THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, May 25, 1995 TAG: 9505230097
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAWSON MILLS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
``I view myself as simply one of the members of the team. I think it's worked out pretty well. I like teaching - can't think of anything I'd want to change.''
Those are the words of Dr. Roderic A. Taylor, head of Norfolk State University's Fine Arts Department and who recently was selected as the school's Teacher of the Year.
Taylor has been at Norfolk State for 21 years and has chaired the Fine Arts Department for 20. He is also a professor of art at the university and a widely recognized sculptor.
The honor came as a result of a vote by a committee representing the entire faculty.
This latest award is one of a number that Taylor, 63, has received recently. Last November he was named Higher Education Art Educator of the Year for the Tidewater Region of the Virginia Art Education Association, Educator of the Year by the Virginia Art Education Association, and Art Educator of the Year for Virginia by the National Art Education Association. In March he was the keynote speaker at the Virginia Art Education Association's annual conference.
His sculpture currently is featured in a one-man exhibition at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C.
One of his works is the 6-foot sculpture of a sailor with a seabag in one hand and a book in the other at the Navy Fleet Combat Training Center at Dam Neck. Commissioned in 1987, the piece commemorates the role of educational training in the Navy.
``I like teaching,'' he says. ``I consider myself a humanist. I try to help people. My office is always open, not just during `office hours.' I'm usually here by 8:30 a.m. and stay until 8:30 or 9 p.m. at night. I do it because I like it.''
Taylor's engaging smile and informal conversational style, peppered with anecdotes, capture his listeners' attention.
His teaching experience goes back to 1963, first in the public schools of Richmond and Washington and, after a stint in the Army in 1966 and '67, at the college level at a number of institutions before coming to Norfolk State. In the early '60s, he was part of a project to desegregate the public schools throughout the South.
Reflecting on his years in education, Taylor appears calm and unruffled. But there are a few things that disturb him. One is the current threat to continued public funding of the arts. He lays the blame on several excesses, misuses of public money that have caused a public outcry that threatens to undo much good.
``Some of the things that happened,'' he observes, ``made it inevitable that we would have problems. There had to be repercussions. But a lot of good art will suffer, especially with anticipated cutbacks at the state level.''
He is also bothered by the attitude of some young people today, being careful to point out that it is a minority of kids who ``don't have it together.''
``They are floundering,'' he says, ``and it worries me. What happens to the young who aren't on the right track? Earlier, the young had people all around, adults. Now you don't see that as much.''
The youngest of 11 children, Taylor grew up in New Jersey and moved to Harlem after high school.
Taylor has no plans to retire - ``I still feel good,'' he says - but he speaks of passing the leadership of his department on to someone else, to the young, in the not-too-distant future. He expresses the desire, however, to continue in the classroom and the studio. His wife, Ora, a reading teacher with the Norfolk public schools, is from New Kent County, where they own some land and hoped, one day, to retire. But now a race track is on the way, and the quiet is overrun by the sound of construction equipment, so they are rethinking those plans.
They have one son, Rodney, a student at Old Dominion University, who is working on a master's in mechanical engineering.
Taylor received his bachelor's from Virginia State College. He has a master of arts degree from American University and a master's in education from Alabama State University. He received his doctorate in art education from Penn State.
He has been chosen as director emeritus for D'Art Center in Norfolk and has served as a consultant for a lengthy list of arts and education organizations. He is listed in Who's Who in American Art, Who's Who in Black Art, American Artists of Renown, Who's Who in the South and Southwest and the Blue Book of Tidewater.
Taylor and his wife live in Chesapeake. ILLUSTRATION: Taylor
by CNB