Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" was delivered on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium. Over 450 Carnegie Mellon students, staff members, and friends of Pausch attended the lecture, leaving only standing room as this was more than the auditorium could hold. Pausch later commented about this in an interview, saying "A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding – hopefully at the appropriate times – that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way." The first introduction of the speech as well as the series of lectures was given by Indira Nair, the Vice Provost for Education at Carnegie Mellon. Nair first explained the university's aforementioned lecture series called "Journeys", in which eight more professors from Carnegie Mellon would share their insights on their professional and personal experiences over the years.
J. Luke Wood
In 2017, Wood taught a nationally broadcast course titled “Black Minds Matter: A Focus on Black Boys and Men in Education.” The course was streamed to a registered audience of 10,000 learners who participated as individuals and at 260 live broadcast and replay sites across the nation. Each session included commentary from Wood and featured guest speakers such as Shaun R. Harper, Ilyasah Shabazz, Patrisse Cullors, Jerlando F. L. Jackson, S. Lee Merritt, and Frank Harris III. A review of each week of the course was released in HuffPost According to the public syllabus, the course was “Black Minds Matter is a public course designed to increase the national consciousness about issues facing Black boys and men in education. The course draws parallels between issues faced by Black males in society and the ways that Black minds are engaged in the classroom.” The course was panned by conservatives as a propaganda for the Black Lives Matter movement and resulted in Wood being listed as one of 15 “Teachers vs. Preachers” professors for conservative students to avoid. Wood indicated that the course was offered as a response to the shooting of Alfred Olango by police officers in El Cajon California, near San Diego.