EMPLOYEE PROFILE

Name: Annie Gray

Title: Assistant Professor of English

Major responsibilities: Lead teacher for DSPW0700, instructing DSPW and ENGL classes, Pellissippi State representative to the Center for Academic Integrity, Foundations of Excellence Committee; co-coordinator for Women’s History Month; also a licensed massage therapist at Well by Nature on Bearden Hill and a graduate student in UT’s Educational Psychology Collaborative Learning Doctoral Program

Length of service at the College: adjunct 3 years
full-time 5 years

Place of birth: Stamford, Connecticut

Family members: Elyse, 16 ½; Audrey, 14; John, 11

Something no one knows about you: I follow the Sufi spiritual path.

Greatest achievement or proudest moment: Having my first child.

Favorite things outside work: Bumming around with my kids, reading and listening to poetry, and spending time with my close friends talking about life and ideas, laughing, and punning.

Most rewarding part of your job: The realization that the classroom has transformed into a bonded community of learners.

Most influential people in your life and why: Christ, my kids, the memory of my most difficult college English professor and the poet Goethe, who have shown me that to live authentically in service to others means to die daily to your old self.

Favorite quote: “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” (Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century spiritual master and poet)