Student Spotlight: Dylan Wright
In Episode 55 of Confluence, we hear from Bertha Morton winner, Dylan Wright, on his experience with Missoula Children’s Theatre and his desire to use his expertise in school counseling to work in underserved communities, specifically rural communities lacking access to mental healthcare.
Story Transcript
JAYNA MUMBAUER: Reading about Bertha Morton, I, I realized that she was a connector and a huge part of her community. When I thought about who I wanted to nominate for this scholarship I thought about who is really community focused. And of course, Dylan has all this experience in Missoula Children’s Theatre, which is a community organization. But he’s also a connector within our department. His energy just seems to naturally connect people together, and I think that’s more important than ever considering COVID-19, and so I wanted to nominate someone who I really felt exemplified being community centered.
ASHBY KINCH: You just heard the voice of Dr. Jayna Mumbauer, professor in the Department of Counseling, talking about her student, Dylan Wright, one of the Bertha Morton Graduate student scholarship winners for 2021-22!
Welcome to Confluence, where great ideas flow together, the podcast of the graduate school of the Ñý¼§Ö±²¥. I'm Ashby Kinch, associate dean of the graduate school. This episode of Confluence is part of a series recognizing the achievements of some of our outstanding graduate Ñý¼§Ö±²¥. Named for a great Montanan who dedicated her life to public service, the Bertha Morton award was endowed to support graduate education by recognizing the distinctive contributions our graduate Ñý¼§Ö±²¥ make in research, creative activity, and public service.
The work and values of our guest on this episode, Dylan Wright, clearly align with Bertha Morton’s legacy. His ultimate goal is to bring his expertise in school counseling to work in underserved communities, specifically rural communities lacking access to mental healthcare. He has expansive experience working with children, including over 15 years with the Missoula Children’s Theatre. We’re delighted to share his graduate journey with you. Enjoy the float!
KINCH: Thanks for joining us, Dylan.
DYLAN WRIGHT: Thank you so much for having me.
KINCH: Well, first off, we just want to say congratulations on the Bertha Morton award. What does that mean to you personally, or pragmatically, or financially?
WRIGHT: Oh boy, it means so much to me for many of those reasons, actually. You know, I'm, I am the father of two girls and I've got a 14-year-old and an 18-year-old. So as my 14-year-old becomes a freshman in high school, my 18-year-old is about to become a freshman in college. So, when we're talking about financial struggles also tying on my own graduate debt, the Bertha Morton Scholarship is a huge help also because as I head into internship, I'm going to have to be cutting back on some of my work hours at the Missoula Children's Theatre, which is, you know, going to mean that we're going to be even more strapped than we have been in the past.
KINCH: Yeah. And, and did the Bertha Morton legacy appeal to you at all when you applied? Did you know much about her?
WRIGHT: What I heard was here's this woman who went to school in a rural community and was so influenced by her surroundings, by her teachers especially, that it created a person that wanted to give back to a community.
KINCH: Yeah.
WRIGHT: Even though she didn't have the college experience, she still wanted to help encourage Ñý¼§Ö±²¥ to go and to ultimately give back into the world again, you know?
KINCH: Yeah.
WRIGHT: And so why that resonates with me is because that's ultimately what I want to do is to be helping in small communities and rural communities with children that don't have resources, you know?
KINCH: Yeah, so tell us more about that. How were you inspired to kind of move into that work?
WRIGHT: I graduated from college in 2000 at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. I was hired by Missoula Children's Theatre pretty much directly out of college from a hiring conference that took place in Virginia. It's called the Southeastern Theatre Hiring Conference. And I got out to Montana. They threw me in a truck with one other person, and we hit the road and started touring. And the whole thing about what MCT does is they serve a lot of rural communities. Well, every community, but especially the rural communities all over the world, you know? And we go to every state in the U.S. and about 16 other countries as well.
KINCH: So, through that process you kind of began thinking about maybe a career that you would, you know, segue from the theatre part of it into counseling?
WHITE: Yeah, so I did that for – I toured for about two years and that's how I met my wife. And then we settled down here in Missoula, and I started working at the home office. And, fast forward, you know, years down the road and I, you know, MCT it's the development of life skills in children through participation in the performing arts. And so, for me, I got an opportunity to really work with kids and bring theatre to them when they wouldn't normally get that. And so, it's a helping profession in that sense. And I saw how, how we were changing lives and changing communities and, and helping people to build community, you know, through the work of theatre, which was amazing. But I also kind of topped out and I wanted to find another way to give back. I even went to college kind of thinking I wanted to do some counseling stuff and, and then kind of fell more into the theatre side of things. And so now that I've kind of run this gamut, this life of theatre, I just kind of decided that it was time to shift gears. And so, I ended up applying for the program – for the master's program – and I got accepted, which I was totally blown away by, because I had a huge background in theatre and that was you know the extent of my counseling.
KINCH: Yeah. But you had all this work in the meantime working with Ñý¼§Ö±²¥ and working with young children. And so, they must have seen that you had this kind of skill set that you were going to be able to bring to bear.
WRIGHT: I think so. I think so. And I even asked them in my interview, I can remember Veronica Johnson was in the interview process and, and she said, do you have any questions for me? You know, I'm looking around at all the other applicants that have, you know, these backgrounds in social work or CSCT and just all these, you know, rich backgrounds in mental health. And I asked her, I said, why would you want somebody that's got a B.A. in theatre, you know? She said, well you're bringing a huge part of your life that was working with children already. You know, you have this long background in education and teaching and performing arts, you know, and now I'm learning too that that's extended as far as bringing empathy and radical acceptance. And just all of these things that we do, that we practice in the program, are also a part of performance and theatre and stuff that I was already doing with the kids.
KINCH: Yeah, and maybe doing intuitively or implicitly, and now counseling is giving you kind of a theory on why it matters and engaging. Yeah, well, so, you know, across the board in the graduate school we run into time and time again how important the student advisor relationship is. Tell us a little bit more about Jayna Mumbauer and your relationship with her?
WRIGHT: Jayna came in a couple of years ago and from the beginning I could sense that she was just the type of professor that was going to expect a lot from us. And I loved that because it's a challenge. And then also I knew I could trust her, because I knew that if I could make it in her classes, then I had actually really learned something. That's not to say that that's not true for my other professors as well, but with Jayna it was just very, I just felt an immediate kind of connection with her. Maybe it's because we're both from the East too.
KINCH: Mm hm, yeah, yeah.
WRIGHT: You know. But she really, she really does push us and gets, I think, the, the best out of us, you know?
KINCH: Yeah. And so just recently you've been collaborating with her. Tell us a little bit about this recent presentation.
WRIGHT: Jayna worked with me on putting together a presentation that was on improvisation and its effects on anxiety. And so, the section of the conference that we were working on was for anxiety across the board. And so, people were doing presentations at different things for anxiety, but ours was specifically on how improvisation can help lower the, you know, effects of anxiety on a child.
KINCH: It's a perfect kind of blend of your two backgrounds and your two experiences.
WRIGHT: You know, I was telling a friend about that and they said, wow, what a smart teacher to be able to take this, your real-world experience and apply it to this new education that you're learning right now. That's, that’s how that worked. And we put together this presentation and we had such a great time. And actually, what has spun off from that is I have ended up since then, creating an improv group in the counseling department.
KINCH: That's fantastic.
WRIGHT: It's been a lot of fun.
KINCH: Well, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it and congratulations again.
WRIGHT: Thank you for having me.
KINCH: If you enjoyed this episode of Confluence, subscribe to our podcast feed at Apple, Google, Spotify, or Stitcher. Make sure to rate and review to support our enterprise of bringing you the voices of graduate education at the Ñý¼§Ö±²¥. See you on the next float.