Lawless Announces Retirement

Norma Lawless, professor in the Business and Computer Science Division, will retire this month after 36 years of service to Panola College.

Lawless association with Panola College began as a student here in the fall of 1966. “For me at that point, Panola College was a big step from Elysian Fields High School. My parents had full expectations for advanced education, and I, both my sisters, and a niece and nephew attended Panola College. I even instructed my sister and my nephew. The truth is, though, that my first student was my year-and-a-half younger sister, who received instruction in our ‘play classroom’ to teach her what I had learned in my first year of school! I guess I was born a teacher,” she said.

Work and school have always gone hand in hand for Lawless. While attending Panola College as a student, she was also working as a work-study secretary in the county and district attorney’s office at the Panola County Courthouse for District Attorney K. Baker. There, she says, “I was further educated by the knowledge and antics of Mr. Baker and County Attorney Crawford Parker.”

After moving on to Stephen F. Austin State University, she worked part time in the financial aid department and then the business education department as a graduate assistant and one summer as a purchasing agent assistant at ALCOA. She also spent a short time in corporate life working for Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation in Shreveport before deciding to work on her master’s degree. While in graduate school, she taught business education at CHS. There, she mentored a student teacher and sponsored UIL shorthand during her first year of teaching, with one student advancing to state level.

“I taught one year at Carthage High School before joining Panola College during the second year of operation of the college’s technology division. I’ve been here ever since,” she said with a laugh.

Lawless holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Education degrees from SFA, and has done post-graduate work at SFA, Texas Women’s University, East Texas State University (now Texas A&M at Commerce), and the University of North Texas. She also received Distance Learning certification here at Panola College.

“When I first started teaching, we had a lab full of typewriters and a console with tapes for practice dictation in teaching shorthand,” she recalls. “Technology changed all that, and continues to change the process and practices in technology education.”

“We don’t even teach shorthand anymore. Back then, there were no computers in this building for instruction in the office technology area. The Computer Science Department had the big mainframes with keypunch cards,” she says.  

“The first big improvements from typewriters were the word processors and memory typewriters. Of course now we think of those things as dinosaurs! Learning is a never-ending process,” she adds. “There was no such term as ‘software’ in my vocabulary when I started teaching.”

Lawless was recognized last year with a National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development award for excellence in teaching. She treasures this award because it represented a nod from her peers, which holds special meaning.

“I’m proud of the NISOD Award, but my greatest accomplishments are my students,” she says. “As any teacher will tell you, I’m sure, seeing students achieve success and having students express appreciation are the greatest rewards. Many students have rewarded me—oftentimes after they left Panola College and joined the workforce—by acknowledging that standards I required in the classroom provided what they needed, even though they might have resisted it at the time. One of my students came back to see me after more than 25 years to tell me how much she appreciated what she had learned and how it had helped her in her career. No recognition can be better!”

Lawless plans to enjoy spending time with her family and friends during her retirement. Her immediate plans include a cruise that includes stops in Alaska and Canada.

“I’m looking forward to the trip, but the big task when I return is organizing my own life and home – all those things that we just don’t have time to do when we’re teaching,” she says. She added that she will definitely feel a giant void in her life from the loss of daily contact with her students and all her special co-workers.