New Faculty Highlight: Sharon Meeks

BMC’s ever growing family welcomed a new professor to the education program last fall. Sharon Meeks is a graduate of Blue Mountain, where she majored in Elementary Education. She left Blue Mountain in 1983, and from there went on to have a long career teaching in a variety of elementary classes, including kindergarten, first, second, and sixth grade.

Although she has been teaching thirty years, Ms. Meeks did not start out as an education major. She says that she started out in a different major, but slowly realized during her time at Blue Mountain that teaching was what she really what she wanted to devote her life to. Working with children through Sunday school at her church, she learned that she truly enjoyed teaching.

Apparently, education runs in the family. Ms. Meeks says that her grandmother, mother, aunt, and two sisters all became teachers as well. However, Dr. Ronald Meeks is not included in this list; despite the shared last name, they are not related.

Ms. Meeks says that it was always a dream of hers to return to Blue Mountain and teach. She says “I felt like I could make an impact on students who were planning to become teachers.”

When asked what her favorite and least favorite thing about the campus was, Ms Meeks responded, “I just love this campus. It is a beautiful, relaxing campus, and I love that everything revolves around a Christian lifestyle.” She couldn’t think of a least favorite, she said, because she just doesn’t see any downside to Blue Mountain.

The last thing Ms. Meeks wanted to share was a word of inspiration to aspiring teachers and education majors. “One of the things that has always inspired me was something that William A. Ward wrote: 'The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.'”