Judith Scott, a retired Poplar Bluff educator who also served on many Missouri state boards, died Saturday at her Poplar Bluff home.
Scott, 81, suffered from multiple illnesses for more than 10 years.
She taught English, writing and other subjects to thousands of students over 45 years at Poplar Bluff Senior High School and Three Rivers Community College. She was at TRCC for 41 years, retiring in 2009.
Teaching writing was her great passion. She also headed the faculty council and twice chaired or co-chaired the institutional self-study for the North Central Association accrediting agency.
Students described Scott as a “one-of-a-kind” teacher whose acerbic wit and outspoken manner sometimes obscured her caring inner nature and passionate dedication to helping them. That “help” included advice on life’s dilemmas and actual financial assistance.
Scott and her husband sometimes invited financially struggling students to live free in a furnished apartment behind their home.
Dolores Shearon, a former student and later administrator with the University of Missouri-Columbia, remembers Scott as a “pillar of Three Rivers (College) and the community.
“What an accomplished lady and influential educator she was. Her teaching is what first interested me in journalism as a career. She helped me get a student job in sports information at Mizzou.”
“Mrs. Scott was someone special who made a difference in my life,” Shearon recalled.
Besides her abiding interest in the arts, Scott was an avid sports fan. She worked in the University of Missouri Athletic Department while her husband, Mizzou Tigers basketball star L. Joe Scott, completed law school.
Once branded by a colleague as “an elitist,” Judy Scott reveled in that description. She told friends she was “damned proud of that label.” Always focusing on excellence as her goal in anything she did, she saw mediocrity as a constant foe.
In addition to teaching, Scott chaired the TRCC Humanities and Performing Arts Division, was interim vice-president for academic affairs and served as vice-president for marketing and college advancement.
She founded the TRCC Patrons of the Arts Society, for which she raised tens of thousands of dollars from private donors and brought world-class entertainment to the Tinnin Fine Arts Center.
From 2003 until her death, Scott served as the executive director of the Three Rivers Community College Foundation. The foundation built the E.K. Porter Distance Learning Center on the TRCC campus with a $4 million donation from Kay Porter. The foundation also has provided many thousands of dollars in scholarships, including $15,000 this year alone.
Dr. Mary Phyfer-McClary, longtime TRCC vice-president, said: “Judy Scott was one of the smartest and most articulate women I’ve known. We were colleagues and friends for more than 30 years at Three Rivers.”
“I had the utmost respect for her judgment, leadership, sense of duty and kindness. She truly will be missed. Judy and I did not always agree, but when the chips were down, she was there for me. The world is a lesser place without her in it,” Phyfer-McClary concluded.
In 1994, Scott received the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in teaching. Five years later she became the first person chosen as the Educator of the Year in Higher Education by the Greater Poplar Bluff Area Chamber of Commerce.
In 2000, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Missouri-Columbia College of Arts and Science. In 2002, she earned the Faculty-Alumni Award from MU, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English in 1963. She also held an associate of arts in English from Stephens College and a master’s in English from Southeast Missouri State University.
While at TRCC, Scott was cited for educational excellence by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development in Austin, Texas.
Scott served as one of three people appointed by the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education to oversee implementation of a refined 42-hour general education transfer block of courses for community college students. That project involved resolution of transfer and articulation issues.
She was a presenter at many conferences on articulation and college writing. Those assignments took her to Snowmass, Colorado, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, Tennessee, Long Beach, California, and many other destinations.
She served on the executive board of the Missouri Colloquium on Writing Assessment, a nationally recognized group of writing faculty and assessors from two-and four-year college and universities in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois.
Appointed by Gov. “Kit” Bond to the Missouri Health and Educational Facilities Authority in 1984, she was still serving on that board at the time of her death. During her tenure, the authority has issued many billions of dollars in bonds to finance Missouri’s not-for-profit educational and health institutions.
Scott also was appointed in 1991 by Gov. John Ashcroft to the Missouri Lottery Commission, where she served for five years.
At the local level, Scott served for nine years on the Public Library Board of Trustees; more than 50 years as a member of P.E.O., the women’s philanthropic and educational organization; Doctors Regional Medical Center Community Advisory Board; Mules Sports Boosters Club Board and numerous other organizations. She also taught the Pastor’s Class for many years at the First Baptist Church and was an active member in later years at the First United Methodist Church.