This year’s recipient of the outstanding teacher award is Dr. Sandra Carlton-Alexander. She has given 30 years of service to the university in several capacities. At the end of the current semester, she will retire.

She is a graduate of N.C. A&T, Harvard University and the University of Pittsburgh. She was this school’s first Danforth Foundation Fellow. To say that Alexander has accumulated a great teaching record is an understatement. She thrusts her entire self into whatever she is teaching thereby requiring the students to learn.

“It has been a wild ride, a constant challege and there is never a dull moment,” she said of her experience at N.C. A&T.

For 15 years, Alexander served in an administrative capacity. First, she was the director of freshman advisement and the Learning Assistant Center. In this position, she initiated many programs that have remained a part of the Center for Student Success. These programs include: the Peer Advising Leadership (PAL) program, the weekly Leadership Development and Success Seminars and the Academic Monitoring Program for Student Athletes.

“The challenge with working in administration is finding a way to make people work for the good of the students,” she said.

She later became the co-chair of the English Department, enacting the Hilda Hayes Satterfield Scholarship Fund. She has also played an integral role in the development of the technical writing concentration that was adopted by the Faculty Senate last year.

During her stint in the classroom, Alexander has taught what she estimates to be about 7,500 students in freshman composition, Introduction to Literary Studies, African-American Literature, Writing for Science and Technology and some graduate courses in African-American fiction, nonfiction and drama.

“It (teaching) was a constant challege of finding what works in the class room and learning what makes students tick and respond,” Alexander said.

Alexander can be considered an expert on the subject of African-American literature, because she has written two books of her own. The first book, “Black Butterflies: Stories of the South in Transition” is a volume of short stories, and the second, “Impressions: Six Months in the Life of a Southern City” is a work of historical fiction about the Greensboro Sit-ins. She has also won the first prize in the NC Writers Network Fiction Competition for her short story, “The Last of the Sunkist Soda.”

“I took her for African-American Literature and she used experiences from her life to relate the work to us. She made you question your views and she opened up our creative sides, it makes me sad,” former student Latrecia Jones said of Alexander’s retirement.

“I wish ‘Aggies-to-be’ could have some of the experiences that I had with Dr. Alexander. But I wish her the best,” Jones said.

She can just as well be classified as an expert on technical writing. Alexander has been the principal investigator for funded research that has amounted to nearly $1 million. In those investigations, she, along with Dr. Jane Brown, were required to write proposals and other technical writing documents that can sometimes be tedious and time consuming. A former Writing for Science and Technology student, Sherita Valentine said that she had fun and learned a lot.

“She is a very good teacher, she explained herself very well and I wish she wasn’t leaving,” Valentine said.

Alexander plans to spend her retirement travelling and doing the things that teaching did not allow her to do.

“I am going to see places I have never seen before,” she said. “I am going to spend an entire week at the N.C. Repertory Theatre. And I want to write the great American novel.”

She would like to leave these final words to the students and faculty of A&T, “Cherish the privilege of teaching and learning in this special environment. I love this school and I don’t think people recognize the significance of being able to learn and grow in this environment. So cherish the opprotunity.”

• Tiffany Jones