Something to Hang Your Hat On
Twenty-four baseball caps from various U.S. universities hang from nails along the top of a wall in David Kleist’s office, and there’s an empty nail on the wall waiting for another hat to come.
“It is a timeline of memories of my students,” said Kleist, professor and chair of the Department of Counseling. “Everyone one of these hats is a person and brings back memories of my time working with these doctoral students.”
When Kleist earned his Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University, the chair of his doctoral committee made a deal with Kleist, who was his first doctoral student.
“He said when you get a job, you have to buy me a beer mug from wherever you go,” Kleist said. “He was starting a ritual or tradition with his doctoral advisees, I imagine, so when I moved here I went down to the ISU Bookstore and got him some beer mugs.”
Kleist and his advisor exchanged beer mugs from their respective institutions.
“When I had a chance to work with my first doc student at ISU, I thought I want to do something like that, a ritual or tradition, but not steal the same idea,” Kleist said. “I enjoy wearing baseball caps and I thought that’s what I’d do.”
Kleist started in 1995 at ISU and since that time about 90 percent of his doctoral students have followed through with the hat ritual, for the others, he buys the hats on his own. He’s had 21 students on doctoral committees and some have sent him more than one hat when they’ve found new jobs.
“I don’t require them to buy a hat,” he said. “It’s a bit more playful like ‘I’ll agree to chair your doctoral committee, but you agree to buy me a hat at the institution that employs you upon graduation.’”
The hats are testimony to the influence ISU’s counseling program has had nationwide.
“By sending me the hats, the graduates are promoting their beneficial, excellent education at ISU,” said Kleist, then listing the names of states and universities identified on the hats, “in North Carolina, Oklahoma, Idaho, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Washington, Pennsylvania, Texas, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Georgia, Montana again, Oregon, Utah, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and now Oregon State.”
There’s also a nail that waits for a hat from Brooklyn College in New York.
The hats don’t go unnoticed.
“It has a great impact on students and for me there is a sense of pride to think that these are all different universities and all the different students that are being impacted by folks that went here,” Kleist said. “So to look at the network of influence of ISU, this is one cool way to see it represented.”
The tradition is catching on among at least one of his colleagues. Steven Moody, associate professor of counseling, has begun collecting fishing lures from his doctoral advisees when they graduate. Moody graduated from ISU’s counseling department and began working at ISU five years ago after working at Northern Illinois University a couple of years. So far, he’s collected five fishing lures, each engraved with the student’s initials and the year they graduated.
“It is fun for sure,” Moody said. “You work with your students for a good solid three years in the doc program so you really get to know them. It is just nice to exchange gifts at the end and we don’t want to be too elaborate or too expensive or anything like that, so it is kind of a fun way to have good memories.”
Andy Taylor