[media-credit name=”Shelton” align=”alignnone” width=”200″][/media-credit]Merylee Shelton, tenured professor of Communication Studies in the Language Arts Department of San Jose City College, is the founder and coordinator of the SJCC Community Arts and Lectures Program. Her program brings various controversial subjects to the public forum, and a wide array of speakers.

Q: How did you get into the teaching profession?
A:  I knew I wanted to be a speech major, and in high school I took all my speech classes and four years of drama, four years choir, anything to do with the human voice. I spent one year in College of San Mateo, and I was on the forensics (debate) team. When I transferred to Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, at the beginning of my sophomore year from CSM, one of my first classes was instructed by a Jesuit named Father Wendell Langley on comparative religions. Father Langley told us we would study Buddhism, Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, and existentialism.
I raised my hand and said “Father, are you a practicing existentialist? He said no. I proposed that he would be bias in teaching as a priest. He asked if I think I could do a better job than him. I told him yes, on the subject of existentialism. He said, “OK, well, that’s going to happen later in the semester, so whatever happens, those two weeks are yours.”
At the end of those two weeks near the end of the semester, he told me I was really good and that I should consider college instruction. So I ended up with a minor in secondary education.

Q: How long have you been at SJCC?
A: Going on my 22nd year.

Q:With your tenure at SJCC; what are your impressions and comments about the school.
A: Well, SJCC has always intrigued me, as we have the poorest students with the lowest per capita income of any students out of the 11 other community colleges around us. It’s part of the reason I came to SJCC. I came here from Foothill College; I felt that the ultimate pay is that you can really feel the difference you are making, and that is the thing that has kept me here.

Q: What prompted the creation of the Arts and Lectures program?
A: I was in the Communication Studies Department, when it was housed in the theater, and realized that most of the time the theater was in the dark.
I realized my background in speech communication is really oral interpretation of literature, so why don’t use the theater, for an Arts and Lectures Program. When Patrick Gerster came here as the dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, I convinced him that we should start an Arts and Lectures program; he thought it was a great idea. I went to the district and made a proposal, which they approved.
 Shelton’s Arts and Lectures spring program ran from Feb. 24 to April 14, and was held in the Technology Center auditorium.