After 16 years of teaching biology at Carroll Community College, Associate Professor Sarah Sayre believes she is leaving behind the “most exciting field of all.”

“Incredible new understandings are coming out of current scientific discoveries,” she marveled. “For example, the study of genetic engineering will be changing our world dramatically,” she said, hoping her students are as impressed with the march of scientific advances as she is.

Sayre believes that during her five years of part-time teaching and 11 years of full-time teaching at Carroll, she imparted to her sience. tudents the importance of being knowledgeable and of having a firm grasp on basic science. “Students who leave Carroll receive a good foundation,” she said. That foundation includes courses Sayre taught in general biology, introductory chemistry, and environmental sc

Sarah Sayre

Sayre so impressed students that they nominated her as Carroll’s Outstanding Faculty Member, an award she accepted in May.
In an effort to provide further intellectual stimulation to students, Sayre directed the college’s honors program for a period of time. The program creates opportunities for advanced study using critical and creative thinking. Sayre expanded honors learning into seminars outside the classroom and increased the number of courses which had an honors component. Her biology honors seminar worked with the Outdoor School at Hashawha on local pond problems.

“I was myself a student in an honors course called ‘Peace Studies.’ It was a fantastic experience because I developed a new set of relationships with students as peers and I benefited from wonderful interaction with them,” she said.

As a faculty advisor to student clubs, Sayre applied her love for all living things to experiences outside the classroom. Worldwatch, the environmental club, for example, took field trips to the Museum of Natural History. The Peace Club was started by Sayre and a group of students inspired by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It helped to organize the Oxfam Banquet. This event at Carroll demonstrated how people of various cultures and income levels around the world experience food. The Peace Club continues to collect used textbooks to ship to Africa.

Sayre even found time to pursue a personal hobby at Carroll—choral singing. In the spring of 2006, Sayre joined the Chamber Choir of the Carroll Community College Chorus. The group performs madrigals in costume. A recent performance at a college-wide staff meeting gave Sayre the opportunity to share with the college her love for singing an unusual repertoire of music.

When asked to describe her experience at Carroll, Sayre said she enjoyed “lots of variety of tastes, with chewy challenges, and a few charming nuts along the way.” In a more serious tone, she described her fondness for “the finest colleagues anyone could ever ask for.”

“We worked terribly hard to put out a terrific teaching product, and we have done it joyfully,” she said.
What lies next for Sayre? She will move to the Eastern Shore with her husband to pursue a longstanding hobby of coastal cruising in a sailboat. Though she may sail to far away places, she will always stay anchored to Carroll through her rich memories of a college she called home for so many years.

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