Oral History Project - Retired Faculty
Dr. Sylvia Hutchinson
Associate Dean and Professor Emeritus
College of Education and the Institute of Higher Education
(1979-2002)
Interviewer: Mardi Schmeichel
Date: 18 October, 2007
Q: Tell me how you came to work at the College of Ed at UGA?
A: To answer that question I have to tell you how I came to UGA as a student. My daddy wouldn’t agree to my coming to the University of Georgia because he said nice girls didn’t come here. Georgia was known as a party school then and he didn’t think it was a place where people took academics seriously. So he sent me to small Methodist schools and then I became enamored with a young man from Athens and Daddy sent me to the college farthest away from the University of Georgia but still in the state and the only way I could get everything worked out was to get married.
I married in 1959 and came to UGA as a junior and graduated in fall 1960. Then I taught for a year and realized that… I mean I had done well in my classes always, but after that year I knew that I didn’t know enough to teach those children to read as I wanted to. So I applied for graduate school to get a master’s in Early Childhood but with an emphasis in reading education. There wasn’t a master’s at the time in Reading Ed. I applied for an assistantship and got a university-wide one and they gave me the choice of being in the Statistics Lab or the Reading Clinic. I took the Reading Clinic and have been forever grateful because Ira Aaron has been my mentor since my first semester as an undergraduate – he became my boss as director of the Reading Clinic and I did the master’s with him. I have been forever grateful for that. He is the finest scholar gentleman one could imagine. He’s an incredible individual.
So I left here and went to the University of Florida with my husband and taught and was made a supervisor of reading, which I had no business doing so young. I was like 23 or 24 years old and I’ve said if there was a hell it would be all of those little biddies pecking at me for eternity because they thought I was too young to be in that spot. Then I taught on educational television. They wanted me to be the director of north central Florida ETV and it scared me spitless, so I quit my job, told them I was going back to school. It was the only way I could get out of taking the job and I went back to school at the University of Florida. I did finish my coursework but didn’t take my prelims and by that time my husband had finished his Ph.D. and he wouldn’t stay for me to finish.
It was prior to women’s lib and so we trucked off to Texas and subsequently had babies and when I finally realized I had to come back to school I was teaching at Brenau and they said if you wanna move ahead in academics, you’re going to have to get the doctorate.
So I came back over to UGA and talked to Dr. Aaron and he said that I would be assigned as a temporary advisee to a faculty member. Someone who took you as a doctoral student until you’d had time to learn your way around and the faculty had a chance to look at your work. Dr. Aaron was head of the department and he was going to assign me to another individual and I said, “If you won’t be my major professor I’ll just go back home.” He thought a minute and then said “ It’s OK. I’ll be your major professor then.”
I just have such admiration for him. I’m still a bit intimidated when I talk about it because he’s been so much a part of my academic rearing.
So I received the Ph.D. after a reasonable length of time and went back to Texas to teach and then decided that… Well, I went through a family upheaval and it was just my boys and me at that point and so I was going to teach at LSU but they struck the line position and I didn’t know what I was going to do. They had a spot in the Reading Department (at UGA) for former students – it was a revolving door – you could come in and do that for a year or so and they let me have that position. And during that time a tenure track position came up.
You want to talk about synchronicity or just convergence of good things for me. But the process is under way and they’re looking at the papers. I’m in competition with some really great people from around the country. They had encouraged me to put my papers in and just go through it for the practice of it because they really didn’t hire their own people
So I was doing it not because I thought I was going to get the job, but because it was going to give me good practice for when I would be trying other places. Then a message comes down from Virginia Trotter who was then the Vice President. There had been a reverse discrimination suit and if we had anybody in the pipeline who was one of our graduates, we must give them fair review. So it was just one of those amazing things
Q: What year was this?
A: This was in ’79. I taught the ’78-’79 year as a interim assistant professor then during that spring or summer was when I tried out for this position and came on as a tenure track person that fall
The grad students had all gotten together and they had written me two envelopes and one was to be opened if I didn’t get the job and one if I did. The night before the interview they had dared me to go with them to Sears out at the mall and they would pick out what I’d wear. They picked out this black dress like those Elvis velvet paintings and a fuchsia bag and fuchsia shoes and it was just the craziest outfit you’ve ever seen. And I wore it. So on their notes it said, “you got the job in spite of the outfit,” and on the other side, “you didn’t get the job because of the outfit.” At any rate, I got the position. And that’s how I came to be at Georgia. That’s a long answer to your question.
Q: That’s a great answer.
A: But I’ve always felt so flattered to have the opportunity to come back here because the reading education program for years and years and years had been known as the top. Dr. Aaron had moved that program to the top five in the country and that was the other reason I decided to come. I repeated my University of Florida work and had to do all of my coursework over again when I came back to school at UGA for the doctorate because my time had run out. Dr. Aaron wouldn’t let me petition to extend the time limits. He said if you’re going do it, do it right and so I started over and did it all over again. I took the GRE over… the whole nine yards. So, I was very flattered to have the opportunity to be here. I think it’s the best place in the entire world. I love the University – it’s like my extended family. I just I can’t think of anything better than to be here.
Q: Tell me about being in that position in 1979.
A: Well, this is another action that will give you an idea about Dr. Aaron and how incredibly fine and also, how astute he is. He went to the secretaries before I came. Most of them had been there when I was a doctoral student.
And he said, “I know you all know Sylvia and you know it’s been a good warm relationship and we were all friends but she’s a faculty member now and you will call her…” I was Carter then…. and he said, “you will call her Dr. Carter.” And the biggest problem people talk about in going back to an institution where they did their work is that they never quite get treated as a full-fledged citizen. They continue to be treated as students. I’ve seen it happen on campus time and again. I never had that problem
I was immediately a colleague and the faculty in the Reading Department insured that for me because I wouldn’t have known how. I wouldn’t have even recognized it as a problem. I was so happy to be here, I would’ve accepted it probably on any terms. But they insured that I had an equitable slot
That’s what mentoring is about. Where people care for you in ways that you might not even recognize and they certainly cared for me in so many ways. Bob Jerrolds was wonderful. Byron Calloway, Hazel Simpson, all those older people, many of them have died. Byron and Hazel and all of them, even after they retired, were incredible to me.
People have said to me “Was it hard being a female in those days?” When I made my promotion five years later, I did it in reasonable time. When a woman was promoted to professor a lot of times people say, “Oh wasn’t it hard to be a woman in that era of academics.” I think I was only the 35th female (faculty member) on campus.
So there weren’t that many women who were full professors. But I never felt demeaned or infringed upon or that my progress was subverted in any way. And it was because people came to me and said, “It’s time for you to put your papers in now. And I said, “I don’t want to compete. I’ll just stay here and then go to some smaller place after the time is up, the seven years of teaching without tenure.”
But my colleagues said, “No, you won’t do that. Put your papers together.” And I remember the first time I put them together, I carried them to Bob Jerrolds to look at and he handed them back to me and said, “Now start over. He said, “this is a pitiful job and you will not turn in these papers in this condition.” I took them and threw them all over his living room and I said, in a not nice way, “I’ll tell you what you can do with the promotion.” And he said, “Now I’ll tell you what you can do is to get down here and pick up these papers now and start over.” And so I did. I had tremendous help. People talk about the difficulty of a woman making it without female mentors. I was so fortunate to have grand male mentors who cared about the program and never discriminated. I think it’s great and I love being a mentor to other women
But there were no women to speak of who were full professors. Hazel died as an associate professor. She never made full. There were a few but even fewer in the College of Education. Bernice Cooper was a mentor to me and she was a professor. She was rather an indirect mentor. We didn’t spend a lot of time together in those days. She’s become a jewel in my collection of friends now and I loved her as a teacher. I have some wonderful friends.
Rachel Sutton was my children’s literature teacher as an undergraduate and one of the two advisors in my student teaching. She was an incredible scholar and a lady. She wore gloves when she went out and a hat. One day she came to observe me and someone on the elementary faculty had died. It was before I had completed the quarter, but I had started early so they somehow or another arranged for me to finish and to take on the teaching position. They gave me credit for those weeks that I came before school started. Dr. Sutton agreed to the arrangement but said, “I signed on to be her advisor and we’ll complete the requirements.” So she came to see me after I had graduated and was employed. She finished her number of observations of me regardless. I had some exceptional models. They were wonderful and I can’t say that I had any problems because of being female in that period of time. I just didn’t experience that. I had lots of support.
Q: What did that support look like? What that kind of mentoring and support did you get and how did it manifest itself.
A: It was everything – from sometime visiting my classes to be sure that I was getting what I needed there to a kind of tough love about writing articles.
And I did some collaboration. I collaborated in writing with Dr. Aaron on a lot of things because our interests, not unexpectedly with my having been his student for such a long time, were so similar. So we collaborated but Byron Calloway Bob Jerrolds, Jim Dinnan would constantly say, “What have you written this week?” – that kind of thing – so I knew what the ante was. I knew what I had to do to be accepted and then to be able to stay and make progress through the ranks. At the same time because they knew my love was in the classroom and was with the practical side, they respected that. They helped me find ways to do the things I really wanted to do and I did enough of the things that I had to do that I could get through the process. They watched me very carefully. I really like people and being with people and, you know, I work hard.
I wanted the College of Education to be regarded well across campus, so I was sort of hell bent that I was going to do a really good job every time I served on a committee from across campus. What happens when you do that is you get there early, you turn in your report, you are reasonably amiable with people and so if there are eight people on the committee you get seven invitations to be on other committees the next time. So I had lots of committee service and my mentors called my hand on that and said, “You can’t accept any more committee terms.” I was on 35 committees at one time and they said, “You can’t accept any more committees you tell them we said you can’t accept any more committees for a while.”
So it was very practical, very hands-on, there were very few days that I didn’t have a mid-afternoon tea with Byron Callaway, one of the really older members of the faculty. They were like mentors. They were in a sense parental. I was raising two children by myself and Dr. Callaway and Ms. Callaway fed us a couple of times a week and put us back together when we needed it. So it was personal, it was social, it was academic and intellectual. I am just the luckiest person in the world because I ran into the kind of people who were willing to see what I needed and then provide it.Dr. Aaron mentored me professionally and encouraged me to try to write for a basal reading text program. He invited me to compete for it and it was a blind review so I didn’t have any advantage by his putting my name in the pot but he did let me know about the opportunity to be a writer for the Scott-Foresman basal reading series. And I won a spot on that team. And that meant a lot to my career. It changed me, put me in a practical direction for teaching reading but it was also a recognizable contribution nationally and internationally, so it was very important direction.
Q: Talk a little more about that particular experience in your career.
A: Well, it was frightening at first to write for blind review with all those who came here to interview us. There was one person I’d gone to college with who was now on one of the teams from Scott-Foresman. And he demanded that some of the people apologize to me. They were so I mean, it was like going through a doctoral oral and they said, “We didn’t realize we were that hard on you.” He was just looking after me, I guess. I don’t know but it was rigorous and it was frightening. At the same time, I was getting turned down on copy to Scott-Foresman, Dr. Aaron was turning me down on dissertation copy so I worked on my confidence a lot during that time because I had plenty of opportunities to see where my shortcomings were. And I learned two entirely different kinds of writing, which was healthy for me because writing was not what I enjoyed most
Q: What was the time frame in which that was happening?
A: I guess maybe ’75 for Scott-Foresman. It didn’t actually come out for another couple of years. It may have even been ’78 when the series finally premiered. And so, it was a long process. The series took a lot of time to put together. And I was at Southwest Texas State teaching when it premiered.
Q: What kind of doors do you think that opened up?
A: I don’t know— the major one it opened for me was that because I really liked teachers and I liked trying to communicate with them, I became one of the authors on the Scott Forsman team who went out to schools, because not everybody likes to do that. So I spoke all over the country – probably every state, doing workshops for teachers. I gained a kind of confidence that I don’t think I could have possibly gained otherwise. I think the University being as it is and the actual fearfulness to recognize something that doesn’t fit the pattern, you know, textbook writing doesn’t really fit, goes under like maybe teaching, scholarship of teaching.
And so, it didn’t open a door for me there, but it did help because I eventually went on to work in international settings, in Germany and Saudi Arabia… all sort of places with the series. The books were sold all over the world. We could build a case for an international reputation in the promotion process, which was a good thing for me because I really didn’t have but a couple of articles that had been translated and were international articles. So travels to those countries to present in conferences and with teachers helped build that portion of my work.
But speaking personally, it also helped me a great deal in another way. I later married the Scott-Foresman regional officer. I don’t know what his title was… district manager something like that. I’ve forgotten. Anyway, he was the Southeastern person for Scott-Foresman. I met him at a reception that they had given in honor of the authors and they asked me to go and speak once because John Manning couldn’t go, John Manning used to be active in Reading Education. I think he has retired now but at any rate he was at Minnesota and at the last minute he couldn’t go and they called me and asked me to go in his stead and Hutch was there so that was the greatest thing that came from Scott-Foresman. He only lived four years after we were married. He had a heart condition and we knew we didn’t have long but it was a great four years and a very happy time.
Q: Ok, so we have you at UGA and in a tenure track position and you eventually become a full professor. Can you describe the evolution of your career after that.
A: I wish that I could tell you that I had a five-year plan or a 10-year plan but I never really did. All I ever wanted to do was teach. And it didn’t matter if it was second grade or a class here at the University. I love the University but I was as happy as I have ever been teaching 4th grade the first year out.
But I continued to teach and in maybe ’91, after I made all the promotions, I just did what everybody did and went along my way. And then, I was at home making the bed and the phone rang and it was Russ Yeany who had been named the interim dean and he said that he wanted me to be the Associate Dean. The current associate dean had just taken a leave of absence and I said, “I don’t want to be an administrator. I never have wanted to be an administrator, thank you very much.” But he called back and said, “Look here’s what I did. I took a list of people that might take this job around the building and around campus and this is the question I asked of these three people ‘Which would you be least surprised if I asked to be Associate Dean,’ and you won.” Now isn’t that a funny question?
So I said I’d do it for one year and seven years later I was saying if you don’t let me out of here I am going to die because I had continued to teach… I couldn’t not teach, and they had done away with the other two associate deans. So, I was the only associate dean, the director of development, the alumni person, and I was teaching as well. I was going down the tube physically and so finally, he said, “OK, so what do you want to do?” and I said, “I want to go to the Institute of Higher Ed and use what I’ve learned about administration with students who want to be administrators.” And he said, “Go ask them if they want you and I will give them your line for as long as you want to stay.”
It’s an unheard of thing that my salary went to the Institute and when I retired it came back to the College on the University level. I had a great time at the Institute. Loved that. One day, I’m in the College of Education and I’m doing what I’ve always done and it’s a very, territorial kind of thing. The next day I’m in the Institute and within no time, I was asked to set up a program for support for the Arts and Sciences faculty. I would never have been asked to do that from the College of Education. The Institute is a free standing unit in that effect and you get to extend experience and collaboration without being bound by turf in the same way that you are when you’re in a particular college.
I was asked to direct the program for post-docs in teaching and that was an incredible opportunity. It was a program that Tom Dyer and some others designed to bring along young freshly graduated Ph.D.s, who didn’t have the kind of experience in teaching that they needed. Here, they would teach for us. I helped design a program in which we would work on their teaching skills because they had the academic prowess. They were from the best schools in the world but hadn’t had teaching experience. I observed them and we went on retreats. We just had a wonderful time and I did that for four or five years and then decided to retire.
Q: This was what year?
A: I retired in ’02. I didn’t want people to say “Is that old woman still here?” I retired before that. I had never wanted to do anything but teach, and I don’t take any money for anything I do now, but I continue to work. I can’t imagine staying home. There will come a time when nobody asks me to do anything and I know that. That’s probably going to be very difficult for me, but I’m hoping it coincides with the fact that I can’t get out. I’ll need a motorized chair or something, but at any rate, in the meantime, I enjoy doing what I’m asked to do. I coordinate a couple programs, I teach a course for the Athletic Department for freshman athletes, I mentor Honors Students, I mentor in the summer freshman college, I’m probably forgetting something else, I do the Honors Book groups, whatever anybody asks me to do that I want to do. I find it incredibly exciting to be with the students. I was just at lunch with a group from the Roosevelt Institution, and I cannot imagine at this stage in my life anything any more exciting than hearing those young people talk about issues and see them take leadership roles. This is tremendously satisfying
Q: Can you tell us more about your years as associate dean?
A: Russ Yeany was the dean and he had a very clear sense of what he wanted to accomplish in his time there. And he had a clear sense of what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to have a spot in that building with an open door to faculty. He wanted us to create support for faculty and we tried to do that. Now, you can talk to faculty to see if that worked or not but that’s what we were trying to do.
For instance, we set up a program in which young professors would supply their vita and information about what they were doing to us and we would look at that and talk with their department chair about how we saw what they were doing, let the department chair talk about the goals they had for the department and how this person fit in and then we would say , “OK, looks like this person needs some help here and here,” either it’s money or mentoring or whatever, and we’d make some recommendations and where we could supply additional support, we did that. And so it was to say, “Look, we want you to be successful here.”
And it wasn’t under penalty of not making promotion, it was more like, “How do we help you do want you want to do better.” Which we thought was really a good idea. It was so good that some of the mid-level faculty said that they thought they ought to get this assistance too. I don’t think we ever quite brought that off, but we did a number of things like that where we were trying to support faculty as much as possible. We created a system that some people said was mollycoddling of the faculty, I got that at several points, but we were trying to provide them a system of promotion and tenure that would give them the support to move through the ranks.
And we were with them prior to and throughout the process. We tried to take care of our problems in-house so that if we had someone who wasn’t going to make it, we tried to talk with them about that, pull them back, and help get what they needed to do but not let them go through the complete failure cycle because that’s so debilitating.
We tried to make sure if your papers left the College of Education, they were exactly as they needed to be. Everybody’s was in the same order, so we made it easy on the committee to read and review and find what they needed and that kind of thing. And so because we had such a hands-on process, we were accused of making it too easy for them. We didn’t see it that way. But support was the tone we wanted to create. Russ and I set a goal to be on every floor of the Aderhold every week, and to be in every building of the College every week. We didn’t make it but we were trying every week.
We were trying to communicate. We were trying to support. We gave the name Student Services to that office because that’s what we were trying to communicate—that we were there for the students. And we hired people who were particularly caring. Tony Stringer became our certification officer. We had some wonderful people. We had undergraduate advisors getting’ flowers and presents from parents because they tracked the kids so hard and kept up with them. I think that’s really wonderful. But you’re never going to make everybody happy. And we knew we weren’t.
Service and support were our goals. That’s what we were trying to do. To really be of service to the faculty and the students.
Q: Thinking back over your career at the College of Ed, what are some of the most critical events?
A: I think in formal leadership you always have what are called secondary change agents, people who aren’t in the key roles but who effect change and we certainly have always had those people. But formal leadership is important and I think we went through a lot of changes. Joe Williams was the dean at one point. They said he was an incredible person, carried the budget in this head and his office was always clean, kind of dimly light. He was an old guard kind. Alphonse Buccino came in after him and Alphonse was a mathematician. He was from Washington (D.C.) and he was a very… technology-oriented person and he drug us kicking and screaming into everybody having computers and using them in instruction as well as day-to-day business.
Q: And what year was this?
A: Eighty four. ’85. Somewhere like that maybe, because he had taken a year’s leave of absence in Washington in ‘90. Russ was the acting Dean and that’s when I was named and that’s the reason we thought it was just going to be nine months.
Alphonse came back for a year and then retired and the associate dean decided she didn’t want to come back at that time and so it just kind of went on and on. But when I came down to the Associate Dean’s office, and I’m not proud of this, it was an incredible task. I realized I was going to drown in paperwork. I had never even sat down to a computer. This was in ’91. I’d always said I’m a people person I don’t do machinery. Well, I realized I had better do machinery or I was literally going to drown. So Mary Jo Brown took me up to her office and she would type in what I was to do and she gave me a sheet of paper listing the elementary steps. Cut the switch on at the back. Switch the button up. She gave me a list of directions which I kept by the computer and when I felt comfortable with those I went back up and said I’m ready for my next lesson. I’ve always tried to tell computer people this. When you are teaching an old dog, don’t use all that terminology, make it as simple as possible, give them what they can deal with and when they are ready, let them go on to the next step. Mary Jo understood that and introduced me to the computer.
Q: Good teachers do.
A: She said my sister had introduced her in that way. My sister was a public school teacher. She and Mary Jo worked together. So, it probably came around to me that way. Anyway, I learned to use the computer. So I would say that was a big piece. I’m not sure many people know about this or would agree with me, but during that time Jean Bowen became our grants officer, and the College had done very little with grants, and in my mind, Jean Bowen, took us from relatively nothing in grants, a very dispersed, haphazard kind of thing, to the place where we were regularly getting 10-18 million dollars a year in outside monies. An incredible move, which opened up all sorts of things, and brought us national attention. I don’t think she’s ever been given the kind of credit she deserves for that. I see that as a real change point in the College.
Q: What was the time frame of that?
A: That would have been during Al’s tenure. The late ‘80s to very early ‘90s. And she stayed until she retired. Now she’s back again doing some work with Andy Horne. She is an incredible individual, a good teacher of not only how to do grants, but also being able to take your proposal and change a word here and a word there and you have a viable grant.
The reorganizations in the College have been key points. Russ changed us over to having departments under four School Directors. Well, not everybody saw that as a positive piece and when the new dean came he changed all of that and we don’t have directors any more, we have a whole different arrangement. Some people feel good about that and some people don’t, as always, but it’s a whole new organizational scheme now. Departments were merged and apparently they feel ok about it. They’ve worked out some kind of arrangement that works for them.
Another thing that preceded all of that was the asbestos removal. The University decided that they had to take the asbestos out of the building (Aderhold). That would have been in 1986 or ‘87 when it started and they took it two floors at a time. We moved downtown when our turn came from the third floor. We were in the old Belk’s building. If you had designed something to disrupt interpersonal relations and confuse cooperative efforts, you could have not come up with anything better. I was a faculty member, I was not in administration. I hadn’t anything to do with it. I probably couldn’t have done anything to change the plan, I mean, I don’t know what anybody could have done. They had to remove the asbestos, but it was, in my book, disastrous for getting along with one another. It was a crazy time. I think things sort of got rocky then but now that’s a piece that doesn’t have anything to do with administrative decision. It was a fluke that we had to have that done, but it was very difficult on the College.
Q: What were some of the things that happened as a result?
A: Well, I just think nobody knew what was going on. You know, the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. It was our first experience with being somewhere else. There we were, downtown, and we weren’t a part of the College for all practical purposes, and that happened to every unit at some point. So there was just a sense of dishevelment and upheaval and disjointedness. You just couldn’t get in touch with everybody like you can now. There wasn’t a system. The technology was not at a level that was incorporated in the same way it is now and so I think people were just out of the loop.
Q: What advice do you have for those coming to study or work in the College of Education?
A: If I had any recommendation to make to a prospective administrator, it would be to keep a keen eye on the communication with those people with whom he or she works. And whatever is necessary to maintain good strong clear lines of communication will be to everybody’s advantage. I think a basic respect for all the people involved is really important and I think somehow in the past, processes were sometimes carried out in such a way that people didn’t feel respected.
When Russ asked me to take the position of associate dean, I didn’t know squat about administration. I really didn’t. He always said that my biggest recommendation was that I didn’t want to be down there and the second one was that I didn’t want to stay.
I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I went to the secretary who was in charge of the office and I said, “Give me a list of the offices that touch us that we have to deal with,” because the person who’d been the associate dean had packed up and we didn’t have anything we could call on. I got on the phone and called all of them, asked them if could come over and meet the support staff.
I went to every one of those offices, spent a couple of days going all over campus. I just introduced myself and said , “This is what’s happened to me. I didn’t ask for it, I don’t want it but this is my job now and I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, so I’d like to be able to call you and ask you questions. But by the same token, I know you’ve got a lot of things to do, so if I call you at a bad time or you don’t wanna fool with me, you won’t hurt my feelings, just be honest and say I can’t talk to you right now. If you can see your way clear to help me when I call I’ll be most appreciative.”
Little tiny women tried to pick me up and swing me around. It was the most incredible reaction. I just was doing what I thought I needed to do. But apparently nobody had talked to them like that before. And I will tell you that staff on this campus saved my backside the seven years I was in that office. They would call me and say, “You are going to have a report due in three days. Heads up. I’d call them and say, “I’ve done the best I can but I’m not going to make this on time”. And they’d say, “Don’t worry about it. Bring it over when you get done and I’ll put it down in the middle of the pack and they’ll never know it was late.”
They carried me many times. They explained things to me I didn’t understand. They told me where the bodies were buried that I had no right to know. That’s how I found out about the River’s Crossing building. I got a call that said, “It’s going to come up because it was under lease to the government and it says when it’s up it goes back to the University.” And I wrote a letter and hand-carried it that minute over (to administration) saying the College of Education should get that building. You know, I would have never even known about that.
I could never say enough about the staff on this campus. They are all my dear friends and the people who take care of the buildings all over this campus, I don’t know as many of them personally as I’d like to, but I know lots of them. And when I go in and they hug me it makes my day. They have been so loving and supportive and kind. When I was so sick they came to me and said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean your house. I’ll wash…” I mean, it makes me want to cry now, you don’t worry. You don’t have to pay me, I’ll do it. You know, I would never ask them to do such a thing but what a gift. Can’t say enough about how much I appreciate them. They’re the people who run this campus. They’re the people who really understand the campus.
You know, most administrators hold positions for around 10 years or so and that’s a long time for some… some of them stay much less than that. But the staff is there through many administrators. They are the stable part of the operation. And there are people who have been in the same office 25-30 years or in the same building and they know who did what.
One time, when I was trying to write that proposal for the River’s Crossing building that afternoon, I went into Sybil, she had been the budget officer under Dean Williams, and I said to her, “Sybil do you remember anything about this?” And she had one of those old-fashioned things that nail in a block of wood that you put memos down on and I promise you that had been like 30 years before. She went through like this (motions going through paper) got to the bottom of that and she said, “Here it is.” And she handed me the piece of paper about the agreement. I mean, you know, you couldn’t have found it on a computer as quick as she found it. And she gave me the background on it, in addition. Oh, you can’t put a price on that kind of thing. Anyway, we went far afield from what you asked.
Q: No not at all. Looking back over your career what advice do you have for others studying and working at UGA?
A: First and foremost, I’d say that I hope they would really enjoy and respect… this sounds so hokey but I can’t help it… the people that they’re around. Now, you’re always going to have some people who seem impossible. I mean you’re just so different, one from another, for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s values and sometimes it’s other things, but as much as possible, enjoy and respect those you’re around. And to just learn from the students. I remember setting up a mentoring program for young faculty once. I’d gone to all these lengths to get old dogs to mentor them and the young faculty said to me we really want to hear from our compatriots, the people who’ve come in when we came in. They know more about what we need. We want to share with one another. And what a good lesson!
I think sometimes you forget to learn from the students and from the staff and from whomever. And to respect them. I’ve had secretaries tell me that many faculty treat them like they’re part of the furniture. They never get introduced. That’s a crime. And, all of us who do that are the poorer for it. You want to get rich in relationships and people and experiences, then find a way to enjoy as much of it as you can.
I think too, if it’s possible, one of the things we tried to do in our program is to support faculty instead of saying, “This is what you do to get promoted.” We were trying to say, “Here’s what you do to make what you do count best.” So you start looking from the beginning at the areas you want to concentrate your research on so you don’t have disparate works to present as you career work. You have threads of contribution and focused effort. To try to focus your work, what you want to accomplish, and try to get things moving in the same direction. So that you can say when people think of your name, they say, “Oh, that’s the work that she does.”
I think I would say not to do what I did, which was to serve on every committee, but to pick maybe two committees that you really want to participate in and certainly one of those outside your department so you get to meet other people on campus. Really do a crackerjack job with it instead of five or six and doing a piecemeal job. And be sure that every semester you’re meeting some people outside your department across campus.
From a crass, self-interest standpoint that will be good for you and they’ll know you and you do your work properly then they know who you are and they’re glad they know you too. But again you just get richer and richer to learn about those other departments and other peoples’ interests, to find out there is somebody in Physics whose big interest is baseball but there is also somebody in educational technology whose big interest is baseball, and I’m interested in baseball. I mean that’s the incredible thing and that they’ve made that interest in baseball work for their specialties or disciplines. That’s so intriguing.
To feed your soul on this campus with concerts in the Music department to find out about the loads other people are carrying before you make a judgment. I think I’ve always been kind of critical of the athletes until I’ve taught this athletes’ class and now I understand better the load they’re carrying and now I would never say some of the things I used to say because I know some things I didn’t know before. So just not to think you’re too smart. I don’t know, there are probably a dozen other things, but I guess to some degree that’s a little bit of practical schmooze.
Q: Is there anything else that you’d like to add that we haven’t talked about.
A: Well, we haven’t talked much about some of the people who were… I’m trying to think now… you know, Bernice Cooper who was head of Elementary Education, was also the first female to get a doctoral degree from the University. And what a wonderful woman she is. And how beautifully poised and yet, never called attention to herself.
Paul Torrance, the epitome of creativity in the world was in the College of Education. Ira Aaron, who was the leader of the International Reading Association, the largest educational organization in the word and he was the president of that. Person after person after person who were important leaders but then there were individuals who probably got less attention but were very important to students.
Hazel Simpson never made full (professor), never was president of a national organization or anything like that, but my goodness. We traveled to do a workshop once and she sat on the other bed in that motel room and had me read my dissertation aloud to her and would stop me and say, “What does that mean. What are you trying to say?” And I’d say, “Oh, that doesn’t make any sense does it?” Can you imagine what an incredible contribution that was? She didn’t – I mean that was so far beyond what she had to do. I’ve never done it for anybody.
There are people who just saw their job as helping others on campus and maybe didn’t get a lot of credit for it but were wonderful people. I mentioned Rachel Sutton, Jimmie Dickerson, who was in Elementary Ed. Wonderful, loving, caring individual. Lucien Wooten who told us in class that he wasn’t the brightest one, but he was creative, and he made up for it with his creativity. He was a good solid teacher and a good friend.
You know I could just name people on and on that I think were key. Dean Joe Williams. I remember we went to interview him after he retired, and we finished the interview for the history of the College. And I said, “Dean I’ve got to ask you… I can remember coming to your office as a student, a graduate student and a faculty member, and I always remember that whether I thought about it or not, I was getting my stuff together and I was leavin’ and it was like you dismissed me but you never said that.” And he kind of laughed and said, “I don’t know what you are talkin’ about.” And about that time, Dr. Jerrolds and I were getting our stuff together and getting up and I said, “You’ve done it again.” He had a way of sending you a non-verbal message that the time was over and it was interesting, but… He was an interesting man. He was not scintillating speaker, by any means, we would try to plan conferences and the dean would always give the welcome… and this may get me in trouble… but we began planning the conferences for times when he was not there so then Reese Wells could give the welcome because Reese was funny and he was entertaining and would make the time go better.
I guess for me, the people would make the difference. Alice Bell, who was very active with Kappa Delta Pi. They used to call it Eatta piece a pie. When I went down to Dean Williams we had a big snowstorm and there was supposed to be a Kappa Delta Pi meeting that night and he never had called classes or meetings off yet and I said, “If you care anything about me, you will send the word out that nothing’s going to happen tonight, call off all meetings, because I could get caught here all night with Kappa Delta Pi.” As dear as they all were, I didn’t want to spend the night in Aderhold with them. Alene Cross was another dear person. I could go on and on with names of people who made this place a better place to be because they loved Georgia, loved the opportunity to teach, enjoyed and respected the students and colleagues.
That doesn’t mean you always like everybody and always agree with everybody. You don’t compromise your principles, but you listen to them. As far as I’m concerned, as a teacher, the most important part of our qualitative research was the person who thinks differently. And you listen to that. I think that’s what Russ Yeany did the best of any administrator I’ve seen. It might not change his decision, but the input was there and he valued it and he gave you time to have your say. I mean you could talk to all the people who taught at the same time I did and perhaps not a single one of them would mention the people I have, but that doesn’t change what I think.
As a teacher I want to hear from that student who thinks differently from all the rest… how he or she views this particular set of events or information and it’s incredibly helpful to try to clarify misunderstandings if you see what the outlier thinks. I think for a teacher and as an administrator, I probably wouldn’t have recognized it before Mary Jo Brown let me audit her qualitative research course or before I watched Russ, work with people. After those experiences I wanted to use the strategy when I was with people. That meant that if they didn’t agree with me that I still wanted to listen to them and perhaps to understand how they came to a position. That didn’t mean I always did it or did it well, but it meant I wanted to and I think every time I did it whatever was happening was the better for it.
Dr. Sylvia Hutchinson
Ph.D., Reading Education
University of Georgia
Oral Histories
|
|
|
 |