By Kristin L. Gustafson, Teaching Standards Chair, University of Washington-Bothell
gustaf13@uw.edu
Just hours before the memorial service for Hazel Dicken-Garcia in June, I sat with four of her graduate students eating one of her favorite treats: a chocolate croissant from St. Paul’s Bread and Chocolate. As the sugar revved my body, I also felt a different rush. It was as if Dicken-Garcia—Hazel to all of us—was with us during a moment that would make her proud. Somewhat effortlessly, our conversation moved to scholarship. Soon we each jumped into a conversation to argue separately the merits and rigor of qualitative research and encourage one of my former classmates with her current research project. Sitting there with the warm sun on all of us, I could see Dicken-Garcia’s handiwork. It was not just our clarity about methodology that struck me. It was also the bond that stretched across geography and time and held us fast.
I’d come back to my home state of Minnesota for the service, a lunch with graduate school friends, and, as it turned out, a chocolate croissant. Dicken-Garcia changed my life in three important ways. She showed me how to be both fallible and excellent in teaching. She fed my insatiable appetite for questions that could be answered and honed with clarity and rigor. She taught me how to integrate family and career.