Oct. 26, 2006

New Faces: Carolyn Backus

BY LEANNE MCCULLOUGH
lem001@marietta.edu

On the Record :

Welcome Carolyn Backus, the new Assistant Professor of Education, to Marietta College. Backus is not exactly new to Marietta. In 1980 she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English, Psychology and Sociology with a certificate in education. She returned to Marietta and completed her Master’s in Arts in Education in May 2005. Backus is currently in the process of receiving her Doctorate in Reading from Ohio University.

Although this is her first year as a college professor, many other experiences have prepared her for the job. Previously, Backus was a preschool teacher at St. Paul Lutheran in Parkersburg, West Virginia. She also worked as a substitute teacher in the public school system in the Marietta area, as well as Cleveland.

Off the Record :

As a preschool teacher, Backus recalls many humorous instances. Towards the end of the school year, the students would have a picnic. Ahuge hit at the picnic was the marshmallow slingshot, where marshmallows were dipped in chocolate sauce and thrown at a sheet using a slingshot. One year, boys started throwing the chocolate covered marshmallows at her and it turned into a huge food fight. Every year from then on, the marshmallow slingshot became the chocolate sauce food fight.

Backus remembers one time after a shaving cream activity she went in to check on the boys to make sure they were washing up. Instead, she found one boys’ face completely covered in shaving cream, and all she could see were his two blue eyes.

As a student at Marietta College, Backus remembers some of her favorite experiences. During the 1979-80 school year, the football team was so terrible that the cheerleading squad could not get anyone to try out. Backus and a few of her fellow friends formed their own “volunteer” cheer squad so that the boys would have someone to support them.

Backus’s advisor and his wife were very welcoming and involved in the college, and many students would turn up at their home for dinner. Backus says that to her this was the way a professor should be, saying they “took care of us, looked after us.”