DUNWOODY, Ga.– Students in Jennifer Lentz’s English classes learn from the get-go about their instructor’s previous careers as a magazine publisher and business owner–jobs she held well before she went back to graduate school to get her teaching degree.
Sharing her past careers with her students is important, said Lentz, who received Perimeter College’s Outstanding Adjunct Teaching Award recently. “I let them know that you don’t have to decide right away what to do with the rest of your life when you’re in school. I was 50 when I went to graduate school. I’m evidence that you can change direction and be fine with it.”
Lentz has worked part-time at the college for the past decade and loves it.
“I am happiest when I see an engaged student, and it makes me really happy when they share parts of their lives with me. We always spend a few minutes at the beginning of class talking about the weekend and what happened. I let my students know that I’m not just working with them, I’m going on a journey with them. I try to establish a rapport with them. If they have a rapport with me, they seem to feel better about doing their work.”
Prior to her teaching career, Lentz led a successful medical publishing company in the 1980s, producing the country’s first cancer lifestyle magazine with an international circulation. “Publishing was dear to me, and especially being able to communicate with cancer patients and doctors was particularly meaningful for me, since my father died early from cancer,” she said.
She met her husband, an oncologist, while running the magazine. The two married and formed a biotech company around his research. The couple later sold the company.
After going to graduate school at age 50 to get her teaching degree, Lentz taught as an adjunct professor at Tennessee State University for a semester. She was offered a full-time position at TSU, but decided to leave when she received the job offer with the pharmaceutical company in Raleigh, she said.
She stayed at the company a year and came to Atlanta after her daughter had her first child. “I wanted to be around with my grandchild,” she said.
But she knew she also wanted to go back to the classroom. When Perimeter College’s former English chairperson Ted Wadley offered her the part-time position on the Dunwoody campus, she accepted. Teaching English seemed a good fit for the former publisher. “My first degree was in the sciences and liberal studies, but I’ve always loved writing and literature,” she said.
Her career at Perimeter College has been a rewarding venture.
“It’s been an amazing journey for me,” she said. “It has always been my choice to teach part-time, and I’m grateful that I’m able to teach and also take care of my grandchildren.” She now has four grandchildren.