Dr. Gregory Sawyer Fails at Retirement

By Rachel Forrester

“It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” –William Ernest Henley, “Invictus.”

Those words have become the mantra for ENMU alumnus Dr. Wm. Gregory Sawyer (MA 78), who recently retired from California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) after 16 years as their founding vice president for Student Affairs.

In his nearly four decades of working with students as an educator and administrator, Sawyer adopted the poem “Invictus,” which emphasizes embracing courage and resilience in the face of adversity, as his way to encourage, motivate and inspire students when they felt they were at their lowest point.

“The poem was a way to say that although life had dealt them some serious blows, they could and would recover. They may be beat but never beaten!” he explained.

Dr. Wm. Gregory Sawyer with his mom Betty and his two sisters Leslie and Deborah.

Under his leadership, CSUCI’s Divison of Student Affairs has been recognized for the past four consecutive years as one of the nation’s Most Promising Places to Work for in Student Affairs. In addition to his administrative work, Dr. Sawyer taught public speaking courses and regularly ran speech tournaments and leadership retreats, often using his own upbringing and experiences to connect with students.

“They would say ‘Doc, you’ve probably always had good grades.’ But I didn’t,” he revealed. “At one point as an undergrad I had a 1.0 GPA and that was really difficult for me because I’d done so well academically in my military academy high school. My sisters and I always made good grades. After that I still ended up becoming the outstanding grad student in communication, so I wanted students to see that no matter where they were in life, they too could pull themselves up by their bootstraps.”

Growing up, both of Dr. Sawyer’sparents taught the importance of education. His father earned his undergraduate degree from Morehouse College and spent three years postgrad at HowardUniversity Medical School before being pulled out to bean Army medic. Dr. Sawyer’s mother attended Bennett Collegein Greensboro, North Carolina, but transferred and graduated from The Ohio State University. Sitting around the dining room table at the Sawyer house wasmore like a college study session.

“This type of family engagement helped me and my sisters to remain motivated throughout our academic journeys. Knowing that our parents sacrificed and cared for us made us want to achieve even more for them, and ourselves,” Dr. Sawyer said.

Sawyer applied to a variety of different graduate programs. He was accepted to all of them but is grateful that he ultimately choose to become a Greyhound. His two sisters, Leslie J. Sawyer (MA 82) and Deborah M. Sawyer (MS 82), were also graduate students at ENMU. The three siblings all attended private institutions for their undergraduate degrees, and each one drove all the way from Ohio to New Mexico to earn their master’s.

“I had a pretty solid educational background before coming to Eastern, but I think my best academic experience was at ENMU,” Sawyer said. “All the things that I learned in terms of the ability to interactinter culturally, to teach, as well as to get up in front of an audience and speak, I learned there.”

Dr. Sawyer knew he would probably “fail” at retirement, and after only six weeks he was invited to join Sonoma State University as the vice president for Student Affairs.

“There were bets on how long I would stay retired,”Dr. Sawyer explained. “My wife (Dr. Rita Gloria Sawyer) and I are looking forward to working with this visionary and very forward-thinking president (Dr. Sakaki) as we work together to make a difference in the world through the lens of higher education.”