THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410160064
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 138 lines
For the first time in their lives, Tracey Johnstone and Gregory Smith are full-time faculty members.
This fall, Johnstone began teaching political science at Old Dominion University and Smith math at Norfolk State University.
After at least five years in graduate school, they finally are setting their own lesson plans, telling others what textbooks to read, managing their own workweeks.
But it's not a totally new experience for them.
They hardly need campus maps to find academic buildings. They don't have to build relationships with their new bosses. And Johnstone and Smith can relate to students as if they once sat in their seats.
Because they did.
Johnstone and Smith received bachelor's degrees a decade ago from the universities where they now teach.
Smith, 33, turned down offers this year from universities such as Hampton and North Carolina A&Tto return to NSU.
``I feel Norfolk State is a special place,'' he said last week. ``Every student has an opportunity here. They'll take anyone who says, `I'm willing to learn.' ''
Johnstone, 35, also eagerly accepted ODU's offer. ``If you like international relations, this is the place to be,'' she said. ``. . . I'm a firm believer in the virtues of an urban university. I can't help but think that if you go to a little college in the foothills of Virginia and get a degree in gracious living, it doesn't prepare you as well for the real world.''
Administrators say it's unusual for Norfolk State and Old Dominion to hire alumni to teach there. Few graduates of any college end up as professors. And those who do often don't want to go back home.
But Jesse Lewis, NSU's vice president for academic affairs, says they can add something special: ``If you're lucky enough to get faculty who have graduated from a school, they know the university, they know the type of student you get, they will probably be dedicated to making a great difference.''
Smith thinks he can motivate the generation of NSU students who followed him to aim high. ``I really feel black students need to see another black person who has achieved a measure of success,'' he said. ``I didn't even consider going for a Ph.D. until I met a black professor with a Ph.D.''
And Johnstone evinces a passion for Old Dominion that most new faculty probably don't feel. ``I still get upset because they changed the school colors,'' she said. ``They look like Dallas Cowboy colors, and I won't wear them. Most professors won't sweat that as much.''
Both now live in Norfolk. Both still feel uncomfortable calling their chairmen, whom they knew as undergraduates, by their first names. But the two are almost as different as their subject areas.
Johnstone has traveled the world. She's a fast talker, quick to bring up snippets of her life. Smith has stayed in Virginia and Washington nearly all his life. He's slower-paced, friendly but more reserved.
Johnstone was born in DePaul Hospital in Norfolk, but her family shuttled around the East Coast because her father was a submarine captain with the Navy. They returned to Virginia Beach when she was a teenager, and she graduated from Bayside High School.
She went on to ODU, getting her bachelor's degree in political science in 1981 and her master's in 1986. Christine Drake, a politics professor who taught Johnstone, remembers her as ``always an alive person - very dynamic and thoughtful. She was willing to challenge and question.''
Johnstone was deciding between getting her doctorate at the University of South Carolina or the University of Toronto when she read a magazine article about Paul Shaffer, the Canadian bandleader on David Letterman's TV show. ``I said, `Wow, I know divine intervention when I see it.' '' So she went to Toronto.
She spent last year in Moscow, researching her dissertation on Russian unemployment, which she still is working on. During a recent class in international law focusing on Russia, Johnstone wove in some personal experiences - meeting Yeltsin (whom she describes as a ``combination of Fred Flintstone and Tip O'Neill'') at a McDonald's, getting a visit at her parents' house from an FBI officer after she wrote a letter to the Soviet Embassy for her research.
``She's generally interesting all the time,'' said Ron Fry, a graduate student in the course. ``The class is not dull. You don't come in there and get a straight lecture.''
Smith grew up in Exmore on the Eastern Shore, the son of a truck driver and factory worker. It took him three years, with the help of summer courses, to get a degree in electronic technology from NSU in 1983.
He worked for two years as an electronics technician for a Norfolk firm, but he wasn't fulfilled. So he returned to NSU in 1986 to get another bachelor's degree in electronic engineering.
While he was back, he was asked to teach a course in technical math. Inspiration hit. ``I really like working with college-level students,'' he said. ``They're at the point where they think they're adults, but they're not quite there.''
Smith then got his master's in applied math at Hampton University in 1989 and his doctorate in math from Howard University in Washington this summer.
He wore a white shirt and yellow tie with polka dots to his trigonometry class last week. His style was as crisp as his look. He carefully went over problems calculating the sine and cosine of angles, asking: ``Anyone confused thus far? Yes? No?''
Desiree Barnes, a sophomore from the Bronx, N.Y., said, ``He's a good teacher; he has patience. A lot of times, if you ask teachers questions, they don't want to go over something. But he'll go over it as many times as you want.''
Unlike Johnstone, Smith's delivery is subdued, his manner low-key. He tells an occasional joke, but doesn't dwell on the personal. He doesn't even tell students that he went to NSU, because he wants them to see him as more than an alumnus.
Smith sees no changes in students since he went to NSU, but Johnstone sees a little more life in the international law class that she teaches. When she was a student, ``My class was a bunch of deadbeats.'' Johnstone also sees a lot more bodies.
Her class is more than double the size it was when she was a student. ``We each gave a presentation of a major issue'' in the '80s, Johnstone said. ``Obviously, we can't do that now with 35 students.''
Like parents welcoming their children into the family business, their bosses and former professors speak excitedly of the decision by Smith and Johnstone to work at their alma maters.
``To me, he's the future of schools like ours,'' said Phillip McNeil, head of Norfolk State's math department. ``If we could have 10 of him, we'd be way up the line in terms of producing mathematicians and scientists.''
David Hager, an associate vice president at ODU who taught Johnstone international law, said: ``To see a former student succeed like that, it's a real satisfying situation. I'm personally proud of her.''
Plus, ``she does it better than I did. I know. I looked at her syllabus.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
GARY C. KNAPP
ODU political science professor Tracey Johnstone says each classmate
gave a presentation when she was a student there: ``Obviously, we
can't do that now with 35 students.''
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
NSU math professor Gregory Smith says he wants to motivate the
students who followed him: ``I didn't even consider going for a
Ph.D. until I met a black professor with a Ph.D.''
by CNB