Jean Shepard

Missionary of the Arts

Jean Shepard
Professor of Humanities, South Campus

The importance of the arts is a theme close to the heart of Humanities professor Jean Shepard. “I love Humanities because it allows me to be a missionary of the arts. I enjoy all of the arts, visual arts included. I love talking about these things and getting others excited about ideas.” She is also an award-winning writer whose poetry has been published in several literary magazines.

Shepard loves to read and teach poetry as much as she loves to write it. She admires the works of the great modern American poets: William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens, but above all, Robert Frost. Now, Professor Shepard passes that passion on to students in her South Campus classes.

Shepard’s career in the English, and Humanities and Fine Arts departments at Florida Community College began in 1968 on the original Cumberland (Kent) Campus. Early in her successful 26-year career in education, she left the College to be a full-time mother to her two sons. She returned in 1981 and for a period served as interim dean of the Humanities and Fine Arts Department as well as department chair before resuming her full-time teaching duties.

In 1993 she started writing poetry in earnest. Says Shepard, “I was greatly inspired by the creativity and attitude of the people in the Fine Arts department, particularly Larry Davis (professor of Art) and a painting teacher who is now retired, Eleanor Allen.” Shortly after, Jean Shepard was a published poet, debuting with “Watching Jellyfish at Monterey.” Her poems have appeared in six literary publications including The Tampa Review magazine and New Collage, the poetry journal of the University of South Florida’s New College and most recently, the poetry issue of the journal Passager.

Every summer now, Shepard travels to some part of the country for a poetry workshop. She has been to the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire twice, The Iowa Summer Writers Workshop in Iowa City four times, the New York Writers Workshop at Skidmore, and the West Virginia Writers Workshop in Morgantown. Having the opportunity to meet with other writers renews her energy for the craft and for teaching.

Clearly, this is a person who truly enjoys getting up in the morning and going to work, whether at home with her legal pad or in her Humanities classes. “I love teaching. After all, I get to teach ‘J. Alfred Prufrock’ every year. I get to introduce students to new ideas and ways of looking at the world around them. What could be better than that? This is interesting, exciting and important.”

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