WAUKESHA – A product of rural Minnesota, Gerald Pierre, 65, went to college to play football, taught English for 39 years, the last 27 of them at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, and will retire at the end of the current academic year.
“I’ve never left college,” he reflects. Yet, just going to college was “exciting for a country boy,” who had no idea what he wanted to do besides play football.
“I got into the shortest line at registration. That was engineering.” Soon he discovered, however, that he was looking forward to his English work. By the end of his freshman year, he was beginning to develop an academic focus – in English and history with an eye toward teaching.
For models, he recalls, “I had a lot of good teachers, both in high school and college. And I have memories of my mother reading. She read two to three books a week, although she never went to college. I still have the image of her sitting and reading.”
It didn’t take long, either, to notice that football players were getting hurt, so after a couple seasons, he switched to tennis, a sport he pursued until 1990, when golf took over as his prime athletic pastime.
In 1959, he graduated from St. John’s University, Collegeville, MN, with a major in English and minors in history/education/psychology and went on to the University of Minnesota, earning a master’s degree in English in 1963 and Ph.D. in 1970.
For a time he taught at both the high school and college levels simultaneously and quickly decided that college suited him better. From 1963-69 he taught at UW-Eau Claire. There were “lots of new English instructors, and we learned together,” he remembers.
He then accepted an assistant professorship at Marquette University but found the department strongly research-oriented. “I supervised teaching assistants and spent more time watching them than teaching,” and he wanted to teach.
When the UW-Waukesha advertised an opening in 1975, he responded. He arrived an hour late for his interview, having gone first to Waukesha County Technical College, and then learned that the position was in West Bend at another of the UW Colleges campuses. Despite the confusion, he was hired, but it was to fill a different opening at the Waukesha campus. For a year he taught as a visiting professor and then spent the remainder of his teaching career on the faculty at UW-Waukesha.
Besides the regular English department fare of introductory and composition courses, he often taught business English and developed a course in the literature of evil, a subject that crosses into an area of personal reflection.
“It’s been a good fit,” he feels, “student-centered and teaching-centered.” He does miss teaching juniors and seniors and seeing their later progress. For him the most exciting moments occur when students catch on and their minds’ doors open. “That is the essence of teaching,” he believes. “It’s been a privilege to be a part of it.”
In addition, he enjoys camaraderie among his colleagues at UW-Waukesha and has participated in a weekly faculty seminar discussion group and seasonal biweekly golf outings. Holding on to his Minnesota roots, he also takes time to go canoeing in the northern waters of his home state and into the Canadian wilderness with similar-minded friends both from campus and from other parts of his life.
Retirement for Pierre simply means a change of focus. Instead of teaching fall to spring and house painting spring to fall, a rhythm by which he has balanced his life, he plans to “go to jail.” He had taught at the Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution for a semester and wants to go back to minister to inmates. He also has been very active with Habitat for Humanity and will be able to give more time to that and to a Milwaukee inner city meal program and other projects. His five grandchildren can expect to see more of him as well.
Not known for creating big waves, rather Pierre’s friends and colleagues will say that he causes small ripples that reach deep into their lives and those of his students. He gently challenges all his associates to consider the multiple sides of issues, and this will continue. He plans to keep up with some of his book clubs and scripture groups even as he changes his activity schedule.
Jerry Pierre and his wife, Jean, live in Whitefish Bay. |
