Macon State College MVPs is a web feature that profiles notable students, alumni, faculty and staff.
Dr. Mary Wearn is the most recent recipient of the Outstanding Scholarship award given to one Macon State faculty member each year.
Full Name: Mary Wearn.
Residence: Macon and Lilburn, Ga.
Originally From: Massapequa Park, N.Y.
Family: Parents, Joe and Helen; brother, Joseph; husband, Jay; children, Jimmy, 23, Jackson, 19, and Jeremy (deceased).
Job Title: Professor of English and chair of the Department of Media, Culture, & the Arts.
Degrees: Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University; Bachelor of Arts in English, University of Maryland, University College; Doctor of Philosophy in English, University of Georgia.
Year she joined the Macon State faculty: 2004.
Some of her teaching career highlights are … “Successfully organizing the School of Arts and Sciences’ first scholarly undergraduate conference, ‘The Culture of Conflict’ in 2009; being nominated by my lovely peers in the Humanities for the faculty scholarship award; and being asked to pin a former student in the Macon State Honor Society induction. What a privilege!”
She enjoys teaching at Macon State College because … “I get to work with really smart and tremendously generous colleagues. Also, the students at Macon State are really unique. I’ve taught at other schools like UGA and Georgia Tech, and prefer the truly diverse and student body we have here at Macon State.”
Her favorite course to teach is … “The humanities special topics course (HUMN 3999) because it allows me to share my scholarly research in the classroom. My first special topics course was called ‘American Madonna: The Culture of Motherhood in Red, White, & Blue.’ This semester I’ll be teaching a new special topics course: ‘Violent Charity: the Puritan Roots of the American Imagination.’"
One thing people don’t know about Macon State is … “Its value. We’ve got the small classes, dedicated professors, and swank environs of a small, private liberal arts school—all at the low-end of the USG tuition scale.”
One thing people don’t know about her is … “I am wretchedly shy in new social situations. I have a morbid fear of small talk with strangers.”
In her spare time she likes to … “Take long walks alone in the sunshine with loud music blasting on my iPod.”
The one person she’d most like to meet is … “I could give an erudite answer, but instead I’ll admit that I’d love to hang with Tina Fey in NYC. She’s made it big in a man’s world (comedy has not been kind to women), and has made feminism funny. Much of her work challenges the myth that women can have it all - can be all things to everyone. Fey’s talented, neurotic, geeky Liz Lemon is my idol because she’s real. On one episode of ‘30 Rock,’ Liz warns a coworker seeking her counsel, ‘ You shouldn't take advice from me. I ate a Three Musketeers for breakfast.’ Some days I feel like that, and I suspect other women do, too. Fey gets the dangers of female perfectionism and crusades against it with humor.”
If she wasn’t a college professor she would be … “Well, I was an engineer before I was an English professor, so there’s that. But if I could start from scratch I think I would go into psychiatric research of some sort because there is so much about the human mind that we do not understand, and there’s so much suffering that needs to be alleviated.”