Faculty member hopes to bring fellowship experiences back to UCA
Faculty member hopes to bring fellowship experiences back to UCA
When Angela Webster was in the first grade, a teacher told her that people who love to learn go to college, and people who really love to learn get doctorates. That seed of wisdom sprouted into a passion for learning that led Webster to earn her doctorate, become associate vice president for institutional diversity at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway and, most recently, receive a fellowship from the American Council on Education.
“I knew I was supposed to be an educator from childhood. Like many other young girls, I taught my dolls, but I took it more seriously than teaching my dolls,” she said, adding that she also taught her siblings and held summer camps on her back porch.
Growing up in Memphis was powerful, she said, not only because of the fast-paced urban energy, but also because she was exposed to successful African-American role models.
Her parents were active in the civil rights movement, and her grandfather was a sanitation worker, so when Martin Luther King Jr. visited the city to give his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” in support of the sanitation-worker strike, she was in the crowd at age 7.
“Even though I was that young, that experience framed my convictions,” she said. “I know from that experience that every life matters. Everybody wants to be visible, valued and validated. Everybody can make a contribution to humanity, and our nation would be greater if it afforded that.”
A first-generation college student, she said her father had high hopes that she would use her degree to make a good living and support herself with or without a husband.
“My parents really didn’t know much about educational pursuits,” she said, “so when it was time for me to go to college and I said I wanted to be an educator, my dad knew enough to know that educators weren’t really well paid, although they’re well respected.”
He urged her to major in business, and although she had no desire to study the topic, she honored his wishes. She focused on human-resources management so that, in addition to accounting and finance, she was able to learn about working with people and creating positive work environments.
“No information is ever wasted,” she said. “So in the future years, when I became an educator and started schools, that information actually came in handy. Who knew?”