Jodi Long ’93 has found that ‘Life happens in plan B’

“I was meant to be an educator all along,” says Dr. Jodi Dixon Long ’93, who was recently appointed Vice President for Academic Affairs at Daytona State College in Florida. Though her career path has been less than straightforward, many of Jodi’s experiences, including those at Erskine, served as signposts on the path to her calling.

As an Erskine College student, Jodi was a cheerleader for basketball, participated in the Philomelean Literary Society, benefited from the influence of faculty and staff members, and made some lasting friendships. She values her campus experience and says of her Erskine friends, “It is incredible to me that we could all come from different backgrounds and walk different lives as adults and yet remain connected.” Here, Jodi talks about her time as an Erskine student and traces some of her endeavors since graduation.

The benevolent Bowes

Jodi cherishes “many memories of friends, activities, classes, professors, and staff who informed my Erskine experience.” As a math major, she remembers especially well Professor Emerita of Mathematics Dr. Ann F. Bowe and her husband, Young Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Dr. James J. “Mike” Bowe. The Bowes still live in Due West.

“They were always gracious with their time whenever I needed help with the topics we were covering,” she says. “I think they scratched their heads most days wondering why I selected math as my major.”

Always an early riser but afflicted with a serious slump each afternoon, Jodi had trouble staying awake in Dr. Mike Bowe’s class. Realizing her difficulty, the professor placed a lectern at the back of the classroom so that she could stand and, it was hoped, stay awake. Some days, she admits, she still fell asleep “for a few moments, leaning against the wall.” Years later, she arranges her schedule around her afternoon slump as much as she can.

When Jodi took the final exam in Abstract Algebra, the last class in her major and one in which she had worked “with more fervor than in any other class that term,” Dr. Ann Bowe allowed her the time she needed to complete the test. Jodi recalls “sitting in the room crying, writing a very apologetic note,” sure that her exam performance would be deemed unsatisfactory.

Commencement was a few days away. As the distraught senior contemplated what she might do if she had to repeat a class that was only offered every two years, Bowe returned to the classroom and said, “You’re still here? I should have brought you dinner!”

Jodi does not remember what happened after that, “except I started crying even harder and blubbered some apology and handed in my paper.” To this day, she says, “I am not sure how I earned a passing grade.”

Step forward, then pivot

After Erskine, Jodi went on to teach in junior and senior high school. “I always enjoyed math and spread that enthusiasm to students during the [early] years of my professional career as an educator,” she says. “Math is as instrumental in fostering critical thinking and reasoning as the other liberal arts disciplines.”

Despite her love of mathematics, after “three years and two different schools,” the young teacher “was fairly certain I did not want to be in education.”

Since she had been leading group fitness classes as a hobby for several years, Jodi thought she might like to be a corporate wellness coordinator.

“Leading others to healthier lives—socially, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically—was something I identified with, and so I wanted a way to do it full time,” she says. She enrolled in graduate school to obtain a master’s degree in kinesiology. That decision “was what set the trajectory for the rest of my career,” she says. But there were a few more turns to negotiate.

“After 18 months in grad school, where suddenly I was a ‘great’ student of the science of the human body and physical performance, and a year working as a corporate wellness coordinator,” Jodi recalls, “I was miserable.”

She returned to teaching, becoming a physical education instructor at a local community college. At the prompting of one of her professors, “they figured out my degree was really in physiology and gave me a shot teaching anatomy and physiology,” she recalls. “That sealed my fate in higher education. I had finally found where I belonged.”

Commitments

After a few years of teaching in the University of Georgia system with her master’s degree, Jodi began looking at exercise physiology schools, planning to get a Ph.D. so that she would be eligible for a tenure-track position.

Meanwhile, she and her husband George W. “Trey” Long III ’91, a CPA, had welcomed their first child, and their second one was on the way. Jodi narrowed her search to two Ph.D. programs, one at the University of Florida and the other at San Diego State University. “San Diego seemed like a world away to Trey’s family,” she explains, noting that Trey is from South Carolina. So the family moved to Gainesville, Florida in 2002.

Jodi enjoyed teaching anatomy and physiology as an adjunct during her Ph.D. studies. She kept up with a few other roles as well. “Yes, you can be a grad student, a wife, a mom to toddlers, teach anatomy and physiology, and lead 11 group exercise classes a week if you really want to!” she says, adding jokingly, “Yes, I might be a tad ‘off.’”

During her Ph.D. studies, her focus was to “do what it took to get the degree and land the dream faculty position,” which she envisioned as a tenure-track position at a university.  “What I didn’t realize was that the dream position would be teaching pre-health students at a community college,” she says.

When Jodi was offered a full-time appointment at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, a two-year school in an area of Florida which had become “more like home each year,” she took it, and the family stayed put.

Speaking about the success she enjoyed at Santa Fe, she recalls with good-natured humor her selection as chair for the school’s Sciences for Health Programs in 2010. “When my department chair was nearing retirement, I feel like the other full-time tenured faculty took a big step back, leaving it to appear that I had stepped forward.”

Accepting leadership of the Sciences for Health Programs took Jodi around another career corner. “I had an amazing time as chair, helping other faculty grow into quality educators, influencing far more students—and ultimately our community—than would have been possible had I remained in the classroom.”

Fully intending to return to teaching after her three years as chair, Jodi found that her provost “had different ideas.” She was offered a position as interim associate vice president in 2013. To her surprise, she enjoyed her new work.

“I could not believe I had found something that I liked as much as teaching anatomy and physiology,” she says. “Being an administrator has stretched me and taught me much about myself and human behavior.”

Living out a mission

Thinking about the road she took to her current position at Daytona State College, Jodi says that when she was working on her master’s degree in kinesiology, she “could not have anticipated” that she would ever return to education.

“Similarly, while working on my Ph.D., I was focused on landing a tenure-track faculty position at a university,” she says, but she soon found fulfillment in a different educational setting.

“The community college mission aligns with who I am personally,” she says. “Leading others to discover and realize their potential is not what I thought I would do with my Ph.D. However, I firmly believe this is what was ultimately intended as I navigated my own higher education journey and the early years of my career.”

Jodi is “mission driven,” she says, and her mission is “to positively impact people’s lives socially, emotionally, mentally, cognitively, spiritually, and physically.”

As she lives out her mission, Jodi has often reflected on a conversation at Erskine with her friend Ann Woodson Prime ’91 which affected her “more profoundly than I understood in the moment.” She says she has shared that conversation with many people over the years.

“I was standing in Ann Woodson’s room in Bonner, back when it was a women’s dorm,” Jodi remembers, “and Ann said, as I lamented some change happening that I didn’t like, ‘Jodi, different isn’t bad. Different is just different.’”

Her friend’s statement “became a consistent gentle reminder each time life took a turn I wasn’t expecting or felt ill-prepared for.” This Erskine memory has helped Jodi “find the good in all things and support students who find themselves at an academic, career, or life crossroads.”

Thankful and amazed

From math teacher, graduate student, and fitness coordinator to college professor and now administrator, Jodi Long has steered through many changes herself, and she is quick to express gratitude for her husband. They have been married for more than 30 years.

“My husband Trey has been willing to move numerous times to support my educational goals and career. Without that support, I would have faced challenges to achieving any goal under consideration,” she says.

While Jodi’s career experience has entailed many opportunities for growth, she believes her children might not have realized how stimulating and challenging her path has been. “The timing of some of my decisions was based on the ages of our children and stages of our family and careers,” she explains.

“I feel that because the kids were so young when I was working on my Ph.D. and in my early days at Santa Fe College, they simply saw my work as this thing I did like many other moms,” she says. “In fact, my daughter had to interview me a few years ago as part of an assignment and seemed genuinely surprised at my responses—musing that I had perhaps had a somewhat boring track, given that I had been at one place for so long.”

Jodi had told Trey when they moved to Gainesville that “this was the last time I would ask him to move for me,” and she kept her word. Years later, though, after they had brought up their children, “a door opened that was unanticipated”—this time for Trey. He was recruited for a position in Orlando, Florida.

“When I reached out to colleagues across the state to let them know we would be relocating, many came back with information and links to currently or soon-to-be-posted positions,” Jodi recalls. She was amazed that a position she was considering was open, well out of the usual academic cycle. “Imagine my delight and surprise at the opportunity to join the wonderful team of faculty and staff at Daytona State College.”

Based on her own career trajectory, Jodi believes “Life happens in plan B” and advises everyone to “be open to plan B.” Many of today’s undergraduates might benefit from her perspective.

“The journey might not look like you expected,” she says, “but you’ll look back on little choices—and sometimes big life changes—and realize they all led to where you are today.”