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| Jeanie shares a typical attitude with (and about) the photographer |
This past spring, EML said, “Thanks, and come back and harass us” to
Dr. Jeanie Crain. Jeanie is retiring after over thirty years of teaching at
Missouri Western and is the last of the Big Six to retire, and presumably wins a bet (Drs. Frick, Fulton, Thorne, Rosenauer, Sawin, Crain).
After receiving her degree in English from Berry College, Jeanie
collected a masters in management from Georgia College as well as a masters in
modern drama and poetry from Purdue University where she received her PhD as
well.
Jeanie has had a storied career at MWSU. She is the winner of the
alumni association distinguished faculty award and has served as faculty senate
president. In fact, Jeanie was instrumental in founding and serving as first
president of the Missouri Association of Faculty Senates (MAFS).
It was Jeanie who began what was to become our program in technical
communication (ETC). Jeanie designed and taught our first courses in the 1990s, and
now we have a thriving undergraduate major and master’s program. Jeanie was
also a pioneer in online education at MWSU and taught the department’s first
online course.
Early in her career at Western, Jeanie served as the interim chair of
the Department of Business.
In 2000, Jeanie began a ten-year stint as special assistant to the
president of MWSU—first with Dr. James Scanlon and then Dr. Robert Vartabedian. In
that role, Jeanie became an expert in assessment. She worked with the
assessment organization AQIP (Academic Quality Improvement Program) with the
Higher Learning Commission in Missouri. She was a systems portfolio reviewer,
which took her to campuses around the state. She served on the AQIP advisory panel.
Jeanie’s love of literature and the Bible led her to a special
scholarly project on combining those interests. In 2010, Jeanie published Reading the Bible as Literature: An
Introduction as a way to introduce students to the common tools of literary
analysis while also helping them understand the Bible as a literary text. Her goal was to return the Bible to the
common reader and to build in that reader an appreciation of a collection of
ancient, literary texts.
"Dr Crain's book offers undergraduates an invaluable means of
studying the biblical texts, systematically demonstrating how applying a host
of different literary techniques can help illuminate the biblical writers'
message. By analyzing the use of such rhetorical devices as image, metaphor,
archetype, narration, and character portrayal, Dr Crain equips students to
interpret the Bible responsibly and effectively."
Stephen Harris, California State University,
Sacramento
In 2010, Jeanie returned from the fairy mound of administration in
Popplewell Hall to her true home in Eder with the English faculty. There she concentrated
on her courses in composition and literature until her retirement this spring.
We wish Jeanie all the best chasing after grandchildren, and we invite her to come by
anytime for some bad coffee and pretty good gossip.
