the liberator april 17, 2014
The [Bess]t man for the job
Former Assistant Fire Chief of Austin Fire Department joins LBJ Fire Academy Joann Min
Staff Writer Students in the LBJ Fire Academy portable sit in silence, listening to Chief Lionel Bess retell one of his many stories from his days as a firefighter at the Austin Fire Department (AFD). LASA Junior Ross Murdock at the academy said this interaction between students and Bess is just one of the highlights students are able to experience after Bess joined the Academy as an official instructor. “He fits in perfectly,” Murdock said. “He works out. He’s just another firefighter in the sense that he has fun with the information,” Murdock said. “He’s always there for you to talk to, so if anything, he’s only affected the program positively.” Former Assistant Chief of the Austin Fire Department (AFD) Bess joined the LBJ Fire Academy as its newest Director at the beginning of the 2014 Spring semester. After 25 years as an Austin firefighter, Bess retired in 2006 but remained a part of the fire community through his many connections with other firefighters. His continued association led him to the opportunity of becoming an instructor of the LBJ Fire Academy. “I’ve got hundreds of friends that are still with the Department so I’ve [stayed] connected,” Bess said. “When I heard about this program and that they had an opening, I applied for it [since it] was a very good opportunity for me to become active again.” Although Bess’s direct relationship with the LBJ Fire Academy started in 2014, he has been indirectly connected with the Academy since the beginning of the program in 2006. “This program was started with the Austin Fire Department,” Bess said. “I was actually on the committee when we were developing this program.” Since joining, he has become a part of the LBJ fire community and has participated in many different ways that would change how the Academy would teach and relate to its students. LBJ senior Christian Diaz said that the relationship Bess was forming with the students of the Academy positively affected the whole community as students found more relatable experiences and confidence in the activities they participate in. “When the instructors teach it, he’s back at the table, [re]learning the same things we’re learning,” Diaz said. “So if I have any problems, I can just go to him and ask him a question.” The atmosphere isn’t the only thing affected by Bess’s presence. According to Murdock, the Academy had had a number of scheduling and coordinating problems in the past that are now being attended to by Bess. “Before Chief Bess came, we’d have days where we’d have
LBJ fire academy practices drills outside the school. photo by Joann Min
a lot of instructors but nothing to do, [so] it would just be a lecture day and there’d be one instructor talking and eight just sitting to the side,” Murdock said. “And on some days, when we’d actually have to do stuff, there would only be two.” Now with Bess as a member of the Academy, Murdock stated that the organization and efficiency of the Academy has significantly increased giving students a higher quality of education and more opportunities. “With Chief Bess here, we have much more standardized schedules and we’ll always have about five firefighters,” Murdock said. “And depending on the day, we’ll have the proper
run smoothly.” Although organization of the Academy has increased its organization since Bess joined, a different factor had also kept the Academy from participating in all of its planned activities; a financial backlash that had cut a number of the Academy’s events scheduled for students. In 2012, AFD significantly cut its budget, decreasing the amount of opportunities the LBJ Fire Academy provided students. LASA senior Daniel Hauglie mentioned that his class had not been given some of the opportunities graduated classes had received during their participation in the program. “For a couple of years there hasn’t really been a director and because of that when Austin Fire Department changed
their program, there was a lot of budget and funding that got cut out of the Fire Academy,” Hauglie said. But with Bess as the new director, Hauglie said he hoped that the Academy will again reach its full potential and give students all of the Academy’s original aspects. Hauglie also said that Bess’s contributions to the Academy both through his active participation and his ties to the AFD have become key to making the LBJ Fire Academy a special program to the school. “Chief Bess is definitely going to bring that whole sense of ‘now there’s a program director so we can allocate more resources here or ask for funding from here and get an actual, legitimate program,’” Hauglie said. Ultimately, Bess joining the Academy has given students another instructor to learn from and, for Bess, an opportunity to remain a member of the fire community without having to physically put out any fires. His many activities have also been put to use as he related much of his own experiences that the students go through in the Academy. “We try to relate a lot of our experiences while we do things the way we do,” Bess said. “It actually gives [students] the opportunity to say ‘I can compare this with other things in life, things that I do, I can connect that with what they do in the fire department.’” Although it has only been a few months since Bess joined the Academy, he said that his short time at the Academy has already brought him great opportunities to reconnect with his passion. “It feels great already,” Bess said. “[The Academy] interacts with the Austin Fire Department and other Departments. This past Saturday, we were at the Oak Hill Fire Department [where I] revisited people that I have known for a long time. So it’s been a good experience.” For the LBJ Fire Academy, the addition of Bess has brought a number of opportunities to become the program it once was. Bess said that the sense of community felt throughout the program, much like a real city Fire Department, is one of the main reasons he has enjoyed the program so much thus far. “Not [only for] the people within a Fire Department, a fire station is part of the community,” Bess said. “I can remember, some of my fondest times were working at a fire station in southeast Austin, and we were part of the community.” Bess said he looks forward to the future he will be able to share with students and stated his hopes that the LBJ Fire Academy will grow even more than what it is today. “[The program] is an excellent opportunity,” Bess said. “And the relationship with people you have as a firefighter, how you can sympathize with people going through disasters even though you’re providing the service for them and how you can put yourself in their shoes and understand how they’re feeling just makes you a better citizen.”
One of the teachers instructs a fire academy class. photo by Chloe Edmiston
Fire academy students practice a drill led by Chief Bess. photo by Daniel Vega
graphic by Marissa Hansen
number of instructors to facilitate activities and make things
LASA holds second annual N-MAST Nationals, which one has to qualify for. And most importantly, it just seemed interesting.” Staff Writer This year, LASA junior Dhruv Puri fulfilled the new officer position of tournament Up a flight of stairs and tucked in the director and began preparing for N-MAST white hallway of math classrooms, math during the fall, allowing for more meticulous and science competitors scribble frantically organization and for greater attendance. on scratch paper. Between testing blocks, Puri organized the bulk of the event in attendees gathered, snacked, and played math 2014, working with registration, food and games. In the early afternoon, awards were recruiting math club members to write the announced and distributed, and participants competition tests (three math, three science and a math team test), stepping in when tests dispersed. The LASA math club hosted the Nautilus were incomplete. “I was really happy to run [N-MAST],” Math and Science Tournament (N-MAST), its second math competition, which drew Puri said. “It ran really smoothly, we didn’t close to 40 participants from Texas, on March have any major troubles with food or 8. LASA alumnus Youry Aglyamov desired anything, we actually finished early, we had to organize a math tournament at LASA the awards ceremony and had all the tests and, in 2013, worked with a few math club run smoothly, no big mishaps in printing or members and LASA math club sponsor Sarah anything. I think it shows how planning stuff Harrelson to write tests and organize the like that can really help out.” N-MAST is the only student-run event, then called the Nautilus Invitational Tournament (NIT) for LASA’s mascot, the math and science competition in central Texas making it different from many math fighting nautilus. “I wanted to organize a math and science competitions which are run by university competition in part because it felt like the staff. LASA senior and math club president Austin area was a desert in terms of academic Jessica Wang helped write the tests for the tournaments,” Aglyamov said. “There was, LASA-hosted competition both years and in other words, a geographic hole. There was said it was very different from numerous also a temporal hole, because no independent other math competitions she has attended, tournaments were happening in April, most of which were on a university campus only stuff like Science Olympiad State and with a large number of participants. “I feel like LASA’s competition was more laidback,” Wang said. “We provided everybody pizza for lunch, instead of MSW, LCSW letting everybody go and come back for the award ceremony, all of Harrelson’s Clinical Social Work and Therapy math games were out, it was much more relaxed.” 5766 Balcones Drive The competition was Suite 101 hurriedly put together in it’s first year and had about Austin, Texas 78731 10 competitors, including 512-380-9090 middle schoolers. The
Frankie Marchan
Jennifer Spradley Jones
individual test topics were Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, Advanced Topics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Geology and Astronomy. This year, the test categories were changed, leaving Biology, Chemistry, and Physics as science tests but switching the math tests to Lower, Middle, and Upper Level Math. There was also a team math test, which Aglyamov wrote. LASA alumnus Allan Sadun, though not a math club member, assisted with last year’s competition (NIT) as a senior. “I helped out,” Sadun said. “I wrote some test questions, gave advice on how to organize the schedule and fee structure, created a Google Form for people to sign up and attend the tournament, showed up the day of to help set up, grade, and entertain the competitors and in general did whatever I could that I thought needed to be done - but I was only in an advisory role.” N-MAST test questions were based off released national test questions from competitions such as USAMO and AIME as well as techniques found in some art of problem solving books from Harrelson’s classroom. According to Wang, writing test questions was very different from both competing by taking the test and the math she has encountered in her classes. “LASA’s math curriculum is not very math competition-based, which I personally like in a math class,” Wang said. “It’s very, well, especially Harrelson’s class, it’s very theoretical, very proof-based, which doesn’t go well in a competition scene. I liked our tests; I thought they were more interesting than a regular competition math test. It wasn’t all computation; there were one or two proofs in there, and theoretical stuff, so I found it more interesting, but some people thought they were too hard.” According to Puri, N-MAST attendees who had also competed at Rice University were pleased with N-MAST because it ran on schedule, and everyone had a copy of the test and an answer sheet. Wang said a couple of her friends, who are competitive in the Texas
math competition world, attended N-MAST and found the tests challenging. “My experience has been really positive because it’s really different writing tests instead of taking tests,” Wang said. “It was interesting having to write all the tests and finding questions that would be interesting but not too hard, deciding which subjects of math are applicable to everybody, not just LASA students, not making it too easy. It was interesting; it’s a different role to take to put everything together instead of just taking the tests.” Besides the different test structure and small scale size of the tournament, the math club was able to provide breakfast and lunch for participants by collecting a registration fee. As Nautilus manager, Puri said being in charge of an event was a new experience for him. “[Organizing N-MAST] gave me that feeling of what it feels like to actually be responsible for something,” Puri said. “It was a very new feeling, it was refreshing and gave me the cliche adult feeling, like you’re taking responsibility, you’re doing it, you’re running it, it’s all on your back, so to say. So that was a really, really, new feeling for me, I haven’t really felt like that before, so that was really cool.” Sprouted largely from Aglyamov’s imagination, hosting a math tournament is becoming an annual activity for the LASA math club. According to Puri, the club’s goal is to continue to expand the evolving tournament. “For the future, [the math club] definitely [wants] to bring in more kids,” Puri said. “[N-MAST] is very new; it just started last year. It ran really well this year, and people really like it, so we want to advertise even more, have more people show up, and see how far we can take this tournament, to the point of having people all over Texas show up and compete with us, which would be really great.”