By Nancy Patterson

For The Observer

The new early childhood education technology building on the Senatobia campus of Northwest Mississippi Community College will soon bear the name of longtime Career and Technical faculty member Marilyn R. Spears. 

Action at the October meeting of the Northwest Board of Trustees named the building in Spears’ honor.  In further action at the Nov. 12 meeting, it was announced that the facility would be named the Marilyn R. Spears Building.

Spears became an instructor in the child care technology program, as it was called at the time, in 1985 and later became the lead instructor. This included supervising the Child Enrichment Center, which specialized in day care for three- and four-year-old children of Northwest employees and adult students.

When certification requirements for teacher’s assistants and Head Start personnel changed, Spears and the faculty in that program responded to the needs of the community by offering classes during the evening school program.

Spears retired as a Northwest faculty member in the spring of 2005 with a total of 26 years of service to the college.

“The future for training early childhood education technology students certainly seems bright for our college to be able to build an impressive facility and name it after a former student, instructor, and now the wife of our college president,” said Jerry Nichols, dean for career and technical education and workforce development. “This gives us reason to expect excellence in this program.”

Spears retired before she was able to teach in the new facility herself. Before it was built, Northwest students took classes in the Berry Building and then walked to the Child Enrichment Center, which was located in a renovated faculty residence on West Street.

The new 8,800-square-foot facility, which opened for classes in August, now includes classrooms for the Northwest students as well as the Early Childhood Enrichment Center for the children. Also located in the center is a state-of-the-art kitchen lab used to teach nutrition classes and in preparing meals for the children, a student resource room, conference room and a “safe room’” accessible in the event of a tornado or other emergency.

The facility features a fenced-in playground with special material used on the playground that is designed to cushion any fall and lessen the chance of injury. It is equipped with state-of-the-art play equipment and a special playhouse built by the college’s physical plant employees.

“This is just a dream come true,” said Spears. “This new building provides the very best environment for the preschoolers’ first educational experiences, and it is an outstanding training facility for the early childhood education technology majors. I am humbled and honored to have been associated with a program that makes such a difference in the lives of so many people,” she said.

Spears and her husband, Northwest President, Dr. Gary Lee Spears, reside in Senatobia. They have two adult sons, Jared of Taylor; and Daniel and his wife Julie, of Oxford.

Current faculty in the program include lead Instructor Dr. Alice Camp, instructor Judy Barham and laboratory assistant Penny Potts.  For more information on this program of study, contact the career and technical dean’s office at (662) 562-3361.