As I walk through the halls in the second floor of the Learning Center, I find the door to Tobie Sanders’s office. It is ornately decorated with pink daisies made out of construction paper. To the right hangs a picture of Sanders smiling brightly, her fist thoughtfully placed below her chin, as if she was in deep, cheerful contemplation. Below the door sits a welcome matt, as though anybody who came into her office was in just the right place.
All of these nuances are indicative of the type of person Sanders was. As of late July, Tobie Sanders, Ph. D. passed away, and Capital University will never be the same.
“She always had a way of making everybody feel comfortable,” said Page Bruening, Ph.D, who was a friend and colleague. “I even remember her from my interview at Capital when I first came. She was genuinely interested in students, whether they were students of life, or students in her classroom. She was interested in learning, and knowing as much as she could about anything, which was very inspiring to me, and to people around her. You wanted to know what she knew.”
Sanders was a celebrated teacher, mentor and innovator in early childhood education, child development, and reading and literacy learning and teaching. She joined the Capital family in 1986, but held more than 40 years of experience in early childhood education. She held the Homer and Isabelle Cotterman Chair in Education, was past chair of the Education Department, and was the recipient of the Praestantia Award for Excellence in Teaching — the highest honor Capital bestows on its faculty members. Her scholarly and professional contributions have earned her dozens of awards and widespread recognition.
Regardless of all of the countless awards and titles that she held, her legacy will live on through all of the people that she touched. She is immortalized by the impact she had on the school, her students, and her colleagues. She loved people, and made it her goal to shine her brilliant light onto those who cared to listen.
“I worked with Tobie since 2011,” said Holly Porter, Early Education Program Coordinator and colleague. “She was always great, and always had a nice word to say about everybody. She was always a really happy presence around the office. Everyday she was here she would go around to everybody’s offices and poke her head in and see how they were doing. She was just that kind of person.”
“Professor Sanders was, of course, a very special person, who brought smiles to the faces of all she met,” said Denvy Bowman, Capital University President. “During a spring break not so long ago, she traveled with me and the University’s Advancement staff on a fundraising trip throughout central and south Florida, where our main goal was to secure new donors and new scholarship dollars to support students. Of course, Professor Sanders charmed the University’s friends and alumni at every stop, and donors quickly responded with the funds we had hoped for. Because she made this strenuous effort look so easy, the two of us laughed in celebration of her achievement and ever after referred to this as our Florida vacation together!”
Inspiration was the way Sanders worked. If she wasn’t stimulating her colleagues with her infectious laugh, she was encouraging her students to live out their dreams.
One of Sanders’s early education students, Paige Fair, junior, painted a portrait of a tree in one of Sanders’s classes. “She liked it so much that she ended up asking me if she could take it and put it in her house,” said Fair. “I have never painted before that time and she really motivated me to pick it up as a hobby because she was so fond of it. I appreciated her charisma and her love for what she did. She truly was an inspiration!”
“Tobie was a really good mentor to all new faculty members here,” said Jim Wightman, Associate Professor and Department Chair. “She had been here for 28 years. She had seen a lot of changes, not only at Capital, but also in education in general. She was able to share not only a historic perspective about what had gone on at Capital and in the world of education, but she was able to bring great insight and experience to the work she did here at Capital. She was well respected in the field of early childhood education. She was a very caring person. She really cared about her students, which was quite clear. Tobie’s impact on current practicing, teachers, and those that are still here will live on for a long, long time.”
Shirley Delucia, a retired professor, worked with and was a close friend of Sanders. “She was one of a kind,” said Delucia. “You can see that she was a very creative person. We did research together. We team-taught together, more than once. We traveled together. The Monday before her death, I went out to lunch with her. We laughed and had a great time, and I am forever grateful that time we had together.
Delucia’s voice was distraught and full of sadness when I spoke with her. It is clear Sanders is sorely missed by her friends. The amount of lives she changed is unprecedented.
“I was a student here a couple years ago,” said Michelle Thomas, adjunct professor, who is currently taking hold of Sanders’s classes. “I met Tobie though the children’s literature course. She really prompted me to delve into children’s literature. My first job I got when I graduated was teaching middle school. I ended up having students create picture books to demonstrate their understanding of what we were studying. I then selected a handful of those students and brought them to Tobie’s language art class to present…and it was powerful. In that, one of the students in particular, had a book…that wasn’t a stellar book…though it was a really good book. But he was a problem student. Inviting him to participate in that experience made the biggest change for the rest of the year for him.”
It is these types of stories that truly exhibit the type of affect Sanders had on others. It was her ability of making people feel special, welcomed, and loved that enabled her to turn the lives around of those in need.
“Tobie and I met for lunch about a month ago now, caught up, and she invited me to come and speak to her class this fall,” said Thomas. “And now I am here to work with her students.”
When she told me this, there was an intense pause, and Thomas’s eyes began to tear. “I have assured them that she is watching over us. And I can really feel that, as I have been preparing and working with the students this week. She is smiling, and watching over us.”
Thank you, Tobie, for everything. You are loved, and you will be deeply missed.
There will be a memorial service on Capital’s campus in the Kerns Religious Life Center for Tobie Sanders, and all will be invited. The university is still waiting to hear about the family’s availability before a date is set, so please look into the next edition of the Chimes for when it will be held.
