“I have a friend who says, ‘Linda can’t know anything without teaching it to somebody else.’” For the last 20 years at SUNY Oswego, Linda Loomis has dedicated her time to her students, showering them with knowledge of creative writing, journalism and English. Yet, she was supposed to retire in 2008.
Growing up in Oswego, she would take the role as the teacher and play school with her two brothers and sisters. At a young age, teaching was always part of what she wanted to do. School was the most amazing thing to her; the order and routine of it inspired Loomis to pursue her dream. To be fortunate to go to school where teachers concentrated on their students and subject matter made Loomis lucky. “Every day we learned something new. It was just delightful,” she says.
By high school, she recognized that the gift of living here was the college. She saw friends take the opportunity of raising their standard of living and becoming educated people. Loomis understood that she had this way to elevate her existence through education and became the only one of her siblings to go to college.
From about 1976-1996, she was a reporter and editor for Brown Newspapers’ (now Eagle Newspapers’) Liverpool Review. Loomis decided to be a journalist because she believes newspapers are one of the best ways of telling the story of a community, its people and their activities. Coming to SUNY Oswego in 1993, she was working at various capacities on campus, starting as an adjunct in the English department. Two years later, she was hired full time and became the editor of the alumni magazine; and in 1999, Loomis became a full-time journalism professor. She says it was like coming home.
Loomis agrees that if “you live a long time, you get to do an awful lot of stuff.” Throughout her time as a reporter and professor, she has received many awards in the last two decades: “Writer of the Year” by the New York Press Association in 1994, awards for her columns and features from the Syracuse Press Club and National Newspaper Association, National Award of Merit for Student Advisement in 2005; the 2003 (SUNY) President’s Award for Excellence in Student Advisement; and five citations for excellence, writing and design of the Oswego Alumni Magazine, while she was its editor.
Linda begins her Mondays with a smile, opening up books of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, reading the great literature of the past to her English students. “I feel like I learn something every time I teach a course,” Loomis says. Teaching English 331 for the 2013 spring semester, she didn’t have time to plan for it. Having not taught it before, she took the course hands on, having read the literature before. Every lesson, she tries to imagine how she could best understand what’s being taught. Loomis says if she can read something and understand it herself, then it’s easier to teach it to other people. She admits that she is learning right along with her students. “In every situation I think a good teacher is both a teacher and a student in the class.”
Corey Sheen can remember the first time he was in one of Loomis’s classes. He is a journalism major and needs to fulfill a writing agreement, so he chose to take creative writing. “By being such a great reader and writer [herself], she can identify the strong and weak points within any writer; she’s very humble about it,” Sheen says. After taking her introduction to creative writing course, he instantly decided to take the advanced class with her. He is grateful for her constructive criticism because it has impacted his writing not only as a student, but also for his writing career.
Sheen says her personality shines through in each class she teaches and always is involved with students on and off campus. He comments on her spritely and youthful attitude, despite nearing the age of 70. “Linda Loomis has been one of the teachers I never disliked or questioned what she was doing.”
She tends to fall in love with every student that passes her way. Loomis looks beyond the classroom and sees the individuals in the class instead. She says her greatest pleasure since teaching has been getting to know all her students individually. She enjoys the young people and the time she spends with them because what it does is free up her time and thoughts for her students. Being older than many professors on campus, she feels she can focus on what she is doing.
“I think she is the only teacher that can keep me awake at 9 a.m.,” says Amy Lipsky.
She has taken both creative writing and English with Loomis and feels that she came out of her classes a better writer than before. The material she gives her students and the way she breaks down her lessons makes sense to Lipsky and applies that to her own writing. She enjoys how Loomis makes her classes exciting and gets students involved with the learning. She says that instead of the regular lecturing, Loomis “cracks jokes and makes the class laugh, and you don’t get that too often in college.” Lipsky appreciates her thirst for teaching because it helps her pay attention and absorbs the information in a relaxing setting. “She is fun. She loves what she’s teaching. I love teachers who are passionate about what they’re teaching.”
Danielle Syers says she has an interesting way to teach. She constructively critiques everything, which improved Syers writing for her sophomore year. Loomis’s friendly attitude and enthusiasm to help made her a better editor. “She has made me definitely think about what I was writing and willing to tell me what I was doing wrong and what I was doing right.”
When grading work, Loomis doesn’t look at the papers piled on her desk as just things to be graded, but thoroughly reads each assignment and respects what they’re trying to say. “I am very grateful to the school itself, to the people that have been very affirming and helpful. Most of all, I am grateful to the students.”
When leaving journalism in 2008, she officially retired. Since then she is working full-time in one capacity or another as an adjunct professor. She says at some point she will have to leave the school, but it is a thrill to be teaching still. “I feel very privileged to be here. It really is a blessing to be involved. I love this place.”