Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
Source: The Gallery, 1970: A Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College District, 1970. p3.
Source: Donnybrook Fair Yearbook, Class of 1941. Baltimore, MA: Goucher College, 1941. p90. Used with permission, courtesy of Goucher College Digital Library’s Special Collections and Archives.
Source: The Gallery, 1974: A Photographic Directory of the Grossmont College Staff. El Cajon, CA: Grossmont Junior College District, 1974. p3.
Source: Ehrke, Wiley G. "Teachers Choking In District Barbecue." The G (Grossmont College, El Cajon, CA) 11 October 1978: p1. [Cropped]
One of Grossmont College's earliest Department hires, Doris Alexander received her Baccalaureate degree at Goucher College and, in the early 1960s, undertook graduate study in English and Literature at San Diego State College, earning her Master's degree in 1964 with a focus on the works of Henry James.
Upon completion of her Master's program, Grossmont Junior College made her an offer of employment in its English Department. Known to her friends by the moniker "Da," Dorothy F. Alexander was a steadfast colleague, a respected instructor, and a cheerful and witty friend. Doris was also an avid, non-stop reader of contemporary literature. Tom Scanlan, editor of the District's retire newsletter, the GCCCD Grapevine, remembers Da regularly sending recommended readings lists for inclusion in the newsletter, endorsing works such as Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and recommending everything from Flannery O'Connor to Frank McCourt. In fact, her recommended reading lists became something of a GCCCD Grapevine tradition during the 1990's.
When, in the late 1970’s, the Grossmont College Faculty Association feuded with the District's administration over collective bargaining, Alexander was one of many English instructors to protest in the trenches as well as to educate students in the classroom about the collective bargaining issues.
In 1981, Doris F. Alexander retired from teaching but remained in close contact with colleagues for decades, even participating in many of the organized retiree activities and luncheons that followed in the next decade. One of these, in fact, held on March 24, 1991, was a farewell luncheon for Doris and her husband, who moved the following week to Washington state to be closer to their extended family. In Seattle, Dorothy bemoaned to her Grossmont colleagues the winters of the Pacific Northwest, but her reading habits became even more voracious and she described herself in a letter to Tom Scanlan as "up to my neck in books."
Doris passed away in December of 2009, in Seattle, at the age of 89.
Debora Curry
English Dept - Administrative Assistant
Email: debora.curry@gcccd.edu
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 8am to 10am and 2pm to 4pm - email Debora for link for her Zoom Office hours
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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