Her parents didn’t graduate high school, but now she’s a college dean

Her parents didn’t graduate from high school, but she earned a doctorate. She didn’t initially go to college after high school, and she didn’t initially major in education, but she now leads a college that teaches teachers -- and is about to become much more prominent.

So when Columbus State University conducts its opening ceremony Friday at 1:30 p.m. for Frank D. Brown Hall, the new headquarters for CSU’s College of Education and Health Professions, you can understand why the dean might be a bit emotional as her alma mater takes another monumental step in its expanding footprint in downtown Columbus.

Sharing her journey with the Ledger-Enquirer this week, Deirdre Greer wiped away tears and declared, “It shows the power of education. It really does.”

CSU’s interim provost, Tina Butcher, agrees.

“Many of our students are first-generation college students,” she said. “(Greer) is an outstanding role model for our students because she has a personal understanding of the challenges that they may face.”

‘Wanted to do something’

Greer grew up in the region her university helps educate. She worked as a pharmacy technician even before she graduated from LaGrange Academy in 1980, and she continued in that field when she moved to Columbus and worked at The Medical Center.

She didn’t go to college right away, Greer said, because she didn’t have the money. This was before the HOPE Scholarship, she noted. “I guess I wasn’t savvy enough to realize that I could get the student loans,” she said.

It took that suggestion from one of the pharmacists for her to realize that she indeed could go to college.

Although her mother was a teacher at a private school, Greer started as a computer science major at Columbus College, taking evening classes through The Medical Center’s tuition reimbursement program.

“I really liked doing that and had a strong proclivity for it, but I got irritated with people saying, ‘Oh, computer programming? You’re going to make big bucks.’ But it wasn’t about the big bucks for me; I wanted to do something.”

That something took a while to discover.

‘It was fun, and it was hard’

After making it through a few semesters, her son was born in 1987 and she became a stay-at-home mom. In 1993, three years after her daughter was born, she felt it was time to return to college and finish her bachelor’s degree, but her career goal had changed.

“Having two children and staying home with them and having that experience of really seeing how children learn, I thought this is fun, I can do this, and this is important,” she said. “This isn’t something you do just for the money.”

She became a full-time college student while her husband, Ricky, worked as a construction contractor.

“It was fun, and it was hard, having two children,” she said. “They were in school, so I did a lot of my homework at night, stayed up light. Fortunately, I’m not much of a sleeper anyway. Four or five hours a night is good for me.”

Greer earned her bachelor’s degree (1997) and master’s degree (2001) in early childhood education from CSU. Her goal simply was to be a classroom teacher, which she did at Wynnton Elementary School, in third grade and then in first grade.

“I didn’t really see it much further than that,” she said.

During her eight years teaching at Wynnton, she worked as part of a team that won a grant to revamp the school’s reading curriculum. That experience also sparked a new passion for Greer.

“I realized that I really love the research,” she said. “That’s what pushed me on to get my doctorate.”

‘Broader impact’

Greer earned her doctorate, also in early childhood education, from Auburn University in 2005, when CSU didn’t have the doctoral program it has now. She would be at Wynnton from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., drive an hour to attend her classes, then do her homework and study at night.

She wanted to teach at the college level, Greer said, to have “that broader impact.” She could help teachers be better educators and do research that improves the noble profession.

But she never aspired to be dean, Greer insisted.

“I’ve always been very focused on whatever it was I was doing,” she said, adding with a laugh, “I got moved up to all my different positions because I never went home.”

Greer quickly ascended the academic hierarchy at CSU in the early childhood and teacher education departments: from coordinator, to assistant department chair, to interim department chair, to department chair and to associate dean.

Even when Greer was interim dean from September 2014 to July 2015, she said, being the permanent dean wasn’t her wish. But then she looked at the bigger picture.

If CSU hired a dean from outside the college, someone who wanted to change its direction, she worried, “faculty are really not going to be happy. We have great faculty, and when something like that happens, there’s a chance that a lot of those faculty may leave. … I already had strong buy-in into all these initiatives and saw that it was the direction we needed to go, and that was really my impetus for applying for the dean’s position, seeing that work we had started to the finish and to move on from there.”

That direction, Greer explained, emphasizes what is called the “clinical experience” for students.

“In a lot of programs, the pre-service teachers only go out into the field for a couple of hours here and there,” she said. “We’ve always had strong field experiences, and our candidates do a lot of time in the schools, but we have become even more focused on that.”

All of which has translated into a stronger relationship with local school districts. For example, an estimated 60 percent of Muscogee County School District teachers are CSU graduates, Greer said.

Butcher called Greer “truly a servant leader. She does outstanding work that is well-regarded both at CSU and in the profession. However, she does not seek accolades for herself. Her interests lie in helping our students and supporting our faculty and staff.”

‘Refreshing moment’

Moving from parts of three buildings on main campus in midtown Columbus into one dedicated facility in downtown Columbus has boosted the unity among the college’s departments, Greer said.

“We’re more than just education,” she said, noting the School of Nursing and the Health, Physical Education and Exercise Science (which still is on main campus), as well as Counseling, Foundations and Leadership, are included.

The $27 million project converted the Ledger-Enquirer’s former property into 90,000 square feet of state-of-the-art learning spaces and offices for CSU’s 1,800 students, faculty and staff in the College of Education and Health Professions.

“Being in this new building is sort of a refreshing moment for us,” said Greer, who also is an associate professor and dissertation chair in the doctoral program. “… It’s a much more visible, much more attractive place, and I think we’re going to be able to attract students because of this building.”

She expects that effort to “make a difference in the community.”

“When businesses or families move to a new city or decide to relocate, they look at health care and they look at education,” she said. “If those two components are strong, then that city will be a strong contender for those businesses and those families to move. And so that’s the way we see what we do.”

Butcher sees Greer personify that philosophy.

“She cares very much about the quality of the students we prepare and the way in which we prepare them for future careers or graduate study,” the interim provost said. “She has high expectations of our students, faculty and staff, and they rise to meet her expectations.”

This story was originally published January 4, 2017 at 4:49 PM with the headline "Her parents didn’t graduate high school, but now she’s a college dean."