Interview with Audrey Anderson 14 Question Interview

 

Title: An Interview with Audrey Anderson

Deck: Instructor At LBCC Gives Us An Insight Into Her Work

Audrey Anderson is a bakery department instructor and co-curricular advisor at LBCC. She has been at Linn-Benton Community College for four years. She has a husband and two dogs, and lives in Corvallis. She has her own business named Roux Events and Catering. She is originally from Independence and went to culinary school in Newport. 

She used to be an executive catering chef for Willamette University, and used to manage a lot of catering events. She loves going outside and going camping and hiking. She and her family have Sunday dinners every week and they always make something that is really warming feeling and that everyone likes. 

What did you do before your job as an instructor?

Chef Audrey Anderson used to be an executive catering chef for Willamette University in Salem. She did a lot of event management among other things. 

What is some background about your life? What do you like to do, hobbies, favorite food?

She likes to go outside and go camping. She likes hanging out with her dogs and her family. Her favorite food is Thai and Chinese food.

What is the best part about your job as an instructor?

She loves that she can be an advocate for the students and she is the co-curricular adviser for the curriculum. She gets to talk more directly with the students, more one-on-one time than in a big group and she can be there for them and guide them through the process of cooking and help them relate to the process so they understand it better.

What is the most embarrassing thing that has happened while being a chef?

When she would manage a lot of people and do a lot of events a day there would sometimes be a drop in communication and it wouldn't be good when she had a staff of 30-60 people that she was managing and she would have to “suck it up” and take the blame even though some line in the communication there was something that got disrupted. 

What is a time where something went really wrong in the kitchen?

When she was managing a restaurant in Independence for a while, they had an oil drain and it got backed up and it started smelling like sewage, and it was in this small little area and they had to shut down the whole restaurant and get it professionally cleaned.

What is your favorite lesson to teach and why?

She really loves to teach laminated doughs and teach the process of lamination because there is a lot to do with time management and temperature management and with this dough there are a lot of variables that could mess up  what you're doing. It could make the dough a gray color sometimes. If you mess up any of the variables the dough can get messed up very easily. 

What is the most important thing for LBCC students to know before they leave college?

There is always more to know. The culinary arts instructors give really good information and a baseline of information for them to take and build off in their futures in a restaurant, even if they are working for someone or owning a restaurant of their own. There is always more to learn. Having the accountability to say that they don't know everything and be open to learn more through their career and their life. 

What is your dream meal you would like to cook?

Anything that could be shared between her family because her family does Sunday family dinner. When you can cook something that everyone relates to and have a good experience it doesn't matter what you do as long as everyone is happy and having a good time.

What has been the best cake/meal you have ever prepared?

She feels like every time she makes a cake they get better and better every time. She did this cake for her cousin's wedding, it was a simple naked cake with flowers all over it, it was a 3 teir cake. 

Why did you choose to switch from your previous career to an instructor?

She's always wanted to be an instructor and by the point when she was in culinary school she had already worked in the industry for seven years. She had an opportunity to become an instructional assistant, where she would tutor students and help them with their cooking methods, notes, homework. In her school she got a lot of experience with instructing when she went to Oregon Coast Culinary Institute and put a bug in her skills with her skills on instructing. She loves working in event services and just working in a kitchen. 

What classes do you teach outside of the culinary department?

She used to do private classes from her business that were anywhere from two to four people. She hasn't been teaching the private classes since Covid hit and she has put her business to a stop. 

What has changed in your culinary department due to Covid?

They have had a big push for a more centered curriculum and they are more on track to teach one-on-one with students and teaching at a very personal level. It could get mixed up a lot because you can have 10 different students doing different things. They are all on the same page of making the curriculum to help everyone to stay on the same page. They can deliver the instruction so they are more direct. 

At a Glance:

Audrey Anderson

Hometown: Independence, Oregon 

Age: 32

Spouse: Yes

Kids: No but she has dogs

Instructor title: Instructional specialist for baking

Years at LBCC: Four

Favorite sports team: Portland Trail Blazers

Favorite TV show: “Mind of a Chef,” Amazon Prime Video

Favorite type of cake: Black Forest Cake

Name of her business: Roux Events and Catering

Cullenary CTE

 Soren Skinner is a Culinary Arts major and is in his second and last year of his degree. When he gets his degree he wants to open his own restaurant. This program is helping him fine tune his skills in cooking and management. How COVID has affected this program is that it's affected the organization of the kitchens. Skinner says, “It's impossible to fully teach culinary arts online.” Since March of 2019 when everything shut down because of COVID things were hard for everyone. But since October of 2020 things have gotten better with trying to organize, learning online, and more. 

The biggest challenge is the change of pace from high school to college, like the sudden  long hours on their feet. It's also a hard way to learn and some people get cut from the program. Some big highlights are that the students have free reign of what they want to make in their rotations, and also the banquets that happen three times a year. During the banquetes there is a lot of food being made inspired by many different regions and provinces in the world. The banquetes also give them memories and an experience for future events either in college or in life when they open or manage a restaurant. 

In this program, they were taught not only how to do things, but also why it was important to do them a certain way. Soren says, “Why vinaigrettes work, why bread is such a fickle creature, why meat behaves in a certain way.” Once the students are taught why things are done it clicks differently in their mind instead of being told what to do and how it's done.

For future students Soren said to not give up even when it gets hard. Sometimes you will want to pull your hair out, but you have to keep trying and stay organized because that will help you. 

Aiden Nielsen is a culinary student who is in his second and last year of the program. He decided to go into the CTE culinary arts program because he has always had a passion for cooking and he wants to take a leap into the STEM program at OSU. 

COVID has changed the program so much, they can’t have any people in the cafeteria like they could before covid and they can't have a full production crew in the kitchen either. All the students have an online order form that they can give the chefs to order the product for their dishes. 

When the students first when into this program as first years they were learning basic skills and using those skills for mass production, but now as second years they are honed on fine tuning their skills, regions, and learn how to cook on the line at the Santiam Grill, which now with COVID the second years can’t do it anymore. 

Some of the biggest challenges are time commitment because some days you are there for normal times where you're in the kitchen and some days Aiden is there from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Some of the biggest highlights are that you can bond with your classmates and instructors. 

There are a number of benefits to joining the CTE Culinary arts program. Like Aiden, he is the president of the culinary club that they have and he has the opportunity to go to different locations and meet different chefs, farmers and more. 

For future students who are thinking of going into the CTE culinary arts program Aiden has suggested to make the most of your time and get involved in things. It also helps if you make connections with your classmates and teachers and get every little bit of knowledge that you can that will help you in the long run.

Unity meeting/ celebration

 The Unity Celebration of 2021 was held on Feb. 26.

There were a lot of people performing at this year’s Unity Celebration, including LBCC Poet Laureate Sofia Griffith, the LBCC choir, keynote speaker Christopher Hughbanks, and the winner of the Black History Month Essay Contest Jason Davis.

Hughbanks is earning a Ph.D. at Oregon State University, and his major is Language Equality and Educational Policy. How he has connections to LBCC is that he and English instructor Ramycia McGhee are good friends and he has attended events that are a part of the NAACP. They also hosted the annual freedom fund banquet. 

What Hughbanks wants to do when he graduates is to continue teaching and focusing on working for social change in Linn and Benton counties. His goals include continuing to work in his community, he also wants to focus on health and wellness. How he is going to achieve these goals, is to take it one day at a time. He is doing his reading and writing each day to get closer to his Ph.D and celebrating each day because he is a little closer to what he wants to do and he is staying connected with his friends. 

If Hughbanks could change the world and he had to pick his top three it would be to create more spaces that cultivate care, connection, and love between human beings; to take care of the environment; and honor the original caretakers of the land. He also wants better transportation within the state that uses renewable energy. The last thing he would want to change is a better health care policy that supports taking care of ourselves physically and emotionally. 

Jason Davis was the award winner of the Black History Month Essay Contest, and was in the unity meeting. What made him want to write a paper for the contest was that his teacher wanted him to enter this contest and he hadn't thought anything about it till his teacher brought it up to him. When he was writing this essay he felt good about how he was sharing his experience. 

He loves writing but he doesn't really share his work, but when he won the award it was a real confidence booster to him. He didn't think that he was going to win the award of first place of the Annual Black History Month Essay Contest; he didn't think that his writing was award worthy. When he was writing his essay he felt energized, he felt like there was good energy while writing the story. Davis wanted to create a story that people could connect with. 

Davis is currently going to LBCC with a major in psychology. When he graduates he wants to become a psychologist. He would like to work in schools and work with children. Davis believes that at a young age it is important to learn about mental illnesses so it can change people’s lives so people can move through it together. His goals include being able to educate parents and children about mental illnesses, especially African American communities. How he is going to achieve his goal is to be honest, so America's school systems will be receptive to teaching mindfulness and mental health. 

If Davis could change the top three things in the world he would erase racism because it serves no purpose to have others divided between people. He would also change the perception that material things and monetary wealth are important. “If people were more focused on what was truly important in the arts, science and exploration of the unknown,” he said.  He also would want a flying car. He wants to make our history always be told honestly, not sanitizing it because it may be deserving to some people or because they may be ashamed of the events in the past. Our history can help us dictate what our future looks like but only if we can see the truth. 

The celebration, now in its 12th year, began with a song written by LBCC student Mari Estibel Valverde and sung by the college’s choir.

Along with Davis, the other essay contest winners were Lacy Kennedy, second place, and Serenity Wilson took third place. 

Adult Basic Skills faculty member Jan West earned the Analee Fuentes Unity Award,  which is presented to one employee (or employee group) and one student (or group of students) for their contributions to diversity and social justice on campus. The students honored were Christopher Byers, Alexis Castaneda-Perez, Nyssa Cronin, Cassie Cruze, Shonna Dempsey, Ruta Faifaise, Jessica N. Hampton, Katherine Hemlock, Amy Huskey, Carla Medel, Hannah Morelos, Katie Niemeyer and Wesley Sharps. They were nominated for their contributions to the newly released (open educational resource) text for HDFS 201, “Contemporary Families: An Equity Lens.”

First awarded in 2015, the Gary Westford-Robin Havenick Community Connections Award was presented to Deb Powell, executive director of Love INC of Linn County.