How Jerry Dunn wound up teaching at SWOSU in Weatherford is a good story.
The 1992 Canute High School graduate thought that after college he’d eventually return to western Oklahoma to live and work on the farm near his tight-knit family. He was right, though not in the way he’d planned.
LEARNING HOW TO LEARN Dunn became a college student at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater in 1993. He spent the year before, however, acclimating to higher education by commuting about 25 miles west.
“To ease that transition, I spent my first year of college at SWOSU in Sayre, then transferred to OSU,” Dunn said.
The hardest part of adjusting to college was learning the study skills that he hadn’t developed in high school.
The hardest part of adjusting to OSU was its size and the size of his classes. “Some of them were massive, with more than 100 students,” Dunn said. His entire graduating class at Canute had about 25.
FAMILY MATTERS He benefitted by having family nearby. “My cousins Cory and Christie Spieker were finishing up college at OSU, and I moved a trailer house into the trailer park down the street from them,” he said. The Spiekers being close helped Dunn adjust to living away from home.
More help came from more family. Dunn was roommates with cousins Wes and Quenton Elliott, which also helped immensely.
By the time he’d left Stillwater, Dunn had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Agricultural Economics.
He graduated from high school intending to get a degree in Farm and Ranch Management from OSU, then go home to work on the family farm. But as he advanced in that program, he considered other options.
“I began to realize just how difficult farming life can be and started looking for other avenues,” Dunn said.
BECOMING DR. DUNN That’s why he went into the OSU master’s program and eventually decided to pursue a doctorate at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.
K-State offered a Ph.D. in Economics with an emphasis in Ag Economics. Dunn said that the program fit his mindset, and Manhattan was a lot like Stillwater, also a good fit.
He hadn’t considered working in a classroom, though, until he got the chance to teach an Ag Finance class while he was at K-State. “That opened my eyes to the possibility of being an educator,” Dunn said.
As he finished his doctoral dissertation—a book that Ph.D. students write to complete their degree—in the fall of 2001, he began looking for a job. Dunn had interviewed at some small agricultural colleges and universities, more interested in teaching than researching.
GOIN’ HOME Then, he took a shot in the dark.
“On a whim, I emailed my resume to the SWOSU College of Business concerning a Management position that was advertised,” Dunn said.
He didn’t hear back as the weeks passed, so he continued the job search. Then, one day he got a call from Dr. Ralph May, Dean of the SWOSU College of Business.
An Economics professor was retiring, and May thought that as a Canute native, Dunn would be a good fit among SWOSU’s students, many of whom come from small western Oklahoma schools.
He interviewed, was offered the job, and began teaching undergraduate and graduate Economics and Statistics courses at Weatherford in August 2002 and has ever since.
Then, in 2019, SWOSU implemented a Business in Agriculture degree program, and Dunn has been intimately involved. “Given my background, I have been extremely excited and very active in its development,” he said.
He teaches two courses in the program, advises most of the majors, and is a co-sponsor of the SWOSU Collegiate Oklahoma Farm Bureau chapter.
The best part of Dunn’s job is helping students learn and succeed, particularly when they’ve struggled. He especially enjoys witnessing “the light bulb moment” when students suddenly understand a concept.
The most challenging part of his career was early as he transitioned from researcher to educator. “I had a steep learning curve when first stepping into the classroom, and the learning continues as strategies and techniques evolve in education,” Dunn said.
Dunn and his wife live just northeast of Love’s on the east side of Elk City on farmland that’s been in the family more than 100 years. He farms with his parents, Wendell and Shellean Dunn.
“I’m very fortunate to have that opportunity,” Dunn said.
A veteran educator, he’s been on campus more than two decades, is serving under his third SWOSU president, and still loves it. “I’ve cherished every year that I’ve been here,” Dunn said.
The 45-minute commute from Elk City to Weatherford to teach is a small price to pay for realizing the goal that Jerry Dunn had as a Canute High School graduate of returning home and working in agriculture.
