Zane Hodge, an English instructor at Mississippi Delta Community College’s Greenwood campus, has been named the 2012 MDCC Humanities Teacher of the Year.
The award, sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, allows the president of each college or university to select a faculty member for the recognition each year.
October is Arts and Humanities Month.
Each recipient receives an honorarium of $500 from the council.
Hodge, a native and resident of Greenwood, also has served as pastor at Moorhead Church of God for the past 21 years.
On Oct. 16, Hodge held a presentation at the college’s Fine Arts Building on its Moorhead campus titled “The Confluence of Avocation and Vocation,” which focused on his avocation of endurance athletics and his vocation as teacher.
He first related how he struggled with and came to terms with guilt over his athletic hobbies. He said the enjoyment of his pastimes led first to writing about his adventures and then to some of those writings making their way into his classroom.
During the presentation Hodge shared excerpts and photographs from several of his stories.
One story, titled “Catharsis,” deals with a two-day bike ride he made as he attempted to deal with grief after preaching at the funerals of two of his aunts.
Another, “Barney,” explains his fascination with tomcats and one cat in particular that he met on one of his long bike rides.
The connection between human and animal is also explored in “Up the Road,” a story of a man and a dog who become friends while running together. The tale is narrated the dog and is used in Hodge’s Composition II classes.
Hodge’s latest phase of athletic adventure is marathon swimming.
He swam 13.94 miles in Lake Chicot in June as a fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association. Some of his students tracked the swim via Facebook and made donations to the ADA.
He plans another long-distance swim in June with the hope of more student and colleague participation.
“Here in the Mississippi Delta, we are the diabetes capital of the world. But we can do something about that,” he said.
Hodge experienced a call to preach and go back to school in 1986. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in philosophy from Delta State University in 1991. Hodge received his Master of Divinity from Wesley Biblical Seminary in 1998.
He received his doctorate in Old Testament and Hebrew from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in 2004 and master’s degree in education from Delta State in 2009. He also did additional study at Wesley, Mid-America and Delta State.
Hodge joined the Mississippi Delta faculty in 2004. He now teaches English at MDCC’s Greenwood Center.
Hodge and his wife, Penny, have been married for more than 35 years.
