#PrideofLions

Ken Shepard | 1 | #ColumbiaPride

when I first came here as a faculty member I was a little conscious of the fact that I was a that I was gay and I kind of sort of kept it very quiet I

didn't really discuss it but my students really knew my colleagues who and it was a comfortable situation but I didn't feel comfortable being out and said I'm a tenured faculty member either to my

colleagues that would be perhaps writing letters for me for tenure or things like that I just didn't just didn't feel comfortable at all after tenure I still

had a great deal of discomfort I the way I came out was I I to my colleagues here at Columbia was was my wedding announcement so I got married in I've been with my husband now for almost 30

years we we got married in 2008 in California when it was there was first became legal that you could have California allowed out-of-state people to come in and get married so I got

married in 2008 in San Francisco at Grace Cathedral and my letting one with my wedding announcement was in The New York Times in fact it's sort of it's sort of quite to my general coming out

in general anyone who Google searches me because not only when they Google searches my name because in the air time is such an authoritative source you know the first thing you get is my home page

sometimes you get is my group home page or the third hit or fourth hit is the New York Times article my wedding announcement so pretty much anyone that Google's he finds out pretty quickly Who

I am and who I married but that was her laying my coming-out experience for my students I was most worried about my own PhD students and how they would react and I remember on the flame coming

in California I got the first sort of email it was that Sunday that the article appeared I got my first set email reactions from my students and most of them were like why didn't you

tell me you know and then I explained to them you know I was worried how he would react and they all told me how silly that was and everything else so ELISA was generally very positive experience

When Ken Shepard first started teaching at Columbia, he didn’t feel comfortable being out. Then, his marriage announcement was featured in the NYTimes. The Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering @CUSeas talks about the support he experienced, against expectations.