Dr. Mark Ballora

To begin with, I didn't know where to put something like this. Sometimes words just deserve to be written even if there is no intended outlet for them. The impact that people have on others can be traced forward, even beyond their lifespan. When Mark died, I was regrettably oblivious - wrapped up in my own life. This year when I watched the partial demolition of Beaver Stadium, I wandered down the path of seeing what else had changed at Penn State. Esber Recital Hall had been demolished and rebuilt: the location of my Schreyer thesis project. The courses that I took to fulfill an Integrative Arts degree had long since been established as a Music Technology minor, and the man who made that happen, Mark, was no longer listed as a faculty member.

Mark was the kind of person who lived in deep curiosity and awe, finding joy in the little complexities that shaped the things he enjoyed: music, expression, learning, and technology. His spirit was infectious, drawing in the students who were open to it, and I was one of those. Entering Penn State, I thought I'd be a mechanical engineer, but my free credits were wrapped up in music. Mark taught one of those electives which became the core of the Music Technology course path: the Science of Music. I remembered thinking he was a quirky professor, but fun for a class or two. He used an extendable fork as a pointer during lectures and had a sign on his office door that read "A Gentleman can be defined as one who CAN play the bagpipes, but doesn't" (or something along those lines, it's been almost 20 years). Thinking I knew a thing or two about music and science, I approached Mark about adding an "honors option" to Science of Music to meet my Schreyer requirements. He agreed and asked me to write a short 3-5 page paper every week adding on to the topics from class. Sadly, I never bothered to ask him if he was trying to scare me away and/or if my completion of his requirements led to him trusting me enough for what happened next.

Engineering was not for me. Mark was the professor who cared and listened, and he offered a change: Integrative Arts. At the time, Penn State offered students in the College of Arts and Architecture the option to combine different arts areas and knowledge domain requirements to build a full degree, and Mark was willing to be my advisor through that process. We tore through the course offerings and built most of a four year plan with music education, technical theater, computer science, and all the knowledge domains so that I could go to school for something I loved - music. But Mark was the kind of life influence who would not settle for contentedness, he expected growth. He approached me with a challenge to manage the Music Education computer lab. This was a huge step of trust because I had no background, no Mac experience outside of his class, and I was just a 19 year old kid. This job typically went to a graduate student, but Mark was willing to make it a grad-level course, saving the college money and getting me more honors credits for Schreyer.

All the pieces came together for me after that offer from Mark. I used the money I'd saved to buy an iMac, learned how to navigate it, and that fall I was a computer lab manager for the first time. This was 2007 and the humble beginnings of the PSU Mac Admin conference were still a couple years away, but the people who started that conference, who started block-based Mac imaging, they were the ones who taught me to manage this lab. Mark set me up better than I think anyone could have planned. When I walked out of Penn State with an unknown arts degree in a country recovering from the great recession, engaged to the woman I'd marry, I needed work badly. With a background in Mac administration, music education, and critical local connection with a lifelong friend in Education Technology, I found myself very happily employed at Liberty High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That career in technology for education has led me to and through every major event of my life.

He's not here to read this, but Mark opened the door to a life of opportunity for me. Of course I learned from him, all kinds of specifics about digital audio, but teachers do so much more than provide information - in many ways they give us our lives. Truly consider where you'd be without them, and then go and thank your teachers.