Oxford School of Emory College’s latest dean, Dr. Molly McGehee, has a deep ardour for schooling and scholar success.
As a child McGehee’s alternative of playtime was college. For hours she could be tucked away within the schoolroom her dad and mom made for her grading papers with stickers. Each of her dad and mom had been one of many first of their household to attend faculty. After incomes their levels, they realized gaining this type of schooling can change the circumstances they’re in.
This realization is what influenced them to instill a love of studying into McGehee.
“In order that they stuffed my home with books,” McGehee mentioned. “Each time I bought an award or I did one thing good, I bought a e-book with slightly inscription in it. My home was a spot of phrases and studying and dialog.”
After educating English at Presbyterian School from 2008-14, McGehee turned an affiliate professor of American research and English at Oxford School She has been there ever since, taking up plenty of completely different roles all through the years.
That love of studying and enthusiasm for all issues Oxford School culminated in McGehee being named the brand new dean of the varsity earlier this yr. After serving as interim dean for seven months, she formally took over the everlasting dean position on July 1.
“As you may think about, it’s an enormous duty, but it surely’s a spot I like,” McGehee mentioned.
McGehee’s roots run deep in Newton County. Her husband, Daniel Parson, runs the Oxford School Natural Farm. Once they moved to Oxford in 2014, they lived on the farm for 10 years and solely just lately moved to Covington slightly over two years in the past. Their son Benjamin Parson will probably be a junior at Eastside Excessive College this upcoming fall.
McGehee mentioned she is worked up — or as she talked about on Fb, “ox-cited” — to tackle the position as dean in a spot that she now calls house.
“We’ve actually put down roots right here,” McGehee mentioned. “So though I think about Spartanburg the place I grew up, I now actually think about Covington and Oxford my house.”
McGehee’s path to schooling wasn’t typical. In faculty, she was surrounded by individuals who wished to be in enterprise, a lawyer or a physician. For some time, she gave into this peer strain and majored in historical past to change into a lawyer.
On the finish of her 4 years at Davidson School, McGehee realized she by no means wished to depart college. That is when she started pursuing graduate schooling, acquiring a grasp’s diploma in southern research on the College of Mississippi and a Ph.D in American research at Emory College.
Though educating didn’t appear as glamorous as turning into a lawyer or a physician, McGehee knew it was the appropriate profession for her.
“There was one thing in me that was like, I need to give one thing again to college students,” McGehee mentioned.
One in all McGehee’s favourite lessons she has taught was a visible tradition course known as Monuments, Memorials and Meanings. She began the category by educating college students concerning the historical past of Oxford then zoomed out to the south and even the nation.
“It’s only a actually fascinating, difficult class to show,” McGehee mentioned. “And I feel it makes college students see issues round them in a brand new method.”
Kailash Menon, a earlier scholar of McGehee’s, mentioned that this class not solely modified his perspective of the South however of how he needs to be taught. On this class, McGehee took her college students to Montgomery, Alabama to go to the Legacy Websites.
Menon mentioned this area journey was simply one of many some ways McGehee made him within the class materials.
“I actually felt linked to the work I did as a result of she was capable of put us in these positions the place we’re not simply studying from a textbook,” Menon mentioned. “We’re studying by means of conversations and we’re studying by means of experiences.”
One other one among McGehee’s earlier college students, Chloe Kahn, took this class with McGehee in Japan by means of Oxford School’s World Studying program. The category explored how Japan memorializes tragedy after WWII and the way the Japanese promote peace.
Kahn mentioned one among her favourite moments on this journey got here from a dialog her class had with Hiroshima College college students.
“There was one thing simply so wonderful with assembly youngsters our age, and regardless of language boundaries, connecting and wanting the identical aim of peace,” Kahn mentioned. “We had been all simply in tears. It was a kind of life altering conversations.”
Experiences like this are the rationale McGehee believes educating college students outdoors of the classroom is so necessary.
“That for them, I feel, is simply so transformative,” McGehee mentioned. “It actually brings studying alive.”
McGehee has not solely taken college students to Alabama and Japan however has additionally accompanied college students to locations like Hawaii, Martinique and France. She loves main these journeys as a result of it permits her to get to know her college students on a extra private degree.
Quite than simply seeing college students in a classroom setting, McGehee enjoys getting to sit down down with them and hearken to their tales.
“That relational facet is de facto why I bought into this gig and why I nonetheless find it irresistible,” McGehee mentioned.
As dean, McGehee doesn’t need to lose these relationships she’s constructed with college students in her educating roles. She believes it’s simple for directors to lose contact with the inhabitants they’re serving.
To fight this danger, McGehee began internet hosting espresso with the Dean on Friday mornings. She permits a number of college students at a time to enroll in a cup of espresso and dialog in her workplace, one thing that has been deeply helpful for everybody concerned.
“While you begin to see there’s one thing that numerous college students are saying will not be working, then that helps me be a greater chief as a result of then I lean into that,” McGehee mentioned.
Kahn mentioned McGehee began these espresso chats in her second semester of her sophomore yr. She mentioned these conversations are simply one of many methods McGehee is ready to foster relationships together with her college students even whereas she is Dean.
“Being interim dean, she turned much more busier, however nonetheless made it a precedence to be in the neighborhood and meet with the scholars and never simply cover behind her new position,” Kahn mentioned.
McGehee’s high precedence as dean is creating entry for college students. Along with her educational background, she believes rising up within the South has given her an understanding of how socioeconomic standing and the South’s historical past has impacted who has entry to an Emory schooling and who doesn’t.
This has influenced her need to extend entry for everybody at Oxford School.
“I feel it’s additionally knowledgeable that need to verify extra individuals have entry to one thing like an Oxford Emory schooling and the alternatives that we offer right here,” McGehee mentioned. “Primarily it’s not simply the wealthiest college students who get to have this kind of expertise.”
