Professor Stephanie McClure, a sociology undergraduate coordinator and professor entered her 20th year teaching at Georgia College during which she amassed numerous awards, honors, publications and strong relationships with students.
For McClure, college is more than a degree. She believes it is an art of finding yourself and your passions.
“That college was really transformative for who I was when I started there and who I was when I left,” McClure said. “I was so different, and I liked the second person so much better.”
McClure was inspired to teach at the collegiate level in graduate school when she earned her PhD in sociology at the University of Georgia.
She reminisced about her time spent in a teaching assistantship which covered her tuition and allowed her to teach with UGA professors in 300-person introductory courses for sociology. She was then responsible for four different breakout groups of twenty-five students where their meetings consisted of activities to supplement the lectures.
Although the love for teaching started here, it was not bound to finish. She still thoroughly enjoys teaching students and watching as they learn a new curriculum that shapes their worldviews.
In the same way she found herself through college, she finds joy in students who do the same.
“This little table right here in my office,” McClure said. “The number of amazing students who have sat in that chair talking to me about stuff we talked about in class, their life, their future or the things they are interested in. You can watch students come alive and it is the best part of my job.”
McClure learned that sociology was a discipline that would help answer questions about how the world works, and it does so across a large range of areas. She purposely specialized in racial stratification because she wanted answers about race from a particularly young age.
“Sociology lends itself to the answering of a whole range of questions,” McClure said. “They are generally questions that have more to do with the way we move about the world and interact as opposed to what’s inside of our brains.”
McClure has many publications, with her biggest being the race readers. The first edition came out in 2014, and the fourth edition will come out in 2026. She originally co-edited with her colleague Professor Cherise Harris, who lectures at Connecticut College.
Editors approached the two and asked for a new edition, but Harris confided in McClure that she would not have the time to do so. Because of this, they invited James Bridgeforth, a third editor for the new edition who is a new faculty member in the Department of Education at the University of Delaware and was a Georgia College graduate.
Aside from her publications, McClure has also received multiple awards and honors across the years at Georgia College.
“I have gotten across the categories, but my most proud is the 2019 Faculty Mentor of the Year award from the Southern Regional Education Board,” McClure said. “That was from Sida Patel, who was Jame’s best friend, and she nominated me for that award. I got to talk in front of an audience about how brilliant she was from the time that I met her and what a gift it was to be her professor.”
Students find that McClure is a gift to the university and find her teaching to be inspirational in their curriculums.