A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin County Community College District. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: March 10. All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, campus correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Jennifer Brooks, student correspondent; Mae Nguyen, special contributor; Siulan Thomas, special contributor; Amy Lenhart, special contributor; Nick Young, photographer; layout by public relations.
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Professor of the Year takes joy in teaching
By Sydney Portilla-Diggs
Campus Correspondent
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| Pam Gaiter, professor of the year. | One would be hard pressed to find a more gracious or modest woman than Collin Sociology Professor and Minnie Stevents Piper nominee Pam Gaiter.
Professor Gaiter did not feel deserving of the award Professor of the Year.
In her opinion, “[The honor] is an extraordinary award, which reflects the ultimate professor. I don’t perceive myself as to have attained that sacred position but I am striving to become that not only for the title but for the students.”
In her brief acceptance speech, Gaiter further demonstrated true humility when she attributed her successes to her colleagues that she considered to be “excellent examples of what it means to be Professor of the Year.” At the awards ceremony, Gaiter’s husband—“her best friend of over 25 years and the first man she ever fell in love with” —was in the audience along with her first-born child Gabriell, her oldest and only sister, Debra, two long-time family friends, which included her pastor of several years, and her “daddy.”
Gaiter emerges from a strong familial and spiritual background. She says her immediate family is her heartbeat. She and her husband teach premarital and post marital classes. Their two children are special to them because they were told that they would not be able to conceive. Her five-year-old son, Daunte, is her number one fan regardless of what is going on. Gaiter calls her “bright and compassionate” 12-year-old daughter a “social butterfly.”
As a child, Gaiter was raised in a “close-knit East Texas community.” In fact, according to Gaiter, “Everyone on my road—not street—was related to me. We attended the [very same] church that my ancestors help to found. The same teacher taught my parents (until integration taught me).”
However, Gaiter experienced one of the most traumatic and life-changing events in her life. Gaiter’s parents divorced when she was in middle school. Her worst fear was that she would no longer be daddy’s little girl. However, her father maintained a close and loving relationship with both of his daughters. When he remarried, he built his house less than a mile away. Her father continues to have a great influence in her life. Gaiter is convinced she inherited her hard work ethic from him.
Initially, Gaiter had no intentions of teaching when she went to college. Because she enjoyed theatre arts in high school and received several scholarships, Gaiter aspired to act alongside Billy Dee Williams or Denzel Washington. In college, Gaiter's star did not shine as bright as she had hoped. She considered many different disciplines but it wasn’t until she took a sociology course that she became hooked. Looking at society from different perspectives opened up worlds that had never been revealed to her.
Eagerly, Gaiter “enlightened” her father with the social inequalities and injustices that had been revealed to her.
“He looked at me and said…now how are you going to make a living telling people what they already know. As far as I know, there aren’t many ads for sociologists, so have you considered teaching?”
Gaiter attempted to teach at the secondary level of the public school but spent most of the time addressing issues of discipline. Because of this, she knew she would teach at the college level.
After finishing the Master’s program at TWU, Gaiter started working for Texas Children’s Protective Services (CPS) as a case aide and intake worker. According to Gaiter, she believes she inherited compassion from her mother who is a retired nurse (LVN).
“[I think] that is why I became a social worker.” She became an investigator for CPS then a case manager for a number of families. “I have always had a soft spot in my heart for children and my goal was to come in and be an advocate for the voices of children who were ‘lost’ in the system. [Children] were either thrown away, abused or rejected by their families and getting shuffled through the system. Boy, was I an idealist!”
According to Gaiter, in the CPS system, the better your were at your job the more cases you got. Her caseload kept increasing. She watched as her colleagues “burned out, boozed out or tuned out of the mission of the agency.”
Gaiter saw herself becoming cynical. She made the decision to leave and start working for Dallas County as a social studies counselor and divorce mediator. She wanted to save every child and save every marriage. Therefore when she was offered the opportunity to teach part time at Collin, she felt her passion revived once more.
“At this point in my life, teaching at [Collin] is the fulfillment of my dream. I get an opportunity to meet so many interesting students, learn from some of the greatest educators, and share topics that I think impact every life.”
However, getting here wasn’t as easy as it appeared. Because her parents believed in education, her parents paid her way through college.
“My father is a hard-working man who believes in education and hard work He did not receive a college education but he worked hard all his life and retired early as one of the first black managers in a company where he started out as a janitor. He was been recognized by the Department of Agriculture as one of the top ten farmers in Texas,” Gaiter said.
To supplement her work-study income, Gaiter cleaned homes.
“I had to do some pretty awful things as a young student…one homeowner requested that I clean his shower stall with a toothbrush.”
Her life experiences impact what she says in her classroom. Currently, Gaiter is on sabbatical. She is interviewing African-American landowners in East Texas who have maintained their family land for generations all the way to ex-slaves. Her goal is to document their legacy and the rich family history that surrounds these ranchers and farmers.
According to Professor Gaiter, each story opens up like a flower to reveal other stories reflecting the commitments to other families and to the community as a whole. Professor Gaiter describes herself as passionate. She is passionate about people, about what she does, and about why she does it. And she is passionate about her girlfriends. She loves chick flicks, exercising, reading African-American non-fiction, and traveling. The Gaiters have several close sets of friends, who travel with them yearly. Together, they have visited Jamaica and Mexico several times. They go camping as families. But most of all, Gaiter loves to dance—good old school dancing.
“My husband and I have won a few dance contests in our day.”
Gaiter has passionate Christian beliefs and believes that one must do what one is called to do. In the classroom, she is a sociologist who exposes her students to many viewpoints and allows student to make their own decisions.
“I perceive teaching as an engaged dialogue among the students, teachers, and the community. Each entity has a vital role to play in order for the educational process to be complete.”
[PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION]
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