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Retiring professor will not stop teaching

When Phyllis Anderson began teaching business courses at DCCC in 1987, she made a commitment to learn and teach every technological advancement in the office. She taught typewriting at first, but once desktop computers materialized in the workplace, Anderson said, she mastered one wordprocessing program after another to make sure that she could help her business students succeed.

Twenty-three years later, Anderson found herself tasked with something she had not anticipated – making sure that students knew enough of established methods of communication to succeed, rather than the newest. What Anderson faced: students’ tendency to use “text language” in formal documents.

“It was an on-going battle,” Anderson said. “I came with the frame of reference that what you practice is what you’re going to perfect. If you keep doing it wrong, then you’re not going to be able to recognize when you need to do it a different way. Some [students] came along, and others did not.”

Anderson retired from her near 40-year teaching career last spring. This spring, she will resign from her post at DCCC as acting assistant dean of the business division, a position that Anderson has filled since 2009.

As acting assistant dean, Anderson has overseen everything having to do with the adjunct faculty. Her duties have included scheduling adjunct faculty members’ classes, aiding in the observation of adjunct faculty for performance review, addressing student concerns regarding adjunct faculty members, and arranging professional development opportunities for adjunct faculty members.

Anderson said she wanted to retire at the top of her game, but also looked to make a gradual transition into retirement.

“I worked so many years,” Anderson said. “I was concerned about abruptly stopping without a plan. Becoming an assistant dean worked well to give me another opportunity to work and have new experiences.”

If it had been up to Anderson’s husband, Ernest Anderson, she would have retired five years ago. But according to her husband, who is a retired chemical engineer, his wife liked her work too much.

Before Anderson taught courses in typewriting, machine transcription, office procedures, word processing, and business communications to DCCC students, she went to school to prepare for a career as an office assistant. While working in an office, she noticed that she enjoyed explaining to others how to perform a task.

She then attained two degrees in business education from the University of Toledo and taught in Ohio high schools for 16 years before she began teaching at DCCC.

Anderson thinks that students will remember her as someone who demanded a lot of them, but who was fair and who made herself available to students who desired help with coursework. Anderson said she found working with students on an individual basis particularly satisfying.

“I enjoyed teaching in the classroom,” Anderson said. “I also enjoyed students who took advantage of coming to see me during office hours to work with them one on one. I felt a certain pride seeing them accomplish skills – especially students who were very apprehensive because of their English skills or lack of computer knowledge. To have reassured them, and then to have seen them [improve and even] excel by the time they got to the end of the semester was really rewarding.”

Anderson said she was also touched by the thanks she received. Students would write her notes, sometimes just one sentence long: “Thank you for helping me get to the end of the class.”

“They would stop me in the hall a semester or two later, so I know they were not trying to butter me up for a grade, saying thank you for helping them,” Anderson said.

When Anderson wasn’t working with students, she met with her colleagues to discuss ways courses could be improved. She would research possibilities and share what she learned.

“She was always somebody to lean on,” said Eric Wellington, who worked closely with Anderson in recent years as the dean of business and computer information systems. “I could just pick up the phone and say, ‘Could you help me out with this project?’ She would always step up.”

For DCCC business professor Barbara Garrell, Anderson’s retirement does not mean the end of their history working together – Garrell will still call Anderson to ask for her opinions on ways to approach topics in class. Garrell and Anderson taught many of the same courses, worked cooperatively to write courses, gave each other advice about students and were officemates, Garrell said.

“We both get frustrated when students don’t get something, because we both care about our students,” Garrell said. “I will remember the way she treats her students. She goes above and beyond.” They would come to her all the time, Garrell said, and Anderson had such patience.

Anderson’s daughter Tonya McCall, a public school principal in Cincinnati, Ohio, said that she envisions her mother using her free time to entertain family and friends. “Among her friends, her parties are legendary,” wrote McCall by e-mail.

McCall said she was sure that Anderson will also continue to find ways to teach and mentor others, and affirmed that both of her parents currently tutor and mentor school children at the Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church of Philadelphia. “I know that she really enjoys the experience and has gotten attached to the students she’s working with,” said McCall of her mother’s volunteer work. “She is a teacher at heart whether it is formally in the classroom or informally with those around her.”

Ernest Anderson also predicted that his wife would dedicate more of her time to mentoring at their church once the school year is over, and that the two of them will travel. They are set to go on a cruise in the Mediterranean in June, and also enjoy traveling to Europe, especially Italy, he said.

Taking art classes is also on the agenda for Anderson, who said she likes arts and crafts and most recently took a watercolor painting class. Ernest Anderson said he expects his wife to look for more ways to express herself artistically. If she had not taught business, he said, she might have taught art.

Further teaching is not out of the question once she has had a break.

“I never say ‘never,’” Anderson said. “You always leave options open. I’ve taught online courses as a faculty member. There might be an occasion that I would want to apply for an online position as an adjunct myself, but right now, at the end of the semester I think that is going to be it.”

Contact Ariel Senko at communitarian@mail.dccc.edu

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