Oral History Project - Current Faculty
Dr. Sally J. Zepeda
Professor and Graduate Coordinator
Educational Administration and Policy Program
Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy
(1999-present)
Interviewer: Oksana Parylo
Date: October 29, 2007
Q: How you did you come to work at the College of Education at the University of Georgia.
A: I came to the University of Georgia in August 1999. In 1992, I think it was, I attended the AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference in Atlanta, and I fell in love with the state. Because the University of Georgia has one of the best reputations in the field of instructional supervision in the nation and the people who worked here were giants in the field, I knew that some day I wanted to be at UGA, to follow in their footsteps.
Those people included Ed Pajak, Gerry Firth, Edith Grimsley, Ray Bruce and a few others like Carl Glickman. There was an opening and I was asked by the University of Georgia to apply, which in itself was an honor. I had to decline coming in 1998 because I lost both of my parents within about an eight-week period of time. I had to settle their estates, and so I figured I couldn’t come. And to my amazement, the University of Georgia kept calling me and they invited me to come to UGA, even if I had to delay a year. I came in as an assistant professor, after being at the University of Oklahoma for four years, and since then I’ve been promoted from assistant to associate, and now to full professor. My area is instructional supervision, and that’s what I teach, research and provide service in.
Q: And thinking back to those first years what did your work involve?
A: Like every new person at the University, just learning how to navigate such a big system. Although the College of Education is one of the largest colleges of education in the country, the people here really care, and it’s not such a big place once you get landed and when you get adjusted.
Q: In thinking about those first years, what did you like and/or did not like?
A: I liked the fact that in the College of Education there are opportunities for new professors, and even not so new professors to get involved in a lot of the activities. At that time the College Of Education was arranged in a huge number of departments, I think there were 24 departments across three different schools. I was in the College of Education, in the Department of Educational Leadership, in the School of Lifelong Learning. So, that structure was very difficult for me to get used to because I came from a College of Education that only had four or five departments, and within those departments – program areas.
Q: And when you started working here what were your plans, and did they come true?
A: Yes, they have. The long-term plan was that I wanted to become a professor, and that has come true.
Q: You mentioned several names of people who were influential in the College of Education. Can you tell me more about those people?
A: Sure. I think Ray Bruce, in the way I view the world, was one of the most influential people. He is an icon; he and Jerry Firth, and Edith Grimsley, all of them were icons in the state, because they were engaged in the field of supervision, and those are big shoes to fill. It’s an awesome responsibility. I think that Jerry Firth played a really important part in the College of Education, for one year he served as an interim dean while serving as a president of ASCD national and also doing a lot of different things out there to really help solidify and put the University of Georgia on the map.
I think we had two sets of people who put the College of Education on the map. I think we had the folks who were engaged in the large-scale types of research and writing, who were out there presenting nationally. Then, we had people like Ray Bruce and Edith Grimsley, who were setting the stage and the focus for the field of supervision in the state. So, it’s almost a dichotomy in some respect: you had those who went out and did the research, and did all the national and international things, and those people are really important, but you also had a group of people who could be committed to being in the field, and being what I call “true foot soldiers,” making connections in the field.
Four or five years ago the GACIS (Georgia Association for Curriculum and Instructional Supervisors) had their 30th anniversary, and all of the past presidents and folks here in Georgia that were real active and engaged in helping GACIS grow were there. There are 650 members of GACIS in the state of Georgia, all curriculum and supervision people at the central office primarily. Edith Grimsley and Ray Bruce were there, and in this crowd of about 650 people, my job was to get Ray Bruce and Edith Grimsley to their table, so they could eat lunch, and the luncheon could begin.
But I couldn’t because people were lined up, there were rows and rows. The line went two to three blocks long, of people who just wanted to hug and shake the hands of Ray Bruce and Edith Grimsley. Now, they might have had that person 20 years ago in a class, but Ray and Edith remembered their names, remembered what school system they were in, asked about their families, and it was as if there was no distance of time between them.
So finally, the president of GACIS gave me the signal and I had to get them to their table, and I had to take Ray Bruce and Edith Grimsley by their hands and say, “We have to go and sit down, lunch is waiting.” And I’m sitting there at the main table, and all through the lunch people were going to their table, and then when they went to introduce all of their past presidents and the special guests of GACIS who helped establish that organization, when they called Edith Grimsley’s name, the clapping went on for two or three minutes. Ray and Edith did some publishing, but that wasn’t their focus. They had such strong ties throughout the state of Georgia that I don’t think we will ever see another era like that.
Ray Bruce and Jerry Firth were both well-known in the state, but Firth was also known nationally and internationally, as was Ed Pajak. In fact, Pajak and Firth have proven to be a model for me, because they can do it all. They can have that national and international reputation and Ed Pajak who is now at John Hopkins University, is still actively involved in the field of supervision, both nationally and internationally.
I think what they represent to me in my career is that you can have that balance of being a foot soldier in the field, making the difference in the day-to-day application of supervision, but you can also make your mark nationally and internationally. So, I see my job and my mission in the College of Education is to serve as a bridge between practice, theory, and research.
Q: Can you think of any events that were critical for you or for the College of Ed as a whole?
A: I think the biggest critical incident that mobilized people – either for or against it, but that caught everybody’s attention – was the reorganization. About four years ago. It took about two years of our lives. All the planning and fussing. Good fussing. Fussing is not bad. The provost insisted that we have an external team meet with people to get information about it. Was it good and was everybody’s voice heard? I think so. It was very stressful because people were either very happy with the reorganization, or very upset and angry about it.
Q: So, who was involved in this process?
A: The entire College of Education and different parts of the University. It was a very trying time. I think the positive note on the reorganization is that the College of Education has healed. And I think that there has been a very conscious attempt to get things back to normal so that people can go on doing what we were supposed to be doing and that’s being able to teach, to be able to do our research and to provide service to local and national communities.
Q: What was the reason for this whole process to start?
A: You know I really don’t know what all the reasons were, but I think it was financial. Because we had three schools in the Colleges that had directors, and then we had about 24 departments with department heads, we were top-heavy with administration. So times were tight, budgets had to be trimmed, and there was going to be a new way of doing business, so the ticket was the reorganization. I didn’t pay very much attention to it, frankly, because I wasn’t going to let it interfere with my research agenda or my teaching, or the work I do with students. Yes, I was interested, I thought it was reasonable, but I was probably a minority in that. I think there were more people who were not in favor of the reorganization, and I don’t really know if I was in favor of it, like a zealot, but it didn’t bother me. Because I think a lot of good changes occurred.
We did a dance of trying to find departments with whom to merge whose people who were compatible with us as far as our research, our mission, our philosophy, that made sense intellectually. And we had a certain amount of time to figure out who we were going to merge with. So it was this dance of getting to know different people, and what that configuration would look like and that’s how LEAP, the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy was created. It was three groups of people that merged to form the department, and that was the Department of Educational Administration and Policy, the Department of Adult Education, and the program area in qualitative research.
So that was a dance, getting to know one another, and that was really exciting because I would say that those 24 people that came together really wanted to be together so in that sense I think it worked out very well for us.
Q: What advice would you give to people who hope to be studying and working in the College?
A: I think we need to take stock of who we are, and we really need to continue to be very strategic, and figure out what we envision the next 50 to 100 years to be like. I think we need to prepare for that next generation of people who will be coming to the University of Georgia as our students and our faculty. We need to continue with our mission of research and teaching for our constituents. I think we have to be very purposeful that we don’t forget about our constituents, and our mission, to work with them and to further the whole notion of partnerships within the College of Education. That’s an area that I think personally we don’t do so well, but I think we are the second largest College of Education in the country, so it’s difficult to imagine what partnerships would look like, so I think we are in really exciting times, that we can began thinking that more through.
Q: What advice would you give new, young faculty members here?
A: Find a good mentor, be very productive, and be a good teacher – first and foremost.
Q: You have new students coming in each year. How are they different each year?
A: I think students do change. I think that they are much more market-driven, more product-oriented, and they are looking to get a good education and they are very vocal about that. As far as quality, here at the University of Georgia, we attract the best and the brightest, and that’s a good thing. I think that they hold us accountable more than in the past, but I think that’s because of the overall tenure of the accountability movement.
But because we do attract the best and brightest students, I that I think we have more of an obligation to be able to zig and zag a little bit, to realize that our students are demanding different things now, because of the way society is changing. They are our constituents whether they are from China or Ukraine, or France—they are our students. I’ve noticed that, at least from my little world… more influx of international students and the fact that when they get their degrees with us they will go to their mother countries, many of them, most of them, but they are going to carry that torch of the University of Georgia with them, so that is some responsibility to do things right.
Q: So, what kind of advice would you give to these students?
A: Ask questions, ask lots of questions, and for as demanding as this new breed of students are, they have to be equally demanding (of themselves) in the work they do for us, in their studies.
Q: What are your expectations for the College of Education for the next 10 years?
A: My expectations for the College are very simple: that it will support faculty and students, and be able to help us achieve our mission. And that means hiring more faculty, and providing more graduate assistantships, and being more competitive in marketing. And I hope that the College of Education is ready to answer that call, because in order for us to achieve the mission of in our state, nationally and internationally, more resources have to become available, and I am sure everybody says the same thing, I mean, “we all want more.” But in order to do more, we need more, not less.
Q: How do you see the College in 10 years?
A: I think operationally it will be the same, but I think we are going to see more infusion of technology. I think we are going to become much more savvy in the way we deliver courses, and in the way we teach with technology, and I think that we are going to see more virtual aspects of teaching and learning and service. Right now, blended courses, online courses – those things are up and running, but I think we are going to see much more of a united effort to use technology to deliver programs. I think we are going to see a technology infusion into our service to our constituents, and much more in research as well. Now, I don’t know what that would look like, but I think we are going to see that permeate across more of what we do.
Dr. Sally J. Zepeda
Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction
Loyola University, Chicago
Oral Histories
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