A Passion for Teaching…
Peggy Gilbert’s SMSU Career Spans Three Decades

While change seems to swirl around us, some things remain the same.  For the SMSU Marketing Department, assistant professor Peggy Gilbert remains a rock, a constant, amidst changing curriculum, technology, fads and fashion. Thousands of SMSU marketing students have come to know Gilbert as teacher, advisor and friend during her 33 years at SMSU. She has seen many students come and go throughout the decades.  Some have even left only to return later to become colleagues.  Gilbert has taught fellow marketing professors Dr. Steve Parker, Dr. Charlie Pettijohn, and Mrs. Sherry Cook.

Despite a long and illustrious career, Gilbert never intended to become a teacher.  “I always thought I would be working in the industry.” Her plans quickly changed when she took a job teaching sixth graders in Louisiana, where she is originally from.  She only spent a half year with those children, but that was enough to change her life.  She fell in love with all twenty-eight of them. “After teaching those children, I knew I wanted to teach for the rest of my life. Those students taught me more than I taught them.  I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she says.

Gilbert explains her first teaching job did not have an easy start.  “All the students in the school called me ‘the giant from the north’,” she says.  She had to prove herself to both her students and to the other faculty.  After a few weeks, though, the sixth graders loved her as much as she loved them.  Parents even approached her to teach the group the next year in seventh grade and then eighth grade. She appreciated the offer, but decided to move on.

In the summer of 1970, a friend told Gilbert about an opening at SMSU. She applied and was hired to work in the Department of Business teaching marketing and management classes. She recalls there only being one other professor who taught marketing courses besides her.

Gilbert has seen many changes in her 33 year career at SMSU.  She has seen the small Department of Business, which took up two floors in Carrington Hall, develop into the College of Business in Glass Hall. She has transitioned from using chalk boards, mimeographs and typewriters, to computers, online coursework and distance learning.  She has watched SMSU grow from a regional university of 5,000 students, to the university it is now. 

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Despite these changes, Gilbert takes the same teaching approach with her current students as she has with all her students young and old throughout the years.  “I think I teach the best students in the world.”  In fact she sees a lot of similarity in teaching her first group of sixth graders to her current university students.  “From my years of teaching, I can appreciate the importance parents have in their children’s lives and education. This holds true for sixth graders and for university students,” she says.

Gilbert is very protective and supportive of her students. She often praises the high caliber of people she meets through her classes.   One of Gilbert’s former students and current graduate assistant agrees.  Says Nicole Holdmeier, “Peggy is not only concerned that her students are learning; she is also concerned about them as people.  I know she has often checked up on students with health or personal problems. Students often come to talk to her. She is a great listener and they trust her.”

But teaching isn’t Gilbert’s only interest. Another love is her two “fuzzy baby girls.”  They are Daisy and Courtney her two six-year-old Maltese dogs.  She also spends time volunteering.  Community service is very important and rewarding to her. She gives students an opportunity to share in her passion by having them volunteer locally as part of her Consumer Behavior class.  Gilbert primarily works with senior citizens, many of whom have no family in the area, taking them to the doctor when necessary and just visiting when they need an attentive ear.

Gilbert also finds joy in writing short stories.  Most are based on her life experiences. She finds pleasure in being an “adoptive mom” to her nieces and nephews across the country too.  Gilbert is the eighth child out of nine so she has plenty of family to keep her busy.

So take hundreds of students and multiply by 33 years.  That’s a lot of impressions Gilbert has made on a lot of students. Perhaps nothing sums her impact up better than a recent email Gilbert received from one of those sixth graders in that first class she taught.  He said he had been trying to find her since she moved out of Louisiana.  In his email, John Meaux states, “You were one of the few teachers I had that really cared about your students.  I will always remember you and think of you often.”

For Gilbert, a life-long teacher with a passion for her students, what could be more gratifying?

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