Hello!

Let me introduce myself - I'm Dr. Laurie Gatlin - you can call me Laurie. 

I've been at Cal State Long Beach for 10 years, and I"m the program head of the Art Education program and also coordinator for the single subject Art Credential program. Teaching online is odd - I've been teaching a long time and this is a totally different type of experience. Before I came to CSULB, I taught high school for 15 years in the midwest (in Indiana, where I finished my doctorate while I was teaching).

This is a picture of  me and my husband Dale hiking in Bryce Canyon National Park. We like to do stuff together, his background is in construction, and we like to work on houses, build stuff, and travel and enjoy nature together.  

This is a picture of one of those projects we worked on together - we build a Gypsy-style camper. I know that Gypsy is a slanderous name for a group of people, but it's the best way to describe the camper. It's actually a vardo - which is the type of camper style it is. So that's what I'll call it --my husband and I built it from scratch and went camping in it until we sold it a couple of years ago - with plans to make another (a little bigger and with more conveniences).  Every time we went camping we spent as much time giving tours and talking about our camper as we did hiking and enjoying nature.

I have 3 daughters, two of them are also teachers - my oldest daughter is a professor of public health at Chico State, and my middle daughter is a first grade teacher (who is currently taking some time off to be with her little boys, my grandkids).  My youngest daughter owns a boutique dog care business - training and caring for dogs. She has 14 employees and they take care of dogs, cats, lizards, guinea pigs, birds, and the occasional cow.  

These are my two grandkids - you can see their personalities in this picture.

They're in front of the airstream that their parents fixed up - the whole family took a 6 month break from life and traveled and lived in their camper before returning to work and school.

Dale and I have two cats and a dog - this is Luna on the day we adopted her from the shelter.

These are our cats, Persephone and Mercury.  They're judgmental jerks. 

But good-looking ones:

                             

I look forward to getting to know all of you this semester!