Dr. Misty L. Jameson, a professor of English and Film Studies, is the recipient of Lander University's Distinguished Professor award.
Her 13-year career at Lander began in 2008 when she became an assistant professor in the College of Arts and Humanities. She rose through the academic ranks to become an associate professor in 2014, and was promoted to professor in August 2020.
During her tenure at Lander, Jameson has taught introductory English and film studies courses, as well as World Literature and Introduction to the English Major, and other courses providing a strong academic foundation for the study of the English language
Lander students also have had the opportunity to learn from Jameson that a trip to the movie theater is much more than a great story on the silver screen and a box of buttered popcorn. Through her classes, students have explored cinema's history, warfare in movies, science fiction and the Western in film, Alfred Hitchcock and film noir - all of which have changed their perspective on movies and their cultural significance.
However, it is Jameson's compassion for her students which earned her the type of accolades not usually found on a professor's traditional resume. Lander history professor, Dr. Kevin Witherspoon, chair of the committee which selected Jameson as Distinguished Professor, highlighted students' "rave reviews" of their professor in his letter announcing her selection.
Witherspoon noted that one student wrote: "I was very nervous about the sort of professors I might have, but you made it very easy for me to understand things and come to you for help."
Another raved, "Misty Jameson is a saint at Lander."
Others were grateful for her "compassion and willingness to help," especially during the pandemic.
Jameson's attentiveness to others earned her the affectionate name "Chicken" as a child. It was her Uncle Glenn who perhaps first noticed her caring nature. "When I was about two years old, my parents had some baby chicks that followed me around our front yard like I was their mama hen," she said. "My uncle lived across the road from us, and when he saw me toddling around with chicks behind me, he started calling me Chicken. The name stuck."
When she graduated with her Ph.D., her uncle made the sign that now hangs in her office. It features a cartoon of a chicken with the words, "Professor Chicken," underneath.
Jameson is quick to dismiss the praise of her students and colleagues. "I was just doing my job," she said.
From the time Lander moved classes online in March 2020 through the end of the academic year in May 2021, Jameson said she vowed to "try my best and to be understanding and help students as best I could. So many of them were suffering. It was a struggle for everybody."
The four classes that she taught each semester met in-person, but had an online component. "The pandemic affected the way we teach. We've had the traditional in-person classes, which everyone appreciates," she said. "Yet, we're offering that same experience virtually."
While working with students on campus, Jameson had the experience of having daughter Sophie, 10, studying her classes online - just across the desk from Mom. "We had to figure out her schooling and my schooling," she said, noting that the duo spent a great deal of time together at Lander and at home in their educational endeavors. "We made it work."
Jameson came to Lander after earning her doctoral degree in English in 2008 from the University of Georgia, where she was a teaching assistant from August 2000 to May 2007. She was the recipient of UGA's Alpha Chi Omega Sorority Teacher Appreciation Award and the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in Spring, both in 2006, and the Graduate School Teaching Portfolio Recognition Award in 2005.
She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Mississippi State University.
At Lander, Jameson has had a remarkable record of service to the University through key leadership roles in her department, as well as posts on Faculty Senate. She is the representative from the College of Arts and Humanities on the Academic Honor Council, the faculty advisor to New Voices: Lander University's Student Journal and a member of the Tenure & Promotion Committee.
Beyond campus, she has been a foster volunteer for the Humane Society of Greenwood and is a "community cat friend" committed to feeding and sheltering local stray cats. At her home, she cares for six indoor cats and 20 outdoor ones. She is a member of the S.C. Foothills Chapter of the Sierra Club.
It is the breadth of her dedication to the University and community that was lauded by Witherspoon. "The committee was particularly impressed that she is able to maintain such exceptionally high teaching standards while remaining very active in terms of scholarship and service," he said.
"It is a testament to her work ethic and commitment to scholarship that she remains a productive scholar despite her many activities, having published five articles and delivered more than two dozen presentations over the last decade."
And it is a tribute to her Uncle Glenn that Lander's distinguished professor said she would title a movie of her life, "Professor Chicken." Her passion for helping others - students, colleagues and fur friends -- began years ago with those chickens from her childhood.