To read more about Sarah, check out the UNCG Magazine article on Woman’s College (WC), As the ’60s Neared and Passing the Torch, on Sarah and her time spent in the School of Health and Environmental Sciences (now School of Health and Human Sciences) at the WC.
AS THE ’60S NEARED
In August 1958, Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool” and Bobby Darin’s “Splish, Splash” topped the pop charts. Elvis had been inducted in the Army. The U.S. created NASA, as its “space race” with the Soviet Union sped ahead. On campus, the original McIver Building was in rubble, making way for a modern, new McIver Building.
At the same time, Emilie “Emmy” Mills ’62, ’65 MFA was entering her freshman year. She had come to study art, having heard great things of the founder of the art department and the Weatherspoon, Gregory Ivy. Unfortunately for her, Ivy would soon be leaving.
“The department was in a period of transition during most of my undergraduate years,” said Emmy. But the leadership was still top tier. “Several of the professors that were here, had been here for some time. Susan Barksdale, Norma Hardin, and Helen Thrush were the fixtures of the art department and had very good reputations.”
However, according to Emmy, most of the favorite professors of art students were in the Department of English: notably, Randall Jarrell (future Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress), Robert Watson, and Fred Chappell.
“The artists and the writers often gathered at the Pickwick on Walker Avenue in the ’60s. We were sort of a cultural group in a way. In some cases, we were looked at as the interesting people – but then on the other hand I think there were other students who thought we were kind of weird,” Emmy chuckled.
Unifying students was the dress code. Dresses, skirts, and blouses were the standard. No jeans, no slacks, no sleepwear! (Though lots of times girls would roll up their pajama bottoms and put raincoats on to evade the protocol.) Even going across campus in your gym suit was a violation. If you had a class after gym, you had to change clothes.
“As art majors, we didn’t like the dress regulations because we always wanted to wear casual clothes in case clay, paint, or etching acid got on us. But we had to wear smocks,” Emmy explained.
Aside from their fashion, another thing the women of WC had in common was a wealth of academic talent. Dean of the Graduate School J. A. Davis analyzed statistics from other state colleges and scores from the College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test (SATs) for the freshman class in 1959. He found that WC students ranked well above those of any other public college in the state in high school achievement. He also found that they were in the top third of freshmen in the nation, as was true of Chapel Hill and N.C. State.
As a classmate of Emmy’s, Sarah Shoffner ’62, ’64 MS, ’77 PhD describes her experience at WC with an emphasis on “opportunity.” Sarah’s mom took teacher-certification classes at WC, and her great aunt had taught math there when it was known as the Normal College. So she was thrilled to follow their steps.
She was also happy to find encouragement from faculty. As an undergraduate she was asked to fill roles that she wouldn’t have considered on her own.
“The faculty and the administration, particularly in the School of Home Economics, if they got an idea of something you could do or something they wanted you to be involved in, they would ask you,“ she explained.
“My first opportunity in that sense was when I was asked to be president of the WC student member section of the American Home Economics Association … It gave me a chance to see what I could do, but also, I guess they were recognizing something in people that they wanted to nurture.”
“Rush to breakfast, the 8:10 bell too soon,” Pine Needles, 1958.
“Rush to breakfast, the 8:10 bell too soon,” Pine Needles, 1958.
Her senior year, Sarah was offered a graduate assistantship. Her future position would be teaching home economics classes and supervising a student teacher at the Curry School. To prepare, she was advised to go to summer school and take a supervision course.
“Our school was one of the strongest programs in the nation for Home Economics at that time, so I got to meet a lot of people,” she remembers. “And when I became a faculty member, Naomi Albanese sent me to some of the administrative meetings of the American Home Economics Association and let me participate and represent her sometimes. So I was just given opportunities to get to know people, learn, and branch out,” she said.
“My whole career was having opportunities available that I could latch on to.”