Crimson and Gold Connection; JT Knoll

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection. I am Dustin Triber. Today's guest is a name that a lot of people know around this area, JT Canole. He's a prevention and wellness coordinator and advisor for gorillas in your midst here at Pittsburgh State University, JT. Thank you for coming in. Thank you Dustin. And you're actually leaving us. You're retiring here at the end of June, so it's gonna be, I mean, you're kind of a fixture here really. Well, I am, you know, I, I've been here quite a while. They not only have I been on campus part time for 15 years and then full time for 11, but I go back to two degrees here as well. So I've been on pit state campus for quite a long time. Let's go back into your past. Are you originally from the Pittsburgh area? Frontenac. Frontenac. Well, the most public of frontenac is I like to call it. Yeah. So you didn't have to drive very far to get here. No, we carpooled back. You know, we had a 730 in the morning class back when I went to school here. We carpooled over. And if you had it, didn't have a class to 930, you still had a can't get up for the 730. So was working for Pittsburgh State University,

was that kind of the goal when you first came to the college year? The last thing I ever thought was going to happen. I always, I never liked school. I like to learn, but I never did like school very much. I spent a lot of time in the hall and grade school, figured out if I got into journalism in high school, they let you out of class to go work on a story kind of thing. But as I got a job here, completed my degree after some stops and starts in different majors, like a lot of students, I went off and, you know, pursued my profession as a counselor in other areas. And then it circled back, like I said 26 years ago, I got hired as an addictions counselor at the Student Health Center. And then that evolved into peer education and training students, and then coming over to under campus activities in my present job. And your present job, a prevention wellness coordinator, let's talk a little bit about that. Largely, what I do is train students to go out and do presentations to other students because we know that students

tend to list people of their own elk more than someone who's much older than them. And what I do is I train them and then advise them through the year on providing information on everything from stress management to alcohol and other drug use to relationships, you know, to study habits, to those kinds of things through the year, they go out and do presentations to other students. And some of us prevention areas, like, you know, we were big on going tobacco-free on campus, our students were big and helped get that rolling, those kinds of issues as well. So, largely, what I do is train them and then I'll go out and do other presentations on stress relief, mindfulness training, communication, those kinds of things for other departments. And you, we were talking a little bit before this, you pretty much built this program here at Pittsburgh State. Yeah, it was, it was interesting, I was working back in the programs like 24 years old, but I was working with Dr. Grimaldi was the doctor at the time and he was an old friend of

mine. And one of the students came and said, you know, we need a peer education group here on campus and we talked it over and he had the medical side. I had the counseling side plus I have a background in theater and we wanted to do peer theater as well, not just tabling and that kind of thing. So we just put it together ourselves. We just made it up as we went along. We made a two-hour credit class through a semester and it worked. It was really lucky. And in some sense that we've had a very successful program and I think based on the way we fell into it is part of the reason that the program has been successful. What happens? It's just like having a tradition with a good football basketball team. After a period of years, you get the culture going and you start drawing the best students to come to your program. So it's kind of like I was at a national conference this year and somebody said, you know, your groups always stay pretty, a lot of groups they drop,

but your groups stay pretty high, you know. And what I do is quote, Yogi Beras, like what makes a good manager is a good players. And so we continue to attract the kind of bright, creative, committed, compassionate students, not only to deal with whatever issues are at hand, but whatever issues come along to develop new issues. So it's like right now we're talking about stress and social media is one of the big things and bystander intervention. And our students are coming up with increasingly new ways to reach other students about how to take care of themselves and other students. And I know you guys use theatrics, actually, come and play. Do you look for a theater type majors or you hope for that? Just anybody that's creative as you. We rarely get a theater major. Really? Rarely. And all the 24 years with girls in your midst, we get everything from construction and build an management to automotive, to nursing, to psychology, to social work, to business. The students don't show up for our group based on their major. They show up because they want

to be a part of what they see going on. And we're very fortunate too. I must say because we get excellent, excellent support from the top down, especially Dr. Steve Irwin over the years, you know, in student life has been wonderfully supportive because you have to have not only the financial support, you know, but the intellectual emotional support to say it's okay to do these things on campus, campus, excuse me, because some of them are, you know, we're talking about some of the things that are very controversial. You know, we're, we talk about HIV-AIDS and we talk about safe sex and we talk about alcohol and drug use and those kinds of things to give good health information. And we've never been held back by the administration in putting out good, healthy, science-based information. After retirement, what are your plans? Well, I thought I'd run for governor. Good luck. No, I'm not, I'm political, but not actually getting out there. I, you know, my dog, Arlo the Labradorians is going to be really happy.

We'll have more time to spend together and I will be happy too. Actually, I want to, you know, I've been on here before and talked about poetry and writing and I do a column, but I would like to work on a book I've got in my head, just one of the things I'm going to do. And then the rest of the time, I can read four hours a day, you know, as far as I think what I'm going to do from people who are telling me they've retired is be careful about volunteering, you know, for the first year because people will think, well, now you're retired, you can, you have all this other time. But I really want to be a part of exploring other things in my own creative interest because I used to do a lot of photography. I like to paint and draw and the energy that takes to go to a job 8, 10 hours a day, sometimes weekends and nights in these jobs. At 68, I don't have the bounce to come back. Now I'm going to work on that photograph or that poem or that drawing. So I'm really looking forward to pursuing my creative interest more.

Well, we look forward to seeing some of your creative endeavors in the future and especially with a book you're authoring. So J.T. Canole, thank you so much for coming in and speaking with us on Crimson and Gold Connection. Thank you for having me, Dustin. I appreciate it.