He’s retiring from
the education arena —
staying in the legislature
“I want people to know I’m not retiring from the legislature,” said Dr. Vernon Smith, “because I don’t want a lot of people running against me next year.” He’s ending his career as a professor at Indiana University Northwest after 33 years.
Smith says he’s leaving the education arena because the Indiana legislature “keeps messing with education.”
Right out of college in 1966, he began teaching in the Gary school system. Six years later, he was elected Gary’s 4th District city councilman; a seat he held until 1990.
That same year, Smith began his term as State Representative for House District 14. Two years later, he left the public school district for a professorship at IU Northwest.
The 2 careers he’s shared nearly all his adult life has come to an end.
“I’m retiring from Indiana University. I don’t want to teach anymore, and that’s because the courses that I taught for the majority of this time, up until two years ago, were in Educational Leadership,” Smith said.
Smith headed the Educational Leadership program in the university’s School of Education. Teachers completing the program were seeking Masters of Science or the Educational Specialist in Leadership degrees.
Those degrees qualified teachers to serve as principals in elementary or secondary schools and are pathways to serve in administrative roles, like superintendents, at the district level.
Smith said legislative actions have discouraged graduate studies in education.
Teachers in Indiana used to get a pay raise when they earned those degrees. That no longer happens. “So why should they come and spend $11,000 or $12,000 to get another degree?” Smith said.
His program was further curtailed when rules on class sizes were implemented.
“They said if you have a class that’s smaller than 15, you have to cancel it. At regional campuses, sometimes you cannot get a class of 15 at one time. So what we do is independent studies,” Smith said. “It doesn’t cost the university anything. We just give it out of our time. We work with a student independently. We don’t get additional pay. They said we can’t have those classes.”
Currently, the course catalog at IU Northwest lists the Educational Leadership’s masters degree as “on pause” and the education specialist degree as “on line.”
Smith’s careers in education, in local and state politics have made him a veritable institution in his community. Any election opponent will have a mountain to climb to unseat him.
Earlier this year, the Gary Frontiers Service Club named him the recipient of their “Drum Major Award,” inspired by the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Drum Major Instinct” sermon. The annual award honors a community member who has improved the lives of his fellow man through service.
At his IUN retirement dinner, past students came out of the woodwork to help celebrate. Althea Range was a 5th grade Beveridge Elementary student where Smith did his student teaching. “I was one of his guinea pigs in 1965. When I saw they were doing this, I said I had to be here,” Range said. “I recognized even then he was going to be a great educator.”
Troy Charles was a student at Williams Elementary and Smith was his principal. “He was very inspiring and the best principal ever,” Charles said.
When the picture was taken in his office in Hawthorn Hall, the building’s HVAC ductwork was being replaced. Smith’s office on the third floor was off limits and needed an IUN police officer to let him enter. It turned out Officer Ryan Cain had been a member of the African American Achievers Youth Corp. in its early years.
Smith organized the Achievers in 1993, as a program offering guidance to males in grades 6-12. The mentoring program promotes self-esteem by providing educational and employment opportunities for the youth. The program includes cultural enrichment and recreational activities.
“I remember it like yesterday, the trip to an Indiana Pacers game at Conseco,” Officer Cain told Smith.
Retirement does not mean he will stop serving his community. “It would be like being in hell for me to go sit at home and do nothing. I just feel like I owe people; I owe God. So I do it,” Smith said.
“I’m going to continue to do the projects I’ve always done, except two. I’m not doing the Back to School Jamboree. That’s probably the hardest project I had to pull together,” Smith said. He turned the Jamboree over to the university last year, after hosting it for 22 years. And he’s not doing the Froebel Picnic.
He will still host the Community Fall Fest on the last Saturday in September. The festival is held in front of the Glen Theater, which is operated by the African American Achievers.
Smith will continue the Thanksgiving Dinner and the Christmas Dinner & Giveaway.
“So I don’t plan to retire from everything. I’m just retiring from the university and I’m going to volunteer here. I’m a person who doesn’t like free time. I’m not a TV junkie,” Smith said. “I don’t have to be a big, big guy. I can be a small you in the background.”
