SESSOMS STEPS DOWN AS ENGLISH CHAIRMAN

After 25 years as chairman of the English department at Southeast Missouri State University, Henry Sessoms is stepping down at the end of this semester.

But Sessoms -- only the third person in the history of the institution to head the English department -- isn't leaving the university. Sessoms says he'll continue to teach English courses and direct the school's student and faculty exchange in the Missouri London Program.

The program allows students and faculty at Missouri's public colleges and universities, including Southeast, to study and teach at Imperial College in London.

"The timing (in stepping down) is largely due to the fact I have a sabbatical in the spring," the 58-year-old English professor said.

Sessoms said that he and his wife, Tamara Baldwin, an assistant professor of mass communications, will be spending five months in England.

"My wife will be teaching (in London) and I'll work on Chaucer research," he said.

The 14th century English writer -- author of The Canterbury Tales -- is a particular favorite of Sessoms.

"He's a great comic writer for one thing and he is a very human person," said Sessoms. "He's a great observer of human nature."

Sessoms said he's interested in Chaucer's observations on the relationships between the sexes, both in and out of marriage.

"Chaucer was very much a feminist," said Sessoms.

London is familiar to Sessoms. He's visited the city eight or nine times since 1982, the year the Missouri London Program began.

"I've been on the board of directors (of the program) since the start," he noted.

Over the last 11 years, about 25 faculty members and 150 students from Southeast have spent time in London as a result of the program, Sessoms said.

"I feel more at home in London than I do St. Louis," said Sessoms, who admits to liking everything from London's food to its architecture.

Sessoms, who loves to travel, spent a semester teaching in China in 1989.

"I enjoy going other places and seeing other cultures," he noted.

Sessoms said his trip to China gave him more empathy for international students at Southeast.

"In China, I just felt totally isolated often and alienated," he recalled.

"Language, that's my stock in trade. That's what I am," said Sessoms. "There I was (in China), reduced to a preliterate state."

Sessoms, who grew up in Nashville, Tenn., has been teaching at Southeast for more than three decades. He began his career here in the fall of 1961 when Southeast was a teachers' college and English classes were taught in Academic Hall.

Sessoms estimated the school had about 1,500 students at the time. The English department had about 16 full-time faculty members. Today, it has 27 full-time teachers, plus some part-time instructors and teaching assistants, said Sessoms.

At one point in the 1970s, the department had about 50 full-time faculty members.

"When I became chairman, it was called the department of English, journalism and philosophy," recalled Sessoms.

Since then, mass communications and philosophy departments have been created, enrollment has grown and the college has developed into a full-fledged university.

Sessoms had been at Southeast seven years when he was selected by then-president Mark Scully to head the English department. He had been teaching for only five years, because he had taken a leave of absence from 1965 to 1967 to obtain his doctorate.

Sessoms was 33 years old when he was named department chairman in 1968, succeeding the legendary H.O. Grauel.

The administrative duties have kept him busy over the years. "I've been on practically every committee in the university."

Sessoms said he has enjoyed creating new academic programs and seeing them grow.

As department chairman, he's also worked to address the individual concerns of students.

"I've learned how to make the system work and I've gotten a lot of pleasure out of taking care of student concerns," he said.

Sessoms has also delighted in teaching a variety of English courses. "Over the years, I've taught almost everything you can think of from Old English to James Joyce."

Said Sessoms, "I've never been bored, not one day."

While he's made a career of English literature and language, Sessoms actually started out in the insurance business. Sessoms, who has an undergraduate degree in math, worked with mortality tables.

But he soon changed course, embarking on a career as an English professor at Southeast.

"The happiest day of my life was when I learned I could get paid for reading books and talking about them," said Sessoms.

At its core, he said, literature deals with human relationships. "All of us like stories," he added.

"A lot of people don't understand the serious study of literature," Sessoms said. "But to some extent, I have to acknowledge that what I do is fun and games."