WINONA LAKE – Dr. Paulette Sauders is about to complete her 50th year as English and journalism professor at Grace College. Only three others have reached this milestone at Grace (Dr. Homer Kent Jr., Ron Henry and R. Wayne Snider), but Sauders is the first full-time faculty member to do it while continuing to actively teach. Sauders graduated from Grace College in 1964 with a bachelor’s in English education. After teaching for a year at the Akron Bible Institute, she was appointed professor of English and journalism at Grace in 1965. Over the years, she earned her master’s in literature from Saint Francis University and her doctorate in English literature from Ball State University, where she became a C.S. Lewis scholar. For 35 years, Sauders has taken Grace students on a two-day trip to Stratford, Canada, to attend plays at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre, and since 1995, she’s taken students to England over spring break to visit London, Oxford, Windsor, Stratford, Bath, Stonehenge/Salisbury and Wales. In addition to serving as a faculty member in the Languages, Literature and Communication Department, where she’s taught 17 different courses, Sauders taught in the Grace prison program for 16 years and served as a leader for Women of Grace Schools for 40 years. Sauders has been the chair of the department since 2003 and for four decades has served as an adviser to the school newspaper, “The Sounding Board.” Sauders will continue to chair the Languages, Literature and Communication Department and teach full time. President Bill Katip presented Sauders with an engraved desk chair at the Employee Recognition Banquet April 29 in honor of her 50 years of service. He also presented her with a framed portrait, which will be hung in the Philathea building on Grace’s campus commemorating her service.
