and Methods.” It is a research class. He saw I got an A in that class. It was a really, really hard class and everybody was so afraid of it, and we would joke about this, the teacher was so well-known. He was a writer for Grove Music Dictionary. He was so strict if you wrote papers that were not to his liking, he would give your paper back, throw it into the trash can. You would pick it up from the trash can. Seriously. You would never get away for that now. You could never do that. But at that time. Mark said he got a B. JW: Then he knew you were better. YY: Then he knew, yes. He said, “Mm.” Then I got that job and I started teaching January of 1992. JW: I do not know why, I did not realize you had been here that long. YY: You know what, it did not feel that long. It did not feel like it is that long. This is funny, I was on the committee, I do not know whether you know Rick— JW: Ford. YY: Ford, I was on the committee with Rick. I never had been on the committee with him before. One day, he and I, and our dean Scott Springer. We were doing our subcommittee work together in the dean’s office. He casually said, “How long have you been at Weber State?” I told him, “Twenty-six years.” He said, “You started teaching when you were five?” It really did not feel like that long. I remember When my first teaching piano, that was before Browning Center got 32 renovated. My first teaching piano was a Yamaha upright that had a broken leg. I still kept a picture of that, yes. So that when later, when we became all Steinway school, I mean that is more than a dream. It’s like, you did not think that would ever be possible, even in your next life, starting from that. To build a program, make it where it is today, it is way beyond my dream. I told my students, when I was young, I had two dreams that I had to do, when I was really young. They all said, “To get a Steinway piano?” I said, “Yes, but that is the second one.” They said, “What is the first one?” I said, “Well, my first dream was—in Taiwan—go to Disneyland.” At that time, it was so hard to get out of the country. The government did not let anybody just get out of the country. If you do not have a student visa, if you did not have government business, you do not go out of the country. It was my dream. When I came here for my master’s, guess where I went first. And you know, I went to Disneyland before I went to the school. Then I got my first Steinway, my own Steinway, the year that I finished doctorate. It was like, “Yes,” two things. But I still did not imagine I would have this many Steinways pianos. It is everywhere. KH: What was Weber State like when you started? YY: Well, like what I just told you, my students at that time, now when I see them, they still remember, I was teaching almost in a closet. It was in a very small room, right by their listening lab, it is on that side [gesturing to north] of the building, very far back. It really was a Berong Yamaha upright, has a broken leg. JW: How many practice rooms did they have then? 33 YY: Not many, None. In fact, this is another incredible. During the year that we were renovating the building, two years, we had one practice room. To talk about the students about that, we just wonder about how we survived. I remember they moved me to Union Building. JW: That horrid piano in the Union Building? YY: They eventually got a grand piano, eventually, by the time we moved out. One day, I went from Union Building, fourth floor, back home. I had such a terrible headache that day, and I did not know why. Then I just realized. I had been listening to my colleague was right behind me. There is no sound proofing. So you are listening to two different keys all day long. It was like, “This is absolutely incredible,” and we had one practice room, and somehow the program survived. Yeah! I still have all those students. In fact, one of my first students, she came back to take lessons this year after having six children. She was such a lovely, lovely person and a really great musician and a really fantastic teacher. After her youngest were in elementary school, she just called me, she said, “I am ready to go back.” She is coming every week to take lessons, and she is practicing two, three hours a day. I was just talking to her. It is like, “How did we survive with those years?” KH: How has the music program changed over time? YY: Oh, a lot! At the beginning, we had a music program, but it really was not something big, or something to be proud of. JW: Did they have a Bachelor’s in Music? When you came here? 34 YY: Yes. They had a Bachelor’s of Arts at that time. I think we had the Bachelor’s of Music not until ’98. My piano colleague, she came here earlier, she was the head of the piano area at that time, so she had much better students. We joke about this, she had students who were married, quite a few of them, and there was usually some kind of an excuse why they could not come to lessons. YY: She and I joke about this so much: one day, this was the reason that the student could not come. “I have to dress my husband up for hunting season.” This was outrageous. We joked about having this on her door: all the excuses that have been used before, if your excuse has been used before, you cannot use it again. I told my students, my first group of students, “If you want to be any good at all, you have to at least practice two hours a day.” They were like, “Two hours a day?” They just could not believe the work they need to put in. When I came in, I was judging a lot of the competitions in the state. Why? Because none of the Weber State students were good enough to even participate. So I was judging so much. JW: Did we have Gina Bachauer back then? YY: Oh yeah. But Bachauer usually is for more professional pianists, higher-level, but I am even talking about just the state-level competition. Among the college students, nobody could do that from Weber State. Yes, we had a program, but nothing is really high level at that time. It took quite a while, actually, at least ten, twelve years for me to teach students who are not at any very good level. However, to think back, I also told my students, “Everything in your life has a purpose, you just do not know it at the time.” Also, “Anything, regardless of 35 positive or negative, you will learn something from it that is going to benefit you.” I said, “Even if you had a bad teacher when you were young, you learned what not to do when you become a teacher. Also you learn to survive on your own, so you figure out things on your own. If you have a great teacher that can guide you from the beginning, so effectively, well you are very lucky!” “But then, on the other hand, you never had the struggle. Therefore, you may not know how to help other people.” That is what I told them. I think having the program that was not built up, it was frustrating at times, but it actually helped me to learn a lot from this process. Then you feel like, “Yes, I have done something.” Rather than, I mean, you came in with such amazing facility and everything is all set for you. JW: Right. Then you have nowhere to go. YY: Yeah. You did not make your mark. I remember, The Music Teachers’ National Association—that is our professional organization and it is like 26,000 members in the whole country. There is a state organization that is in charge of everything in the state, and every local chapter, there is an Ogden chapter, a Bountiful, Davis chapter. In that competition, which I judged a lot at the beginning, to prepare competition for this MTNA in the state, you had to prepare almost a one-hour program non-stop. Our students were only playing two short pieces, maybe ten minutes at a time. That is how far we were apart. Because the level of the students were not so high, I had to solve a lot of problems with them. Therefore, I think it built me as a teacher. You have to find solutions for all of their problems to help them to get better. Over the years, we did turn out some decent students after four years. Then I continued to go back to Asia to recruit and to also teach 36 master classes. My first foreign student came from China, and her name is Miranda Wu. So many incredible things come together when you think back now and you see how it evolves. I met Miranda in 2005. The University orchestra went to a tour in China, so the whole orchestra went, and also several faculty members. There was me, my husband, Dr. Michael Palumbo, and several other faculty members who went on the tour. During this trip, we visited Xi’an, do you know the Terra Cotta soldiers? JW: We know them. YY: Right. It is one of their most ancient cities in China. We went to Xi’an and did a performance and a master class at Xi’an Conservatory. In that piano master class, they put three students who played for me from their pre-college program. I asked Miranda at that time, she played for me, and she was so good, and the teacher said she was the first, top student in the Conservatory pre-college program. I ask her, “How many students are in the Conservatory?” You know how many? In music? Four thousand in music! We had under two hundred. To be able to rise to the top that is very hard. She played very well. After she played for me, I was so impressed, I said, “We have never had any students like this at Weber State!” I said, “Do you want to go to study in the States?” She said, “Oh— my family would never be able to afford this.” She said, “My family is very poor.” I said, “Could you make recordings and put them on a DVD that I can take back?” We stayed there for a few days, and she did have recordings, so she brought me a DVD. I came back to Weber State. I had her DVD, I first went to show the dean. The dean said, “Oh, that is very nice,” because she went to the trip with us. 37 JW: Who was the dean? YY: June Phillips. She toured with us, she said, “Oh, this is very nice.” But that is it. She didn’t—you know? Then I went to Michael Palumbo, and I said, “So Mike, what can I do to have her come?” At that time, Weber State had no scholarship for foreign students. Not at all. Then, a couple weeks later, I got a call from Seshachari. Sesh called, he was a good friend. Sesh said, “So Yu-Jane, I heard that you got a DVD of a piano student?” I said, “Yes, how did you hear that?” He said, “Oh, I was at a party with the dean,” and he was also in English, “With June, and I was also with Carol Hurst.” He told me that he heard from the two of them. I said, “Are you interested?” He said, “Yeah!” I said, “Do you want to come over?” He came over. It was a Sunday morning. He came over for breakfast. After the breakfast, I played that on my computer. After Sesh heard Miranda play a few pieces, Sesh said, “Okay.” Then he got out his checkbook. And he wrote $500. I said “Sesh.” He said, “In this many years that I have known you, I have never seen you so excited about a prospective student.” He said, “I want to help.” I said, “Sesh, it is so nice of you. But Sesh, it costs $10,000 a year for out-of-state tuition” at the time. Sesh said, “Oh, it does not matter.” I said, “But how am I going to get the rest of the money?” He said, “You just go see a few people.” I said, “Who?” So he wrote me a list. I said, “Sesh, I do not know any of them.” He said, “Do not worry. You just go see those people, and you show them the DVD, and you tell them what you want to do, and you say Sesh gave you $500.” By that time, it was the end of spring semester. Not much time left. I was ready to go back to Taiwan. I thought, “Okay!” I went and saw a few people that I have never 38 met. I told them exactly what Sesh said, I showed them the DVD, and I said, “Sesh gave me $500.” It was so strange— JW: Everybody matched it? At least? YY: Everyone gave me $500. JW: That is such a great deal. YY: So in three days, I raised $7,400. Just from people. Since I thought, “Oh, this is working,” I also call a few people that I know. One of them, Carol Hurst. Carol said, “Okay, Dean and I will do five hundred!” In three days, $7,400. Then I got so brave. At that time, I thought, “Okay, I have one more day left before I go and fly back to Taiwan. I have to get this.” Then, I got so brave, and I called the Provost’s office. By that time, I had never really met Mike Vaughan in person. I had never met him, talked to him or anything, but I just called his office. The secretary asked me what I am seeing him for. I said, “Well, I have a student that I would like to bring from China.” Then, okay, made the appointment, went to the provost’s office the very first time. By the time I got there, the computer is set up and the DVD player is set up. Mike came out, and he said, “Oh, I heard you want to bring a student from China.” I said, “Yeah!” I said, “This is the DVD, would you like to listen to it? It has Bach, Beethoven, Liszt,” and I told him several pieces. I said, “Which one would you like to hear first?” He said, “Oh, let’s start with Bach.” I go, “Whoa, very impressive!” Usually, a lot of people would say, “Liszt, maybe?” I thought, “Wow, he is really unusual!” I play the Bach, and then I play the Beethoven, and I play 39 the Liszt. After he heard it, I said, “I raised $7,400.” I told him what I had done. He said, “Okay.” You know Mike. You never could tell what he is thinking. He went into the office. The only thing I could see was he picked up his phone. Then in about two minutes, he came out, and he said, “You have got your money.” I said, “How much?” He said, “The rest of it.” Then we got that $10,000. I said, “Oh, thank you, thank you!” He said, “What are you going to do next year?” I am very inexperienced in fundraising. I was already so happy that we would get that. So I said, “I hope those people who helped her this year will be willing to help her again next year.” Seriously, this is what he said: “Wrong answer.” I was like, “Oh! Why?” He said, “Usually when you ask money from people, people do not want you to go back again.” Then I thought, that is pretty interesting. I got brave. I said, “Maybe after they heard her play, maybe after you hear her play, you will want her to stay!” He smiled. JW: What year is this? YY: This is 2005. I was ready to fly back to Taiwan. I got my $10,000. In China, they had this rule, unless you got the I-20, otherwise you cannot buy ticket to fly to the U.S. You had to get your I-20 first. I went back to Taiwan, and I came back the end of June. I call the school International Office, I said, “Have you sent the I- 20?” They said, “Oh! Not yet.” I go, “You have to do that fast, because otherwise there is not enough time!” They send the I-20, so Miranda went to make an appointment. This is really incredible: she was seventeen at the time. In Xi’an, they cannot just have the student visa in Xi’an. She had to go to Beijing. Because 40 her family was so poor, she could not fly. She had to take the train. You know how long the train was? Fourteen hours, one way. She went to Beijing on her own. She made the appointment, then finally got her appointment with Beijing. Then she came back. I had not heard from her for three days. I knew when she was doing that, for three days I do not know what is going on. I call her, and at the time, in China, they do not even have land-lines! Her family was so poor, they did not even have land-lines! I had to call somewhere, those people would go find her! I call, and I got ahold of her, and I said, “Miranda, what is going on?” She says, “Dr. Yang, I am so sorry, they denied my application.” I said, “Why? Didn’t you tell them you have a scholarship?” She said, “Yes, but they still denied me.” She said, “Oh, they gave me this paper.” I said, “Okay, what is on your paper?” There were so many English words, I said, “Can you fax that to me?” She did. So I can see them on the fax, it says, her family was too poor. They were afraid that she was not going to be able to support herself after she came here. They were also like, “Her family does not have a house, her mother does not have a job, they do not even have to have a car,” just all those reasons on there that they did not think she would be able to support herself. I was like, “I thought the hardest thing to get her here was the money.” And now we have raised the $10,000, no student! I called a friend who was working in China, in Shanghai. I said, “Can you tell me what is the next step? What should we do?” She said, “You could ask your school to write another letter and see whether she could do that and go to have the interview again to see whether they 41 would be willing to let her have a visa.” She said, “However, you must know this: if you interview three times at the American Embassy, and you got denied, you will never get a visa to the U. S. for the rest of your life.” I go, “Oh my gosh,” so I sat there for a few hours, and I thought, “But if I do not do anything, that is it.” This is what happened next: I called the International Student Office and said, “Can you write a letter to at least tell them how the student will be supported?” and things like that. The director at the time—they eventually did not do the letter, “Because,” they told me, “The Embassy will be afraid of her staying in this country and not go home.” I go, “Okay, then we are back to square one.” Then I said, “Okay, I am going to write a letter.” I wrote a letter, and in the letter I said how I met the student, what I saw her potential is, what I think she can learn in the U. S., and what I think she can contribute when she goes back. There are so many things she will be learning here that they do not have. After that, I do not know where to send this letter. I just searched, and there is a fax number of the U. S. Embassy in Beijing. I just faxed that letter, also I faxed that letter to Miranda. I said, “Miranda, you go make another appointment and see whether you can get another interview. We have to practice so that you can answer all the questions.” I just guessed the questions that they would ask her in English, and I would practice with her on the phone. Since she was not planning to come to the U.S., she had some language skill, but not much. We practiced and practiced and then she made an appointment again, second time, at the Embassy. Went 14-hour ride, again. Miranda called, and the person told her she would have to wait four months. 42 Miranda said, “Oh, but the school is starting August 24th.” The person was very kind on the phone, she said, “Let me check.” Then she told Miranda, “Oh, somebody cancelled an appointment! Can you be here in three days?” She went back. That is August 8th. I still remember that. I knew that she was going to Beijing again to that interview. I was so nervous, because I thought, “My friend said, ‘Only three times in her whole life!’” That night, I thought to myself, “I am going to go to bed first, because that is the time she is going to have her interview, and then next morning, when I wake up, I will check with her. At least I get my sleep.” Almost at 2 A.M., the phone rang. I pick up the phone, nothing. And then it rings again. I go, “Who is making this joke?” Then, I realized finally it was a fax. I went to the fax machine and here is this paper coming up. At the top I could see “U. S. Embassy in Beijing.” Then there were a few lines not clear. Then several lines later, there is that statement that says, “Visa issued.” Then there is the date issued, check mark. Waking up in the middle of the night, thinking, “That could not be real.” Because you know, if I were governor of Utah, they could probably do something like this and let me know. So who am I? My first thought was my friend who is in Shanghai is just playing a joke, so I thought, “Okay, I am going to have to call her.” I call Miranda in the middle of the night. When we got connected, I could hear her screaming: and she said, “Dr. Yang, I passed, I passed!” And I said, “Tell me everything.” She said in front of her there was a doctoral student from Harvard that they turned down. She said the person was just crying and crying because she had one more year and they denied her. She was so scared, she said. There was an officer, she said it is an 43 African-American lady. She gave her the letter that I wrote, and the lady asked her several questions. A lot of them, we practiced. By the end, Miranda said to herself, “Please do not ask me anymore. I only practiced that much!” Then she said the lady looked at the letter, and Miranda just looked at her at the end and said, “Please give me a chance.” She said the lady looked at her and told her that, “You know, this is a new evidence that it is very crucial for us to overwrite our decision just a week or two weeks ago.” So Miranda said, “Please give me a chance,” and she said, “I will.” She stamp her. It was incredible. But I still, up to today, I still do not know how can you imagine how many fax they get in a day? How they would find that and be able to fax it back to me. Up to today, Carol Hurst and I talked about this, we saw that is a miracle. Miranda’s father finally got her student visa to buy the airplane ticket. After all these days, she had only two weeks to look for the ticket. At that time, so many people are coming. Miranda said her father got the last ticket out of China on like August 22. I went to pick her up from the Salt Lake City Airport. She had to transfer I think San Francisco or L.A., I do not know where she transferred. By the time I got her, she almost was ready to faint. You know why? She had never been on an airplane before, she thought if she is not awake, she may pass the stop. So the whole time she was awake! This is the other incredible part of the story. After Miranda came, the International student director called me, and says, “Hey Yu-Jane, I heard that you got your student here!” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “I heard that you wrote a letter.” I said, “Yes.” He said, “What did you write in the letter?” I told him. He said, “I have served as the director of the international 44 students at Weber State for ten years, the Embassy never replied to any of my letters.” We still do not know how that happened. The other magical thing was the dean told the twenty-six or twenty-seven hundred dollars that I got from the provost’s office, it was Mike Vaughan’s personal check. I could not believe it. JW: Wow. I like Mike so much, so that does not surprise me. He is such a great man. YY: It is incredible, because he did not know me. He really did not. I do not know why you would, out of the blue, get your checkbook out and write $2,700 for somebody. Miranda came here. Mike—he is incredible, he really is—he called me a month later, and he said, “How is Miranda?” I said, “I think she is doing great.” “Where is she staying?” “She is staying in a house, in a shared room with other people.” “How come she is not staying in a dormitory?” “Because it is too expensive for her.” Then a week later, he called again. “Tell Miranda to move into the dorm.” Then, starting from Miranda, Weber State started to stand out in the state competitions. She worked—I told you how hard it was to get my students to practice two hours a day. Miranda practices six hours a day. We got her with all the pieces ready in different competitions and she started to be the first person to let Weber State stand out. Then, two years later, I did the master classes in Taiwan, there was a student, a really fantastic pianist from Taiwan that I taught, who wanted to know about what schools that she should apply in the U. S. She told me what she was going to go and see whether she can audition at Julliard. She said, “What other school would you suggest me to apply?” I said, “You could apply at Oberlin, there is a really good teacher, her name is Angela Cheng, I 45 heard her teaching in master classes, also playing with Utah Symphony,” I said, “That will be a really terrific teacher.” By that time, I was still not thinking about recruiting her. But she said, “Oh. Well, on our way back from New York to California, I think I can visit you, too.” She said, okay, she can visit here, and she would also audition here. And I said, “Okay.” Then she came and auditioned. I invited Mike Vaughan and Carol Hurst, because this student was a really good player. She came to audition at Weber State, and she and her mom stayed with me. Then I taught her a lesson before her audition. She arrived at 8 P.M. and got to our house at about 9 P.M. and I fed her and her mom. After she ate, she said, “Do you think we can have a lesson?” I said, “Now?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Aren’t you too tired?” She said, “No.” “Okay.” We had a lesson until way past midnight. I taught all the things that I wanted her to fix. I was amazed. She did not practice after that. Next morning, the audition was like at 9 in the morning, everything was fixed. She did not even touch the piano. I was amazed. Then she played her Chopin ballade, and Carol Hurst was like, [motions crying], “Oh.” After the audition, we walked outside, and Mike said, “Do whatever you can to get her here.” I said, “Okay, I will try.” But you know, in my mind, I was thinking, “I do not know whether Weber State can— ” you know? Fan-Ya went home. We did not communicate for one month, because she was still waiting. Then I got an email from her one night. She said, “Dr. Yang, I want to tell you a great news! I was accepted to Julliard! It has always been my dream to go to Julliard since I was four! I am so excited and happy about this result. 46 By the way, I am the only person in Taiwan that got admitted into Julliard that year.” I was like, “Oh, that is fantastic that she did that.” Next paragraph: “The trip that my mother took with me to Utah brought totally a different perspective to us in terms of the U. S., in terms of the people, and in terms of what I can do.” She said, “After serious discussion with my parents, we decided that I should come to Weber State.” I could not believe it! When Fan-Ya came, Miranda was already here, she saw a lesson of Miranda, so there is somebody who is close to her level here. In fact, after Fan-Ya came, they accompanied each other. They went to competitions together. I immediately forwarded that email to Mike, and Mike replied right back, “This is fantastic news. I almost was so tempted to announce this news, but I think I will let you have the pleasure.” Fan-Ya came, and she is an incredible student. I mean, talking about wanting to learn, wanting to get better. I am very busy with teaching, and she always did this: she would practice next door. She knew, because of my schedule, she knew when I am done. She would always casually come out at the time that I was finished. She would say, “Do you have time to look at this passage?” Then it will be another hour or two hours of lesson. And this is every single day. The first time Fan-Ya went to the MTNA state competition, she played so well the day before. It was a perfect performance. The day of the competition, I went, I heard, and I was like, “That did not sound like her.” Afterwards, she did not get anything the first time. I asked her, “Fan-Ya, what is going on?” She said, “I was trying to remember everything that I had to do.” Instead of just focusing on her music. I 47 said, “Oh.” I learned wisdom. I learned with her what to do, what not to do and all the things. It is almost seriously like training an Olympic athlete. You need to know that the peak at that day, not the day before! We learned. The second time that she went, she got first in the state. We were very thrilled. Then she represented Utah. This competition is, first place winner represents Utah to go to the division. The division winner will represent the division to go to nationals. It is like the NCAA. She went to Hawaii for the competition and got first in the division. Then Mike flew to nationals to see her. Mike said, “Oh, I have a Board of Regent meeting the next day, so I could not see the real competition.” He saw the dress rehearsal the day before, and he said, “Call me and let me know.” At the result announcement, I heard all the seven finalists in the nation, because there are seven divisions, and in my heart I was thinking, “There is a chance that she can get into top three.” Because with competitions, you never know what the judges prefer and things like that. Then, at the announcement, they started from the third place, and it is not her. I was a little disappointed, like “Oh, she did not get third. Well maybe she could get second.” When they announce the second-place winner, it is not her. Then the teacher next to me started to say to me, “Congratulations!” I could not comprehend at the time. Then when they announced that she got the first place, she was the youngest person that had ever done the national first place in the competition in the fifty year history. When they said that she was the first-place winner, she turned to me, I stood right behind her, she turned to me, and the two of us just look at each other, we just started bawling. This is another funny thing. 48 I had to call Mike. I call him on the phone. I said, “Mike—she got first place!” I could hear on the phone, he turned over and said something, and I heard a woman screaming. Later, you know who it was? KH: Was it Carol? No? YY: No. It was Ann Millner. You know how proper Ann always was. I just could not believe that she was crazy. It is such an incredible, incredible story. Then Fan-Ya won a Steinway piano as a prize. That year, that is 2009, the economy was bad. Steinway did not have enough money to give what they usually give, which is a grand piano, a Steinway M. They gave a Steinway upright. That still costs $23,000. Then Fan-Ya, we came back; after the summer, she came back to school, she said, “Well, my parents and I talked about it, and I have decided I am going to donate my piano to Weber State. But I do not want to donate an upright, I want to donate a grand piano.” I said, “How are you going to do that?” She said, “I will give concerts!” And, “Oh, how many concerts do you have to give to earn that money?” This is what she did: she talked to Carol Biddle. The College helped her, and Ann helped her, to schedule two concerts: one at Weber State, one in Salt Lake, a private concert. The one from Weber State, we sold tickets to people and she actually raised $40,000 in that concert! In the private concert in Salt Lake, she raised another $30,000. She did get her money to go to New York and selected the piano that she donated to Weber State. It is in Room 113. JW: But that was the start of big. 49 YY: Yes, big things. Eventually, Fan-Ya went to Julliard again for her master’s. They only admit twelve pianists in the world for their master’s program. Their acceptance rate is even lower than going into Harvard. When she got that, I was so terrified. I thought, “Okay, she already got into Julliard, and if after so many years at Weber State, and she did not, what am I going to do to face her parents. I was so relieved. Not only that she get into Julliard this time, she got into Julliard with a teaching fellowship because of all her training and teaching that she did at Weber State. That is the story about Fan-Ya. Fan-Ya finished her master’s at Julliard. Wanted to do the doctoral program. During her master’s, she came back to Weber State for the summer festival, the Foulger Festival. I invited my teacher, Lydia Artymiw from Illinois, to come to Weber State she was already long-gone to University of Minnesota. In one of the lecture recitals that Lydia did, she did on Schumann. Fan-Ya was at the recital, and after the presentation, Fan-Ya ran out so fast, started to cry so hard, crying so hard, I thought, “What is wrong?” She was already a junior at the time for one year, and she said, “I thought that I was crazy.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “During this whole year at New York, I went to so many concerts. I was looking for that music that sound, that feeling. Never once—” She said, “I thought I was crazy looking for something that is not existing. When she graduated from Julliard, she got full scholarship from Eastman, that is also one of the best schools in the country, from University of Michigan, she turned them both down. She went to Lydia Artymiw, my teacher, and Lydia is about to retire, so I was one of Lydia’s first students, Fan-Ya was one of her last. It is absolutely incredible. Then Miranda, she went to Cleveland 50 Institute of Music for her master’s, on a scholarship. Eventually, she went to University of Illinois Champaign for her doctorate. Then, she found a teaching position as a piano professor back at Xi’an Conservatory. I mean, it is incredible! If somebody told me at the beginning that is what is going to happen, I would not believe them! Now you heard thirty years of stories. Is there anything else? KH: Oh, I have lots of them to ask you. YY: Oh, you have lots of them, oh! I do have a meeting. I am okay to continue, if you want to do this maybe Friday? KH: Okay. Day II KH: This is day two of the interview with Yu-Jane. You talked about some of the students that you worked with, what were some of the committee’s—either at Weber State or in the state that you have been a part of. YY: You mean the state level? I have been on a lot of different committees at Weber State. I have been on faculty senate and then on the RSPG committee, the APEF committee, and now I’m on the YY: Budget… so BPP. So Budget Physical—Budget Promotion—Budget Physical Year? Anyway, it’s that committee that is in charge of let’s say, the state legislature gave us this much money, how much should we use. Everybody’s salaries increase, how much should be on their merit? Also it’s in charge of the 51 benefits of the Weber State faculty. For example, we did a project on the benefits of the faculty and staff and then we found out that human resources actually let out something on their website on people. It was really interesting, I learned I love serving on the committee. I learn for example being on this RSPG committee—which is the committee that gives out grants, you know money. You all have to apply, so they have a deadline and then you apply by the deadline about what you want to do. Then at first, I thought, “This is going to be so weird.” Because usually you can assess the validity or the merit of your area, right? Like somebody who writes something about wanting to do music, I would be able to say, “Oh yes.” Or, “Oh no, it doesn’t work this way.” But I thought, “How do you evaluate everybody else on campus?” Like I don’t know what they’re doing in, geology or business. It was such a curious thing. But you know, it’s amazing that the criteria was set in a way that you actually can do it. You don’t know what they are doing, but according to the criteria you actually can put points according to each one of them. Then you add up everybody’s points and then you can award them by how many points on the score that they have. I thought, “That’s so interesting.” And I learned so much, so I told my students, “You know what, this is the first thing you do. When you look at a grant that you want to write, you have to see it exactly what they require.” I said, “If they said, ‘Your summary for the project cannot exceed three pages’ you don’t go three pages and one line.” I said, “People are looking for ways to get rid those proposals.” And then, “Second, on your budget don’t let the committee start to ask questions. You answer their 52 questions before they evaluate it, so that if somebody starts…’Oh I think that’s questionable’ and then your project is not going to be good.” Answer all of those questions that you think they can ask about your budget before they ask it, and be very clear what every single item that you are going to spend. It’s really valid and really connected and you know, you show, “I have searched for the cheapest airfare and hotel.” Things like that. It’s a great committee. I enjoy that very much, and this one that I’m on, it’s about university budget. Also as a faculty member, I have never really thought about that, until I served on this committee as a dean, or maybe the provost, you think the state legislature gave you let’s say, three percent of the budget for the salary next year. How do you determine, how do you decide how much to go with what? Eventually somebody has this question, “If you have a three percent, and you have not had any salary increase for several years, are you going to use two percent for the overall across the board? That means regardless of what you did, you’re going to get that much. Then the one percent for the merit for those people who worked really hard, or are you going to use all three percent to go across the board, because people had not had that for a long time. And when you do the merit pay, you know, it’s not that much money. So you have this many, like a hundred faculty, how many of them are going to really get the merit? And by giving them the difference between two and three hundred dollars a year, is it going to create more animosity among them? Or really are you awarding the people who worked hard? I thought, “Wow, what a tough thing to decide.” Because as a faculty you’re like, “I’m entitled to merit increase because I worked 53 this hard.” But then the other people, you know, some of them did too. And then the money is only this much, this little pot. And then to make people feel like, “Well I worked this hard, but I didn’t get the full merit pay.” That’s actually something that I had never thought about, this is what the provost said, “Everybody thinks that I have a secret safety box that I can just open the door and then give them money.” It’s very important for people to be serving on different committees to learn about the university. How does the university function? And it’s very worthwhile, even though you are spending—and right now, I’m on the college Committee, which is about internships. We are talking about how to get the students thinking about their career path as soon as they come in. Not months, before they go out. Months before they graduate and then they are talking about getting a job, too late. They should be thinking about that from the very beginning and then they should be thinking about how they can strengthen their resume and how to increase their experience before they get a job. I really enjoy being on a committee that makes a difference either on the faculty or on the students. I try to avoid those committees that you just talk and talk and talk and nothing happens. And then especially people who fought on the committee but nothing really got done. You know, like, “Oh, I’m so busy.” Then another very important committee that I served on was the College Rank and Tenure Committee, you read a lot of files of the candidates of who is applying. Again, it’s a very important job that’s very interesting because again, you are evaluating people who across the discipline. I mean, I can see somebody’s file for music, 54 you know, their performance and then all of those presentations and things, how important those things were. But for people who are in communications. Then I learned, again, on your file, your professional file—well number one, you have to organize things in a very logical way that people who are not in your discipline can see the importance greater than you assume. You say something they are going to know. Especially, the use of abbreviation of all of the things that you did because outside of your discipline, nobody knows what it is. And then, for that committee, I think on top of that I also served on the Dean’s Search Committee in the college to find our Dean. It’s happened to me both times. I happened to be serving on the College Rank and Tenure Committee and that committee actually also served on the Deans Search. So on both of our deans I was really honored to be on that and to select our leader for the next ten years or so. So that was a really fun thing to be able to see what the vision of the new person and our committee was really impressed about our current dean when he applied and then did his presentation. Because you see, for Arts and Humanities we think about people who are just enjoying what they are doing: performing and their paintings and things like that. But Scott was able to, in a very interesting way, to show people how important the students learning is in the college of arts and humanities. Because he said, in his presentation he talked about the top 100 companies in the U.S. People actually did research and interviews on those CEO’s to ask them about what skills they are hoping to get from their new employees. So they listed the set of skills and then, you know, those skills—a lot of them, like you have to be able to be creative thinking outside 55 of the box and all of those things. Actually, those skills came from a lot of the students from arts and humanities because that’s what we do. The problem solving skills and those things are not necessarily tied to what major you have, it’s what did you learn from this experience of all the classes over your course of the college, four years and being able to do. And in fact, I think he said something about 70 to 75% of the people, they are searching for those big companies, it doesn’t matter where you graduated from or what your major was, it’s what do you have. In terms of your background. He tied it directly to, “So this is what you need to be.” And also there’s something, that he showed a very high percentage of students actually do not work in the field of the major that they have. So to be more flexible actually makes you more desirable. To see that it was scientific data to show. Then you can talk to the students when they get into their degree. The parents worry about, “Can he get a job with this major?” And you can say something that’s really confidently to the parents to help them understand, “It’s not really what they major in, it’s what they learn and what kind of skill set that they get out of this.” And they feel so much better about it. I remember somebody saying, “Visual Arts? They have such a hard time convincing people that this is a very… JW: Incredible degree. YY: Yes, that you will be able to you know, use this degree and then to make a living. For the parents, that’s one very important thing they want to make sure of. Anyway, that’s another very good committee that I serve on. Let’s see, in my department I’m on many search committees. Again, being on the other side, it 56 makes you think and learn so much. Before you apply for jobs and then now, you are evaluating people who send in their application. What are you looking for? So again, all of those things, those experiences that I had serving on the committee helped me to help my students. When you write your resume, don’t write it this way. Write it this way. When you send in your application how do you write your cover letter. You learn so much on that. It’s you, the applicant who needs to prove that you are useful for this job. I said, “We’ve read so many letters.” They did such a general letter that were to people who are teaching those classes and you did not say anything about you can do that. Why should we even look at your file? So I said, “Okay, especially don’t make these kind of mistakes.” Like some people were so careless, they even wrote the wrong school, on the cover letter. I said, “How could you do that?” I mean, young people don’t think much about it. Sometimes they are so busy just getting things out. No, your first impression is so important. I told them—this is one of very memorable application. This application came in an envelope this big. I’m not kidding. The letter and resume were folded in there. What is that? What are you trying to create? I said, “First impression!” So all of those, every committee actually means I learn something that I can actually share with the students. That’s interesting I didn’t think because I thought, “Committees is only for university business.” That actually came right back to the students when I talked to them when I prepare them for the future jobs. KH: What topics have you written about? 57 YY: Earlier in my career, because you know, in my job, our things are different. We perform, and we do master classes and we give presentations. Not so much that we write papers. I did because at the beginning of my career—I got a Ph.D. and therefore I had to write a dissertation so I was used to it. But a lot of the faculty in music they didn’t. They got a doctoral of musical arts degree and they did recitals and their papers were very small scale comparing to the Ph.D. So anyway, I was more used to writing and I told you last time how I learned from those professors to be able to write well. Seriously, when I was writing my dissertation, it was the best of my English skill. Because, it’s so interesting… at that time, every single word that I think about they’re like, “Many more” that I think I could substitute for that because you are not supposed to use the same verb all of the time. You could come up with so many other words to describe the same thing. I was so happy about the improvement of my English at the time. I wrote some articles about teaching and that’s earlier in my career. And then I got so busy with so many other things that was just not my priority anymore. But I did publish several articles in American Music Teachers. Which is our official journal of the Music Teachers National Association. Also in the teaching journal called, “Keyboard Companion”. Those two are the main things that I did. Usually, it depends—one time they asked me to write about how to teach teenage students and then other times they asked me to write about like, certain repertoire pieces. How do you present that to the students? It’s very different from what you read of like social science or even engineering. But, see I told you about my experience taking a 58 statistic class right? And then also the research design class. Those articles I actually can read and be able to make sense out of those. I just didn’t need to write a ton of articles. Yeah, so I did many presentations at the national level and overseas and then in the state conferences. I did a lot of master classes, I think all the time with teaching students. What that means is the teachers who would prepare one of their students or more and then they know that there is a master class of the master teachers. Then they would somehow gather a lot of other teachers together or students and then you would coach their student. Like, you had never met that student and you teach that student in front of everybody else on a piece that they choose and then everybody would learn a lot from this experience about what to improve. If you have a passage that you are not able to play very fluently, then the master teacher usually will give you some tips about, “Oh, you know you used the wrong fingering.” I mean it happens. How to make your piece sound much more convincing. Those were usually the things that we do. Like master classes we’re so used to doing that. KH: What recognition have you received for your accomplishments? YY: Well at Weber State… JW: A lot of them and there’s the wall. YY: I have so many, like I don’t even know where to put them now. They started to do those glass things. JW: The Hemingway Grants. 59 YY: There’s many of the Hemingway Awards. Then also at one time because of the summer music camp that we did with a few colleagues. We also got excellence award for the Hemingway and there was many that we applied for performance like performing in China, performing in Singapore, performing in Europe, that we received the grants about and the most recent one I think was the one that we took students to Germany for music festivals. That was last year. Then, in addition to those Hemingway Grants, I received one called, “Lowell Creative Teaching Award”. Then also “The Endowed Professor” at the college of Arts and Humanities. The Hinckley Award and then the Distinguished Presidential Professor Award and I think those were from Weber State. I also got from our state organization that Utah Music Teachers Association. Their legacy award, the criteria was you excel in your professional performances and then also presentations and things like that. Then you’re teaching, most importantly— that you are teaching somehow that stood out to us. Like a mound of people that they were nominated. Also on your service to the profession. I have served at the State as second vice-president and then first-vice president and eventually the state president of Utah Music Teachers Association. I did that when I was young, I don’t know if I would do it again, because you’re like, “Oh my god, I don’t know what I got myself into.” Then I have been on the state board of the Utah Music Teachers Association for so many years. I’m still on it right now. Anyway that’s the legacy awards from the professional organizations. A few years ago, I was also nominated by the state to be the Music Teachers National Association Foundation Fellow. 60 You have to be nominated by the state and then they honor you at the national conference and then you know you’re name and your picture are in the national office of Music Teachers National Association in Cincinnati. That was a really big surprise and a great honor that I really appreciated for. All of the people that I got to know in the state organization. I had many good friends. You know they ask me this question because not that many college professors are so involved with the state organizations because we are all so busy. They ask me, “Why did you do this?” and I thought, “You know what? People don’t realize that you—the teachers, the professional studio teachers, in the state - you are the ones who send us our students.” So to help them, being able to elevate their teaching, and they prepare us with better students. So I thought, “This is just so logical to do.” They are so lovely, I mean, coming from, a foreign country, I was amazed at how much that they welcomed me into the organization. It was so funny, I had this friend who eventually also served as the state president. We were so close together and we liked each other so much and then everywhere we went, like to the National State Conference she would introduce to people that I’m her sister. We don’t look alike. I have so many friends in the state, I feel very privileged to call friends and to work with them. They are all local professional piano teachers. KH: How have you become a mentor to others in your field? YY: Just that way, just like that. KH: What advice would you give to students starting in your field? 61 YY: Well, I always tell my students, you have to learn all of the time for the rest of your life. This is another interesting thing my students noticed. They went to national conference with me and by the second day, they were so tired because there are so many sessions. Always, at national conference they are in the huge convention center. You walk so much and then they would just look at me like you know? “How can you have so much energy going to the different things?” And I said, “You know, usually at school, I’m the one who gives out. Now it’s my time to charge and take in.” My only time, and I don’t have that many days in a year that I can do that. For those people who are so generous and willing to share what they discover and what’s working, I mean where can you get that? Sometimes the topic is the research of somebody’s lifetime and they are willing to share that with you so that you don’t have to spend that kind of time and energy and you don’t have to make mistakes to learn what’s so crucial. I thought, “Where else can you get that?” So to be able to have that attitude that they liked to learn, always want to learn new things. It’s very important. And then the second thing I tell them, it doesn’t matter how good you are as a pianist. It’s important that you are a complete package. If you are a really talented musician, you don’t have other things. You still aren’t going to make it. So number one, you have to be a good person. People have to like you. You have to not just think for yourself and have that primadonna attitude because I’m so good, therefore, everybody else has to serve me. You have to know how to communicate with people, because even if you are so lucky, you’ve got engagements with an orchestra. You need to know 62 how to communicate with the conductor, with other musicians, with their staff members. Sometimes even their donors. If you are able to do that, you very likely will have your next gig. Because everybody plays really well at that level, but they are looking for something more than that. That’s the other thing, talking about those important skills that’s transferable. Your oral communication skills. One thing that I didn’t know was how important writing would be for my career. I really had no idea those efforts that I spent as a student really came back to help me. They have to write well, I have students write in music in piano pedagogy. Even in piano performance, they have to know how to communicate and be persuasive and be able to really say their ideas on paper. I mean, just talking about applying for grants, you have to be so clear and so convincing about what you want to do. How is that important? As a pianist, playing really well, you don’t think you’re going to need that, and you do. Those were the things that I told them. Just be always willing to learn, and always be the best that you can in every way. Make yourself so desirable in every way. Then just enjoy what you do and believe in what you can contribute. If you think that my music is going to make a difference then you will do that very passionately. KH: I know that you are a very busy woman, so what does a typical semester look like for you? YY: You want to know about this week? You know, I actually coached my students, “You only think about one thing at a time.” So you write everything down, because I see them so overwhelmed and because they are thinking about these 63 things they are not able to finish. For me, my way is to write them down. So I have all of those notes. Now on the cellphones. But before, I have my to do list, it’s always somehow it takes away your stress when you put them down and then there’s an end. Every time that I did something, I would cross it off. It just feels so good to cross off one thing. Things will get done one way or the other. My typical day, my schedule is very tight. But, sometimes you know they need help. You know they need it now because you know that they are the edge of breaking down. So you have to just stop whatever and then that’s important to take care at that time. My Tuesday, I start from 9:30 in the morning and I don’t get done until 7 p.m. and I have about one hour for lunch and that’s all. And it’s continuous and you see it’s different from sitting in the office because when you are not focusing for a few minutes, nobody notices when you are sitting at the desk. But when you are doing this every single second, I have to have everything like my eyes, my ears open so that I know what to say and what to do next with the student. Or I’m in the classroom. But I enjoy the variety of the things that I do. I’m not just sitting here, for nine hours a day. I would be in the classroom with a group piano class or doing a lecture class. My students, that’s the other thing that’s really fun about it, I teach all different levels, even a few of the students in the piano prep program, they are like six or seven years old. They will be doing something really simple but they are so cute. I have my pedagogy students, they are learning how to teach and to help them become better teachers through the coaching and through the assessment. Every week, just like in the private lesson 64 and see them progress in their teaching. They know what to do and from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester they grew so much and that was so rewarding. Yesterday, I had a class until 12:30, but my committee meeting started at 12 and I had to go run right over. It was like a day that was out of a lunch break, because the lunch break was used for committee work. It’s very intense and therefore, you know, I’m grateful that we have the summer, the winter break, and my biggest way of being able to survive and then my students feel, “You’re always so energetic during the semester and then you do a lot of things.” Yep, but I always have to go away. During the break, if I go away, somehow the physical distance means no matter what, I’m not going to be able to help. I’m not here. Therefore… If I stay, then it’s nonstop because you can always find things that you have not done. You can always continue to do things. I think, I have found a pretty good balance to be—doing this and with all of my full heart during the semester but then being away. Like when I go back and visit my family in Taiwan during the summer. I am so far away, I tell my students, “Sometimes I even have trouble remembering the students name when I’m overseas.” It’s like everything is different. I think in Chinese. KH: What are some of your favorite memories at Weber State? YY: Oh probably a lot of those that I told you already. With students, with colleagues, and with Mike Vaughn. There’s so many friends, and just like Richard and his wife Colleen Roberts. Many people. I mean this is like a family and even with some of the donors. There’s just wonderful people here. This is a very special 65 community. Even my student Fan-ya who graduated and went to Julliard and they felt this way. They said, “This is a magical place.” Because of the people, the people who really care. Our donors, they don’t just give money, they care about the students so much. Like in Fan-Ya’s case, her sponsors, George and Mary Hall, they flew to New York to watch her master’s recital. She wasn’t even a student at Weber State at that time anymore. But, it’s the lifetime relationship that makes it so special and the other thing that I discovered all of the piano students, they love to come back to visit. All those that went away, you know, for master’s or for doctorate, they come back periodically. They came and practice and in the practice room and they just felt like when they were here. I think the people is the most precious thing in my memory here. KH: Next year, is the 100 year anniversary of U.S. women getting the right to vote. How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? YY: Well actually, more than in the U.S. history just has been so different. If you think about before, you know, I have heard my colleagues talking about a long time ago when the African American people could not vote, and they were actually talking about things that they read. They could not even be on the same bus, they don’t sit on the same section. I mean if you think where we started, this is actually incredible. But, I’m very proud from coming from Taiwan, we actually now have female president. If you think about a hundred years ago—a 150 years ago, women never were treated as anything important. They were at home, they were a package that belonged to the men in Chinese society. Now, 66 the women leading the country, Yeah, such an unimaginable thing for people even twenty years ago. Here, at Weber State—see I told people so much about this. At one time, we had our dean, was a woman. Our president was a woman. JW: We had the first female… YY: Female president, right? And Ann was such a wonderful leader. She was everywhere, she had done so much for this school and her impact just continues. I mean, Weber State was very ahead. And she is such a lovely person. One time, I went with her for a trip for fundraising. To be able to watch her talking to the donors in person, it was an incredible experience because we don’t know everything. But I was amazed about somehow, when the donor talked to her, she was able to just take in whatever the topic was and actually sincerely got into a discussion and just being able to comment on so many things to make the donor feel very comfortable and interested. She is a really amazing person, I watched that and I thought, “I would never in a million years be able to do that.” KH: Great, those are all of the questions I have. Is there anything else you’d like to share? YY: No, I think I have taken so much of your time. KH: No, we have loved hearing your stories. YY: I will show you though a really fun video as an ending that my students came and did. Usually, I don’t tell people about my birthday, but I don’t know how… like several years ago, somebody, one of my students discovered it. Then somehow it’s passing from one generation to the next. Seriously, I’m not on Facebook 67 nobody brings me… So this year, my birthday was on Friday. I don’t have regular classes on Friday, so I think that they were afraid that I may not be here. JW: Not even come into the building. YY: At the end of my pedagogy class, which is at 12:30 in the lab there. There were two students who stayed and then after I was cleaning up the room, then I said, “Do you need anything?” And they said, “Oh no.” Oh well I will just walk out with you. Then they said, “Oh okay.” And by the way I said, “I forgot to tell my husband, I have a meeting at the dean’s office.” Actually it was with Scott and Rick—“At the dean’s office, it’s important.” So I’m not going to go back to my office. And I gave them a bunch of my stuff, my folders… “Why don’t you take this to my husband? And then tell him I’m not going to be able to go to lunch with him?” I could see one of them call somebody, just talking and then he looked really sad on the face. “I need to go to the meeting. Just go home, go back and tell my husband.” So then, I went to Scott and we were in the office. So this is what happened. [Yu-Jane shows a video on her cell phone. People in the video start singing Happy Birthday. All of her students are wearing birthday party hats and singing, “Happy Birthday”] It is so funny. So then we came out and then Scott was cutting the cake to serve to everybody. I thought, “When did you get a dean. JW: Oh that’s awesome. YY: They were so sweet. Then I discovered that they were all hiding here. JW: They were in here? 68 YY: Because they knew that I would come back here to put my stuff here and then go to lunch. So all of them were hiding here. So when the students said that I wasn’t coming back and they told me and they lit the candles. So one of them was telling that student, “Do whatever you can to get her back here.” It was so sweet. We really have wonderful students. JW: Well and don’t you think that with music students that the difference is it’s not just a four year relationships with piano student. I don’t know, I’ve had piano students from the time they were five till they were eighteen and they just become your life. YY: I told you that several of them—five of them they drove eleven hours one way to hear one of my students competing in nationals. They were not from the same studio. I mean, it would be logical or it would make more sense that if they were all from my studio they would know each other so well. But not really. They were from different studios and they still know each other so well. They wanted to go and support the students. YY: They are so wonderful. Let me invite you if you have time. You want to come and listen to them play, we do the exam of their piano—the piano jury. At first, everybody does this, every school does this. You play two pieces, either in the teacher’s studio for others or maybe in the music concert hall. But we decided we have to get them performance experiences. So we decided it’s going to be a formal concert. It’s not an exam, it’s a concert, so they all dress up. It’s next Wednesday, in the evening at seven o’clock and you will get to hear everybody in this program. It’s not a huge program, but you know, their average level is 69 actually quite good. It’s in room 136 and it’s from 7 p.m., next Wednesday the 17th. What happens is that they will and we wanted to do this for their real experience. They will post the posters, they will make the concert program, they will invite people to come, and then they will perform. So it’s a real thing for them to get this. How do you really play in a concert and how do you really make it happen? Where do you get the audience? Those things. So if you would like to come, they will play some really enjoyable great pieces. KH: Alright, Thank you. JW: Okay, it’s on the calendar. YY: Thank you. Yeah, I guess once you are in a place for solo you have lots of things to talk about. I just could not believe it’s this long. JW: I’ve done interviews that have lasted like three different days and it’s because that the people who have been here a long time and had a big impact. KH: And they have a lot of great memories that we want to know about and save. YY: And the students ask, “How long have you been here?” I said, “Longer than you have been born.” And they say, “No way!” It really is. I guess because we work with students all the time at this age. So you don’t feel like you’re getting old. You see them. JW: You see them and you’re like, “I’m their age.” YY: I’m their age, yes. I just have to be two steps ahead of them, that’s all. JW: Exactly that’s so true. 70 YY: You know, this is something… [Handing out a card that a student had made.] JW: That’s such a great [motioning to the card]. YY: You’re welcome to read it. JW: I just read the front of it. YY: And students made it on their own. KH: Thank you for your time. YY: Thank you so much