You're listening to LCC alumni stories, a show dedicated to highlighting the amazing alumni of Lansing Community College. I'm Steve Robinson, President of LCC. And on each episode I have the awesome privilege of getting to know one of our many inspiring, alums and hearing about their experiences at and since leaving LCC. Lcc alumni community is expansive and far-reaching. They're an incredibly diverse group of people, representative and all walks of life working in hundreds of industries across the country. Lcc alumni stories shines a bright light on alumni who make a positive contribution to their community and showcases those who have overcome obstacles and barriers to achieve academic and personal success. These are their dynamic stories. My guest today is Beth Kuiper. She earned an Associate of Applied Science in 2012 with certificates in kitchen and bath design and fashion and merchandising. Beth currently works as the community and Program Outreach Coordinator for downtown Lansing incorporated. Welcome to the show. You're my very first guess, beth, on this podcast. So I'm really happy to have you on and have you an opportunity to learn more about you and your experiences at LCC and what you've been up to since. So it's great to see you. Great to see you as well. I gotta say I woke up this morning at 03:00 AM, just excited to be here and be the first one silent for a long walk. And I thought about all the great things that I could talk about because LCC was very important in my life. So one thing I want to talk to you about is you have taken on a pretty cool new role at LCC and you're gonna be helping us out. Talk to me about your role in this new advisory committee. So I was asked about six weeks ago, two months ago by Cathy Zell at the foundation to join the Academic Advisory Committee. And I was just tickled because it was something that I've always want to do is give back however I can. So what we're looking at is that LCC is got their 40th year anniversary? Yes. I mean, do it with a foundation has a 40th anniversary excuse. No, that's okay. That's right. It's an important birthday. Yeah, absolutely. So we are looking at ways to celebrate and go out there and spread the word and just help lift up others by celebrating these 40 years. Then I'm really looking forward to it. So I'm looking forward to the beginning parts like we've already started, just like the ideas, the concepts. I'm looking forward to any kind of fundraising and the event planning, but I'm really looking forward to the return that we're going to give to people. So if I can open up my house in my kitchen to students in need and help cook meals. Or if I can drive people, whatever I can do to help them satisfy their goals like I was able to. And LCC was the one that helped me. They helped with childcare. They helped me with any kind of tran transportation if I needed that. So I just look at how can I take what was given to me and give it to the next person that is so exciting to me. And you're gonna see a lot of me in that work because I plan to be very, very active with our LCC Foundation. Great. Look forward to it. So you studied kitchen and bath and tell me a little bit about what you what brought you to LCC and what it was that was so positive about your experience here. So LCC was important in my life, like I said. So as soon as I graduated from high school and we've gotta rewind quite awhile. So we're going back to 1998. I decided to start taking business classes because that's what I wanted to originally go into me and when I kinda have fallen into that role again, but we'll get to that later. So I start with business classes and I slowly transitioned over to interior design classes. And this was still at the LCC downtown campus. Okay. So I started with these classes. I fell in love. I end up moving over to Grand Rapids and going to Kendall, where I did not finish, but I took many studio courses as well as I went to GRC C, which is the Grand