by Rebecca Rakoczy

 

Susan Thomas points to the wingback chair in her Decatur living room.

 

“That’s the chair where Arthur Schlesinger Jr. sat,” she says, explaining how the late historian, best known for his books on President John F. Kennedy, regaled DeKalb College students with colorful stories.

 

Schlesinger was one of the featured speakers during the Lyceum Series, which Thomas helped launch at DeKalb College in the early 1990s. DeKalb College later became Georgia Perimeter College.

 

An English professor with a love of politics, art and history, Thomas created the Lyceum Series to be a collaborative venture between any discipline and student club that wanted to bring speakers to the college, she says.

 

“For example, the Business Department sponsored a guy who had escaped the Soviet Union; the Nursing Department brought in (Dr.) Lewis Sullivan, the U.S. Surgeon General,” she says. Author James Baldwin spoke, then ran a writing workshop for students.

 

Often, Thomas invited the speaker, interested students and faculty back to her home, creating an intimate venue for shared conversation.

 

It was a heady time at the college, Thomas recalls. “If we could dream it, we invented it.”

 

But funding was not guaranteed, and the Lyceum program closed in 1998.

 

That was the same year Thomas retired, after more than 30 years teaching English, to care for her ailing mother. An Agnes Scott alumni, Thomas got more involved in her alma mater after retirement; but she still came back to GPC to volunteer her time as a writing tutor.

 

Georgia Perimeter College history professor Susan McGrath sought a way to honor Thomas’s legacy at the college. “Her effort and devotion and work to support academic excellence at the college are unparalleled,” McGrath says. “I wanted to start a scholarship in her name; she suggested the lectureship.” The program, which McGrath oversees, was endowed within a year.

Like the original Lyceum Series, the Susan Thomas Lectureship seeks to be a collaborative venture between student clubs and academic departments. Departments and clubs are encouraged to work together to apply for funds, McGrath says.

 

Recent speakers brought to the college through the program include political scientist Alan Abramowitz and GPC alumni and artist Jan Selman, who spoke during the 2014 Women’s Conference in Clarkston. The lectureship paid for the luncheon for Abramowitz’s talk, which was sponsored by the college’s History and Politics Club. “It was a wonderful experience for students and faculty alike,” says McGrath.

 

The lecture series is important to the college and the students, notes McGrath. Students prepare notes and introduce the speaker—valuable skills and important experience for them, she notes. But nothing compares to actually meeting the author, speaker or dignitary in person, she says.

 

“Students get an incredible experience by meeting scholars and authors,” McGrath says. “This is something you would get at a private, four-year college. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

 

That experience is important for faculty as well, says Thomas.

 

“I remember when Susan (McGrath) brought Deborah Lipstadt from Emory University to talk about Holocaust deniers for a program called, ‘The Dynamics of Hate.’ They (Holocaust deniers) came to the JCLRC [Jim Cherry Learning Resource Center] and monopolized the questions. I had to remind them of the Lyceum rules of civil discourse,” says Thomas.

 

Providing a forum for civil discourse is important to Thomas.

 

“The lectureship is a point of pride for me,” she adds. “Funds for bringing distinguished speakers to a college provide win-win-win opportunities: the college gains respect from its the academic peers and its community; students gain insights from experiences that take learning outside the classroom’s four walls; and, as I know firsthand, faculty members involved in these events are invariably reinvigorated intellectually by these programs.”