WANTED

work. And when Gaines returned to the classroom and began teaching, he’d find that his Civil War
maps inexplicably included site names from Vietnam or other such unexpected locales.
In the 1970s, the two professors enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the University of Tennessee, and as
Dr. Sexton puts it, “ran the roads between here and Knoxville before the Interstate was the Interstate.”
Dr. Sexton received his Ph.D. in 1976.
Dr. Sexton perceives differences both positive and negative between Tusculum College students of
the 1960s and more recent years. “Students then were less indulged than they are today. Students
today strike me as much more dependent on me as a teacher than they used to be,” he says.
Dr. Sexton recalls a time during his early days at the College when an area barber refused to cut the
hair of a black student. Tusculum College students as a group decided to boycott the barbershop. In
those days a boycott was a radical step, but today’s students see resistance to discrimination as standard
practice, indicating one difference in the times that Dr. Sexton sees as positive.
Today’s students are “more socially aware of each other now than when I first came here,” Dr. Sexton
says. “I think they accept the notion that equality is a value they should have.”
One of the factors affecting Tusculum College students in Don
Sexton's earliest teaching days was the war in Vietnam. To
“flunk out” of college was, for a young man, to face the possibility
of wartime military draft.
Tusculum College faculty members were mindful of this. “I don’t
think any of us wanted to be the teacher who failed a student who
then had to go on to Vietnam and maybe be killed,” Dr. Sexton says.
Today Dr. Sexton is grateful that none of his students, to his
knowledge, died in Vietnam. But he knew several who served
there and were harshly impacted by their experiences.
Looking back over his 40 years at Tusculum College, Dr.
Sexton sees a few pivotal moments. One was the start of the
Douglas Trout presidency. Trout sought to transform Tusculum
College into a stronger institution with a better potential for
growth and student retention.
Similarly, the beginning of the Robert Knott administration
after a period of financial, administrative and academic stress at
the College was also a watershed moment in the College’s history,
Dr. Sexton believes.
The feeling Dr. Sexton had at the time was that Tusculum College needed an opportunity to “reinvent
itself,” he says. A healthy psychology began to prevail among the Tusculum College faculty as the new
administration brought in ideas such as the block system of classes and the Civic Arts emphasis.
“At that time, faculty support of the block system was enthusiastic,” he recalls. “There was a sense
that nothing could stop us, that we could do anything.”
One adjustment the block system forced upon history teachers at Tusculum was making them be
more evaluative of what was truly important in the history being taught, he says. Because of the
amount of ground that had to be covered within a block, it wouldn’t do to merely blanket the students
with more data than could be absorbed. The teacher had to decide what really mattered, and concentrate
on teaching that, Dr. Sexton says.
He has a vision of the Tusculum College he would like to see if he could time-travel another 40 years
into the future. “I’d like to see it be a stable undergraduate program with a non-traditional adult
program. I’d like to see a stable student body. I’d like to see a student body more intellectually engaged
than it is right now. And I’d like to see the College with a $50 million or $70 million endowment. And
I’d like to see a faculty where the students and faculty are still in contact with each other and the faculty
is concerned with the welfare of the students.”
Though Dr. Sexton admits he would love to see more students major in history, his greater concern is
11