Wade retires after 25 years of service

After working at Pratt Community College for 25 years, Gregg Wade is retiring at the end of the school year.
Wade came to PCC in August of 1987, after working at Liberty Middle School for 10 years where he taught Social Studies and coached football.  
 
He said he resigned at the school when he received a coaching job at Skyline High School but didn’t want to teach there so applied at PCC.
 
“The people I work with make this job worthwhile,” Wade said. “The people are the strength of PCC.”
 
Over the years, Wade has taught many classes at the college including: humanities, government, economics, history and multi-cultural classes.
 
“I enjoy teaching a variety of classes,” he said. “Humanities has always been my favorite because I can bring everything I have learned from all the courses together.”
 
Wade said economics was his toughest course to teach because he had only taken one course in it himself and had to teach himself it.
 
Wade, from Pratt originally, went to PCC for one year and then transferred to Kansas University, where he got a bachelors degree in education. After that he went on to Pittsburg State University where he received a masters in Political Science.
 
Since getting into teaching, Wade said many things have changed, one of the main ones being how classes are being presented.
 
“When I started the emphasis was on the classroom,” he said. “Now we focus less on the classroom and more on technology.”
 
Wade said to be a teacher, a person has to learn to go along with the fads that are popular at that time.
 
“Everything about school is just a fad. How you teach from one year to the next is always changing,” he said. “The biggest problem with education is people are always looking for a silver bullet and there isn’t one.”
 
One thing Wade said he really enjoys about teaching is that every semester you get to start with a clean slate. Even though he might have some of the same students, they are in different classes and he gets to start again with them.
 
When Wade moved back to Pratt a professor at Emporia State University told Wade “Some days teaching is the easiest job you can have and you feel like they are handing you a paycheck and other days they don’t pay you enough for that paycheck.” Wade said he has always agreed with this information.
 
Even though Wade is retiring, he is going to continue teaching some hours at the college for another year. He has given up his extra responsibilities, including being in charge of Academic Olympics and being a department head.
 
Wade said when he does retire, he plans on working on the farm. Wade is married to Martha, who teaches some at Pratt High School and has one son who will be a senior next fall at Fort Hay University.
 
There will be a retirement party for Wade on May 7 at 3 p.m. in the Faculty Emeritus Room in the Riney Student Conference Center.