Wall to reflect 75 years of teacher training

C of C looks for alumni who served in classroom

Maurice "Molly" Thompson, a 1959 graduate of the College of Charleston, is reaching into the past to help public education in the future.

Thompson is one of the many College of Charleston graduates who spent at least part of their professional lives working as teachers, and she's looking for others.

The college is attempting to round up such alumni and offer them the opportunity to have their names placed on a "memory wall," said Fran Welch, dean of the School of Education, Health and Human Performance. For a $100 donation, graduates can have their name and the year they graduated etched permanently on a wall in the Alumni Center, a large room on the first floor of the new School of Education complex.

Thompson said it's very important to "recognize people who, sometimes under great pressure, have helped other people learn."

And she wants alumni of the college to join the School of Education in improving public education in South Carolina.

But finding alumni is challenging because teacher education has changed so much, Welch said.

The School of Education was launched in 1988 and since then has graduated about 5,000 teachers, she said. It's not difficult to track down many of those students, she said. The college sent notices to them, included the information in newsletters and on the school's Web site.

Although the college has been graduating teachers for more than 75 years, she said, for many of those years it didn't offer a major in education. People interested in teaching majored in another subject, then got a separate teaching credential on top of that, she said. It's especially tough to identify and find those educators.

That's where Thompson comes in.

The Charleston native, who majored in French and earned a minor in history, taught at Ashley Hall and at Gordon H. Garrett High School in the early 1960s. She continued teaching in Baltimore when she moved there with her husband.

She returned to Charleston in 1994 and now she's talking to everyone she can think of to find more educators for the wall.

Welch said she hasn't yet decided on the wall's design. The school has set Sept. 30 as the deadline for submitting names. Once school officials know the number of names they need to accommodate, they'll decide on the design, she said.

But whatever form it takes, she said, "I want it to be a showpiece for alumni, a place to celebrate all they've accomplished."

Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com.