"Snow bunny" sculptor and Fulbright Scholar
He’s a snow sculptor, Fulbright Scholar and collaborator of MC’s most notorious homecoming queen nominee. Dr. Stan Jacobs, MC Associate Vice President of Instruction for academic/transfer courses, has pretty much seen it all. This past May, in honor of his 40 years of service to the college, a mesquite tree was planted just west of the Dollye Neal Chapel on the MC campus. The mesquite tree is held in low regard by many West Texans, but Jacobs, a Kansas native, says that he likes the mesquite: “It represents West Texas—deep roots and resilient.” Jacobs is the longest-serving employee at MC; in the past 40 years, he has seen the college enrollment grow from 700 students in 1971 to currently over 6,000 students.
Jacobs grew up in Topeka, Kansas, and served four years in the U. S. Navy during the Vietnam War as an officer on an aircraft carrier. When he was 27 years old, he answered a job listing for the Permian Junior College District, Midland Campus. Jacobs recalls, “At that time [1971], MC was a night operation, with classes being held at both local high schools. I interviewed for the job of art instructor with Dr. Al Langford at the old Scharbauer Hotel.”
A few days after returning home to Topeka, Jacobs got a call offering him the job. So, he loaded his belongings in a U-Haul trailer and came to West Texas. He taught art classes in the stables at Museum of the Southwest at an annual starting salary of $8,500! The attendance lists of Jacobs’ first classes reads like a “Who’s Who” of strong women who helped shape modern-day Midland—Keleen Beal, Dorothy Aaron, Norma Webb, Vangie Lindsey, LaVoe Peeler, Celeste Fasken and Prudie Leibrock, just to name a few.
“When I was hired, Dr. Langford told me that one day, the college would have a fine arts building and 3,000 to 4,000 students,” says Jacobs. “I remember thinking that these guys from Texas sure do talk big. To me, it seemed impossible, but 20 years later, I had an office in the Allison Fine Arts Building, and MC enrollment was over 3,000 students. I decided there was a reason Texans talk big—their predictions usually come true!”
Dr. Jacobs states that when he was promoted from art instructor to division chair in 1986 and then to his current position as Associate Vice President in 1992, he felt it was time to become a little more “dignified.” However, prior to his becoming a respected MC administrator, he was known for “pulling a few pranks” around the campus.
He recalls with a laugh the art department’s nominee for homecoming queen one year. “Mary ‘Kitty’ Harmon showed up at the Allison Fine Arts Building one day, and she was an ugly cat,” explains Jacobs. “No one wanted to take her home, but everyone felt sorry for her. We would take turns feeding her, and she kept hanging around the building. So when it was time to nominate a homecoming queen, the art department nominated Mary. In her bio, we said she had large green eyes, a mysterious aura and an interest in outdoor sports. Her favorite activity was listed as spending her leisure time previewing student art projects. The voting was done by ballot, and when votes were counted, it was announced that Mary was runner-up. We then had to reveal that Mary was a cat, and some of the college officials were pretty angry. The girls who had fewer votes than Mary were also upset. After that, the college started requiring pictures of all the homecoming nominees!”
Jacobs also recalls the famous “snow bunny” sculpture that he designed in the early 1980s: “It was an unusually snowy day in November, about a week before Thanksgiving. The entire city was pretty much shut down. There was no school, and the college was closed. The boys in the church youth group that I sponsored at the time decided to get together to just hang out. I told them that I’d meet them at the campus. Eight inches of snow had accumulated, and we decided to build a snowman. Being teenage boys, however, the guys wanted to build a snow “woman” patterned after a Playboy Bunny. It took us about three hours, and there was no mistaking that it was a woman. There was a picture of our snow sculpture in the Midland Reporter-Telegram the next morning, but the picture was taken from the back. I suspect that the paper editor decided that the front would have made it PG13!”
In more recent times, Jacobs has won the college’s United Way tricycle race two years in a row and was a team member of the MC team for the Need to Read Spelling Bee. The MC team won in 1990, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2000. Other team members included Dr. Eileen Piwetz, Dr. Nancy Hart and Dr. Celia Harris. If Need to Read still held the annual fundraiser there is no doubt that Jacobs would be forming another MC championship team! In 2009, Jacobs decided to start playing the piano and enrolled in piano classes with MC Assistant Professor of Music Dr. Nicholas Elderkin. Jacobs jokes, “I’m taking the scenic route to becoming a piano virtuoso, but I’m definitely enjoying it.”
Jacobs has also taken scuba diving and airplane flying lessons—there’s not much that slows him down. In fall of 2010, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and on March 31, 2011, he underwent laparoscopic robotic surgery at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. He says, “The surgery was a success, and the doctor said he’d see me in a year for a checkup.” So, Dr. Stan Jacobs continues enjoying life.
This past summer, he and his wife Carole visited China and Bangkok, two countries which he has visited on previous occasions. In 2003 Jacobs spent six weeks in Bangkok participating in a Fulbright Scholar exchange program. He has traveled to a total of 40 countries, and his goal is to visit 50 countries before he “hangs it up.” “I would like to visit Australia, New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries,” says Jacobs. A lot of his travels have been church-sponsored mission trips, in which Jacobs enjoys teaching English to teenagers. His MC office is filled with mementos of those trips, many of which are drawings and other art objects made by the young people he has encountered.
In Midland, Jacobs is a “reading buddy” at Pease Elementary School. Jacobs started the program in 2001, when a friend who teaches at Pease asked him to speak to her first-grade class about the cave paintings in France. Jacobs said he would, and suggested that the students actually pretend like they were cave dwellers and paint some drawings themselves. So, crumpled paper bags that resembled the texture of cave walls were spread on the floor of the classroom, and the children drew on the bags. Jacobs and the class immediately formed a kinship. Two boys in the class were having difficulty reading, and Jacobs began meeting with them to work on their reading skills. Now every year, Jacobs has “reading buddies.” In fact, he has recruited other MC employees to serve as Pease Elementary reading buddies, and the time spent is rewarding for both the children and the MC staff.
Jacobs still mentors one of his first reading buddies, Isaiah Hudson, who is now a sophomore in high school. Jacobs says, “I asked Isaiah one day what he wanted to be when he grew up. He told me that he wanted to be just like me. I said, ‘you mean an artist or a teacher?’ He said, ‘no—a mentor.’ That really touched me. It’s good to know that the positive influences I am able to bring to his life may one day be forwarded to another young person.”
But it isn’t just young people who have felt the influence of Dr. Stan Jacobs. It is impossible to speak of MC’s art department without mentioning Jacobs’ name. Today, the college has four full-time art professors and state-of-the-art printmaking, ceramics and digital photography equipment. Twice a year, McCormick Gallery, located in the Allison Fine Arts Building on the MC campus, hosts exhibits of work by current and former MC art students—many of whom were taught by Jacobs. From the cat that almost became homecoming queen to MC’s renowned fine arts programs, Dr. Stan Jacobs has had an integral part in the history and success of Midland College.
