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Northern Illinois University

NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

September 30, 2003

Watson embraces challenges, opportunities
of NIU Department of Counseling, Adult and Health Ed

DeKalb — A provocative bumper sticker in Lemuel Watson’s office with a bold, red-and-black message sticks out among the customary shelves of scholarly books and cultural artifacts.

“Men Who Change Diapers Change the World.”

The movement was sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children organization.

Watson’s involvement with that group was inspired by his appointment as a research to the “Call Me Mister” program at his former employer, Clemson University, which aimed to recruit 200 African-American men to become elementary school teachers and to change perceptions of male teachers in the lower grades.

His research interests include examining institutions of higher education (IHE) and how their structures, practices and policies affect learning, development and educational outcomes of students, especially historically under-represented students. In addition, he chooses to examine, through critical theory and policy analysis, the impact that sociopolitical factors have on IHEs and their agents, constituents, resources and operations.

A love of research, and its evolving questions, is one of many things Watson plans to bring to NIU as new chair of the Department of Counseling, Adult and Health Education in the College of Education.

“Research is wonderful, an intimate experience,” he said. “I have the opportunity here to work with faculty and their research agendas, and we have tons of doctoral students at the dissertation stage. One of my goals is to breathe some fire, life and urgency into these students.”

For Watson, the path to a life in higher education was a left turn from his expectations of a bachelor’s degree in business. When he began work in the business and finance offices for his alma mater, the University of South Carolina, he discovered and embraced an unexpected opportunity.

“I started teaching in the evenings,” he said, “and fell in love with that experience.”

Those classes were related directly to his degree – introductory courses in business and computer science – but the taste of teaching adults taking their first steps beyond high school inspired Watson to seek a master’s degree in higher education and human development.

Watson worked in the office of the chancellor at Indiana University, where he conducted faculty development, assessment and orientation.

He took his first faculty position at Illinois State University after earning his doctorate, and later expanded his resume as a community college dean and by building grad programs in higher education and student development at Clemson.

His journey to DeKalb began when he helped a doctoral student look through the higher education job ads.

“Right below was the chair’s job,” he said. “I was able to bring my counseling background, my adult education experience and my higher education and administrative experience to one place with an outstanding faculty at an undiscovered gem.”

The task offers opportunities and challenges.

Watson said he will continue the department’s well-respected tradition of transporting higher education to adults through such venues as Malcolm X College in Chicago or the Great Lakes Naval Training center.

Yet he also plans to help the department forward by pulling its faculty together for multidisciplinary learning and by stressing the “unlimited” prospects for research. Meanwhile, with the departure of the health education faculty to the College of Health and Human Sciences, he expects the newly hired professors of higher education will form a perfect bridge through the department.

As tight budgets call for creative measures, Watson said he is up to the task.

“We’re finding new partners and doing the tango,” he said. “We’re looking for opportunities rather than focusing on the things we don’t have.”

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