160 leadership Dedication\ dean keeps harding in the family\ While Assistant Dean of Students Sheri Shearin described herself as being “a pretty boring person,” anyone acquainted with her knew that statement could not be true. From being an elementary school principle at Harding Academy for 11 years to being regularly called to residence halls in the middle of the night, Shearin hardly lived a boring life. One aspect that kept Shearin’s life interesting was her great love for Harding. Her ties with the university ran deep and went far back into her family. “My grandmother went to Harding at Morrilton before it even moved [to Searcy],” Shearin said. “My father and mother came here and graduated in 1945, and then I came in 1965. When I graduated in ’69, I was one of the first, if not the first, third-generation student to graduate from Harding.” Following graduation, Shearin taught public school music for two years in Nashville. In 1971, she married current professor of music Arthur Shearin, and the opportunity arose for her and her husband to come back to Harding. Arthur was to teach in the department of music, and Shearin was to be the music department secretary. She said they jumped at the idea of returning. “We were so excited! We stayed here for two years,” Shearin said. “We covered a teacher who was on leave getting a doctorate.” At the end of the two years, the couple moved to Boulder, Colorado, so that Arthur could work on his doctorate at the University of Colorado. In 1976, the Shearins went to Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee, for six years, where Arthur taught music and was the chair of the music department. However in 1982, the couple once again found themselves back at Harding. Shearin’s husband was offered a faculty position, and he agreed to it, allowing the couple to return to Harding. “This had just always been home,” Shearin said. “Harding is just part of our family.” Because of her attachment to Harding, Shearin gladly accepted the offer to become Assistant Dean of Students in 2005. “I just love working with women at the age of their life when they are making decisions that form what they’re going to be doing for the rest of their lives and trying to help them see that we all make mistakes,” Shearin said. “It’s what we do with the mistakes we made that makes a difference in life.” While Shearin enjoyed working with students, she said her job was stressful at times, and like any job, did not come without challenges. “It’s not an eight to five job,” she said. “Rarely do I go through a week that I’m not called out in the night to a residence hall. I rarely have a week that I don’t go to the hospital, either to visit somebody or to be with somebody in the emergency room. And of course there’s the discipline aspect, and at times, it takes the majority of my job, and at times it doesn’t.” These challenges did not outweigh Shearin’s love for the students and also for the other deans she worked closely with though. “The four deans work very well together,” Shearin said. “We all are on the same page, so to speak. We support each other. We are in very much agreement on how things should be handled.” Overall, Shearin felt blessed with the opportunities she received by being a dean and the relationships it allowed her to form. “What a blessing to work in a place like that — where you know that you’re going to be supported by your fellow workers and that any of the four of us will handle something and that it will be handled in the same way with the same outcome,” she said. “That is just so wonderful!” Rebecca Harrell
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