In observance of Black History Month, the University of West Floridaheld a “Toasting Excellence” event to celebrate the service of its African American faculty and staff. Special honors went to Mamie Webb Hixon, who has the most years of service among this group, now at 40 and counting.
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Over the years, Hixon has been one of the most high-profile faculty members at UWF. She’s assistant professor of English and director of the university’s Writing Lab and Grammar Hotline. You could call her the “Grammar Guru.”
“Correct, the “Grammar Cop,” the “Grammar Police Officer,” confirmed Hixon, beginning to rattle off just a couple of her many monikers. She recently added another, with the start of a new series of Zoom sessions called “Grammarcise.”
“So, I am the 'Grammar Coach,'" she declared. “My job is to assist people with flexing their grammar muscles.”
While teaching at Tate High School and attaining her master’s degree at UWF in the early 1980s, Hixon says she was tapped for a part-time job helping students improve their writing skills in the early days of the writing lab.
“I was pulled in, not as a director, but as a part-time person to train the graduate assistants to teach writing and grammar,” she said, describing how it all started. “Then in 1982, Dr. Stanton Millet said, ‘Mamie, we have a position, and here's the job description: A short black female with red hair. I think that's you.’ And the rest is history.”
At the time, UWF was still a small two-year upper-division institution, with few buildings, students, and faculty. There were even fewer African American faculty on campus.
“Definitely. In fact, such a small group, I think I can count them maybe six to eight total. It stayed that way for a long, long time,” she said.
She pointed to Omega Gardner as one of the first African Americans to hold a leadership position at UWF, who formed an organization that focused on Black faculty.
“We would meet frequently and just discuss our concerns, discuss our successes, and discuss ways to better integrate ourselves into the University of West Florida, a PWI,” she remembered, explaining the shorthand for “predominantly White institution.”
In preparing for the recognition event, presented by the UWF Division of Academic Affairs and Student Engagement, in conjunction with the Black Employees Association, Hixon says she counts nearly 30 Black faculty today.
So, does she think diversity at the university is better some 40 years later?
“I think so,” she responded. “Just walking across campus, I see the presence of Black students.”
The latest university data show a Black student enrollment of around 1,700, or 11.18%. Hixon says she’d like more of them to sign up for her classes, such as her Black Women Writers course. And, she’s always working to recruit diverse students to work in the writing lab as lab assistants, or “labbies” as she endearingly refers to them.
“Because students want to walk into the writing lab and see someone work with someone who looks like them,” she noted. “So not just African American students, but Asian students.”
Hixon says she was hired initially to address an identified decline in student writing skills.
Over the decades, she has seen improvements in writing skills but believes there’s still a need for the writing lab, which has modified their services over time to meet faculty and students where they are.
“Based on data that we're receiving in the English Department about what's needed, we've tried to set up workshops, training, and paper reading to meet those needs.”
Hixon expressed a sense of pride at the accomplishments of her many students, especially those who used what they learned as English majors to become editors and lawyers.
She also has much to be proud of in her own right. She’s published two volumes of the book, “Real Good Grammar,” and has been the recipient of numerous community acknowledgments and awards from UWF for teaching and leadership in diversity.
Perhaps, she’s most known in the university and Pensacola community for bringing African American literature and history to the masses as a writer, producer, and director of several theatrical productions of Our Voices Are Many.
“The Daughters of Africa,” “The Sons of Africa: Celebrating the Voices and Images of Black Men in America,” and “The Souls of Black Folks,” these are just some of the themes we did,” Hixon proclaimed.
“(We) staged it out here on campus (UWF) and at PJC (PSC), and brought lots of people, people who said to me, ‘I'm a high school graduate, a college graduate, but I never liked poetry until I saw it actually performed.’”
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Since her early days at UWF, Hixon has also brought grammar to the masses on radio and TV, actually starting on WUWF years ago, with a module titled “The Write Stuff.”
Now, as a woman in her 70s, with 56 years of teaching, including 40 at UWF, Hixon says she has no plans to slow down any time soon.
"As long as my creative juices are flowing, and as long as I'm cerebrally stimulated by just being in front of a group of people, sharing my knowledge, and getting more knowledge from them, I'm there,” she declared. “I'm there for the long haul.”
National Grammar Day 2023 is Saturday, March 4.
