Vol. 92, Issue 4
Front
Page
Campus
News
A
& E
Sports
Opinions
Q
& A...
NC
Sees U
Letters
Sound
Off
Arthrell Sanders make a point during class. Tiffany Hughes/Echo Staff Photographer . |
Educator’s long service ends in May
Beloved English professor Arthrell Sanders is set to retire — for
a second time — in 2001.
By Maria Beaudoin
Echo staff writer
Her reputation precedes her. She’s short. She’s graying around the temples. She’s got a delightful smile. And she’s soft-spoken — at least until a student fails to rise to the challenge.
“Well … uh … what somebody else told me was that …” starts a student in her Shakespeare course.
“Somebody told you what?” asks Sanders. “You think for yourself! I don’t want to hear what someone else thinks. I want to hear what you think. What do you think?”
Ask any English major at N.C. Central University about Dr. Arthrell Sanders and their eyes go up, their heads shake, and they let out a low grumble.
“Her bark is as bad as her bite,” laughs English senior Truitt O’Neal. “And she’ll leave marks.”
 |
| Arthrell Sanders speaks with a student after a class. Tiffany Hughes/Echo Staff Photographer |
“She’s just so by-the-book,” said English major Phonte Coleman.
“She’s old school. She gets straight to the point. She don’t play around.”
But both O’Neal and Coleman quickly jump to qualify their comments:
“She works with students more than others and is really willing to invest
in your success,” says O’Neal.
“She’s one of the most compassionate teachers I’ve ever had,” says Coleman. “I call her ‘my grandmother.’ “She’s done so much outside of class to help me. We’ve had a lot of talks about my college career and my life in general.”
Perhaps this explains why Sanders received the 1995 NCCU Award for Teaching Excellence.
Above all, Sander’s is dedicated to learning.
“I love teaching,” said Sanders. “The biggest reward for teaching is seeing a student understand an idea that they did not before. To help students read and come to some kind of appreciation is a great joy to me. There ought to be ways to get more students excited about education.”
After 40 years at NCCU, Sanders is retiring — again.
Actually, Sanders’ retirement began in 1998. She is in a three year “phased retirement program.”
In May 2001, she plans to leave NCCU and pursue private studies, or possibly continue teaching at a private school or community college.
“I’ve continued teaching because I enjoy it,” said Sanders. “But I do like having more time for myself. I will be able to take courses, read, or work in my garden.”
Sanders graduated from NCCU in 1953 with a degree in English.
After graduation, she went to Claremont Graduate School in California on a scholarship.
Then she taught at St. Augustine’s College for one year and Spellman College for three.
Then Sanders, with a grant in hand, went to Indiana University to work on a doctorate, which she finished in 1973.
While at Indiana she heard about an opening at NCCU. The first courses she taught were freshmen composition and world literature.
“I always wanted to teach,” said Sanders. “All of my role models in my family were teachers and I had a great love for language and literature.”
But Sanders almost went into a different field. On the advice of a high school teacher, she entered NCCU planning to major in public health administration.
Unhappy with a “C” in an advanced English course, Sanders changed direction.
“I was challenged,” said Sanders. “I knew that I would go back to English after that first quarter and I changed my major. I worked very hard and was frustrated at times, but I never made another ‘C’ in English.”
Over the years Sanders has seen a lot of change. When she arrived the Farrison-Newton Communications Building did not exist, and the English department was on the first floor of the Edmonds Education Building.
“There has been a great increase in the student population,” said Sanders. “I remember watching the growth of diversity from a time when it was just a trickle to now, when it’s no so unusual to see a Caucasian student on campus.”
'One thing that troubles Sanders is lack of desire on the part of students to attain a well-rounded education.
“The student body is less dedicated or committed,” said Sanders. “They want a degree, but only see it as a means of getting a job. Society has conditioned our young folk to think the time to have everything is right now.”
There are a number of reasons for these developments according to Sanders, including social conditioning, materialism, and obligations like jobs and children.
“Our whole society values education less,” said Sanders. “We talk about education as training to get a job to make money, to spend more money, and to get more things. Students are being misled.”
In her last years at NCCU, Sanders looks forward to a future of enhanced education and dedication to excellence for the university.
“I would like to see NCCU become an extraordinary undergraduate school,” said Sanders.
“There was a time when NCCU had that reputation and we can regain it with material resources.
“We need to strive for that excellence that we are so quick to talk
about, but forget requires hard work and sacrifice on everybody’s part.
We need to decide on what education is and ought to be.”