PROFESSORS OF THE REAL WORLD

Almost everyone in the area is familiar with Southeast Missouri State University.

Its buildings stand tall and imposing on land that spreads over a good deal of Cape Girardeau. The students are a mixture of races, religions and nationalities. And the professors, some think, are men and women who know nothing outside of what they've read in books.

The suggestion goes that they know nothing about "the real world" -- all they've done in life is attend and teach school.

That isn't exactly so. An assessment of the backgrounds of a cross-section of Southeast professors shows a range of "real world" experience.

Robert Zeller, an English professor, worked part-time in the computer lab where he went to school. When he was a graduate student, he was a teaching assistant. Though these are fairly typical academic credentials, he also spent summers working in a warehouse and as a restaurant dishwasher.

Dale Haskell, also an English teacher, seemed to enjoy his school-time employment. When he began college, he toiled as a cashier in a gas station. But his second job was much more rewarding. He worked in plant maintenance at Procter and Gamble locally, driving a forklift and painting things.

In addition to attending classes, he put in around 20-30 hours a week working during the school year.

Roderick MacIntosh, a foreign language instructor, worked at a variety of jobs while he went to school, including as a pickler in a pickle factory for Heinz.

At various times, he worked as a night desk clerk at a retirement home and as a census taker for Haitians in South Florida.

Tamara Baldwin, a theory and research instructor in the mass communication department, was assisted financially by her parents during the first three years of her undergraduate training. In her senior year, she wrote for the Sagamore college yearbook.

While earning her master's degree, Baldwin worked as a graduate assistant teaching classes. She also worked as a waitress at Port Cape Girardeau, sold real estate and was employed by a video store.

R. Ferrell Ervin, chairman of the mass communication department and public relations instructor, worked in a print shop during his freshman year for 72 cents an hour. During his sophomore year, he was a resident adviser for his dormitory. He moved up to community adviser in his junior year and to hall assistant in his senior year. These jobs paid for his room and board, and included a stipend.

Ervin also held a part-time position, during his undergraduate years, as a night manager of a bakery. In graduate school, he worked part-time as a teacher's assistant and as a reporter and copy editor for a local newspaper.

Roy Keller, an editing and reporting instructor, worked during the summers as a laborer for a construction company. He also worked as an apprentice carpenter. In the summer of his senior year in high school, Keller worked in a factory. He now says the nature of the factory work convinced him to go to college.

Robert Poteet, an advertising instructor, worked as an assistant in a psychology laboratory during his undergraduate years. He took care of the rats and helped the professors with experiments.

Deborah Beard, an accounting professor, worked at Kent Library during her undergraduate years, putting in ten hours a week in the instructional materials department. She spent her Christmas vacations babysitting, and her summer vacations bookkeeping. Almost every penny she earned went toward paying her school expenses.

She learned to be "ultra-conservative" with her money, a quality she says that she retains. She says she now saves her money so that her children do not need to work to pay their way through school.

Other professors share Beard's work experience. Rebecca Summary worked both as a waitress and a retail salesperson during her undergraduate years. Her summer job consisted of cooking burgers at a local A&W stand.

Some professors have had a lifetime of work. Michael Hogan, born on a farm, started working as a child, performing a variety of farm chores: cleaning the chicken house, milking cows, picking cotton and so on. He was also a paperboy, and swept and dusted the church regularly.

In high school and college, Hogan took care of four small estates. He mowed lawns, planted and trimmed trees, cleaned stables and dog runs, killed mice in the granary and performed whatever other work needed to be done.

Hogan says he learned the value of a dollar and developed a respect for physical labor. He learned how to do things for himself, which led to the development of a "fierce independence" -- he now confidently performs a variety of tasks around his home, including masonry, plumbing, carpentry, painting, roofing, wiring, cooking and cleaning. "And," he adds, "I do windows!"

Hogan says that, by working hard, he developed respect for people who do their jobs well in manual labor, other types of employment and the professions.

"Those of us who teach in the university have definitely paid our dues," he says, "and we continue to pay our dues, staying up late at night to study, write articles and books and professional papers, and plan our work and grade our students' work."

Peter Yaremko, whose family moved to the United States from the Ukraine in 1949, teaches political science. He learned how to lay brick and cinderblock when his father began building a house during Yaremko's junior year of high school.

"I was not quite a professional, but good enough," he said.

After graduating from high school, he landed a job as a bricklayer in Levittown, Pa., a few miles from his home. Yaremko said he worked there for five years, every summer, even in graduate school.

"I was making good money, like an ordinary mason," said Yaremko. "I lived at home and commuted to college in Philadelphia. I was able to concentrate on college without having to work during the school year."

Yaremko said he liked the job very much, and he still enjoys working with brick and cement.

"My dream is still someday to build a house," he said. "Construction is still fascinating to me. It fits very nicely as a hobby, and it's a nice change of pace."

Grant Lund, an instructor in the art department, is no stranger to hard work either. Self-supporting from an early age, Lund has held a variety of jobs that have led him from his hometown of Murray, Utah, to Southeast Missouri, his home for the last 22 years.

Lund spent several summers, while in school, working for the U.S. Forest Service in the Idaho Panhandle in fire control. He also worked many jobs while out of school for four years. Lund worked in a creamery unloading heavy cans, spent two years full time as a missionary in Montana and the western United States, and served in the military as a photo lab technician.

After running into some difficulties trying to go back to school, Lund worked for three months for a breeder's co-op, loading 50-pound bags of horsemeat and a variety of other goodies to make feed for minks. It was grueling work, with a production quota of one bag loaded every three minutes.

"Those three months were a pivot point," Lund said. "I knew then how badly I wanted to go back to school."

While in graduate school, Lund taught two classes in addition to taking a full load of courses, and he continued to work for the Forest Service. Before graduation, he also took a job in the local area pounding fenceposts.

John Holbrook, who teaches geoscience, comes from Denton, Ky., a farming community in the high Appalachian country of northeastern Kentucky.

"I worked on the farm until the day I went to college," said Holbrook. "Tobacco farming is high labor and totally unmechanized." He added that it made a later job delivering pizzas seem "pretty wimpy."

He worked on the farm one summer while in college, and worked for three summers as a cave guide at a state park.

Brian Smentkowski, an instructor in the political science department and the pre-law adviser, was one of the lucky ones, he said. He was fortunate enough to get a scholarship that paid for much of his undergraduate schooling. He did hold some jobs for extra money, including security guard during the midnight shift, summer jobs in a political consulting firm and in a law firm, and mowing lawns occasionally.

Despite some public opinion that college professors have been "brainy bookworms" all their lives, most don't fit the description. They know what it's like to work hard for meager pay. Along the way, though, they realized that a few more years in education system would be time well spent.

David Dickerson, Chuck Hestand, Kirsten Schaper and Kate Thorpe wrote this story as students at Southeast Missouri State University.