Dr. Mary "Molly" Haas is exactly where she wants to be, doing exactly what she wants to do.

As an assistant professor at Franklin Pierce University, she teaches writing and the first-year seminar to entering freshmen. The courses are part of Franklin Pierce's nationally-recognized Individual and Community Integrated Curriculum, a sequence of classes with a common theme that students take throughout their undergraduate studies at the University.

Though Haas had been teaching college English for more than 30 years prior to coming to Franklin Pierce in 2003, this is her first full-time teaching position. She was one of the first two faculty hired full-time to teach college writing at the University. By all accounts, the fit is just right.

"Molly has a great passion for her students," says Dr. Michael Bell, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Franklin Pierce. "She is a genuine, sincere and honest person and lets those qualities shine through in her teaching. No matter what grade her students get, I believe they come away knowing they are valuable persons."

Dr. Zan Goncalves is the other full-time writing instructor who joined the faculty with Haas five years ago. They have become collaborators and friends, co-coordinating the writing curriculum and the 20-or-so part-time instructors who teach writing at the University.

"Molly is a fabulous colleague," Goncalves says. "She focuses on the positive and encourages people to bring their best selves to the fore. And she has a marvelous way of enjoying people's humanness. She sees people at the heart level. She sees their goodness and is hugely compassionate."

Haas describes herself as a "late bloomer." She earned her Ph.D. in English from Purdue University when she was in her 50s, after her children had all left home. Along the way, she worked in a variety of jobs – manager of human resources, director of development, training coordinator for a computer software company and more.

"Most of my jobs had a teaching component," she says, "and I was teaching part-time in the evenings. But I really wanted to teach full-time."

"one person doesn't have all the gifts…"

Haas wants her students to not only learn to be better writers, she says, but also "to form an idea of what an educated person is. I think that's part of a liberal arts education. My job, I think, is to strive to be an example of that. I try to be courteous and authentic. I bring in literary references that maybe only some get. And I usually take a class every semester so students can see me as a learner. When we're considered experts at something, we need to remember that that's a gift and one person doesn't have all the gifts. It keeps me honest."

"What I enjoyed about her (Haas') class assignments," says Tiffany Reeves, a Franklin Pierce sophomore majoring in psychology, "was the fact that they were all useful, not just a bunch of freshman busywork. She gave us freedom with subject matter that really made me enjoy what I was doing and feel proud of my accomplishments."

Celine Rainville, a junior majoring in anthropology and music, echoes Reeves' praise. "Freshman year was very hard for me and I struggled with the possibility of transferring. She (Haas) was very supportive of me. It was good to know there was a professor who really cared about the well-being of her students."

Grading treated as dialogue

Reeves also enjoyed the way Haas critiques and grades student papers. It is not the conventional method of taking papers home, writing comments on them and returning them to the students.

"I do all my grading in 15-minute conferences with my students," Haas says, "which means I meet at least five times a semester with each student. I used to take the papers home and write lots of comments on them. I know this works for many of my colleagues, but I found that many students would only look at the grades. There wasn't so much teaching going on as sorting."

Now, the students sit at the computer with Haas beside them as they work together on an electronic draft of the paper. She urges students to be actively involved in the process, writing the comments and eventually the grade on the paper themselves. "It's a dialogue rather than one-way," Haas says. "There's something very compelling about working in the presence of another human being."

"I found that I enjoyed going to the mandatory paper conferences," Reeves says. "Even if Professor Haas was telling me that, once again, I had failed to correct a comma splice, the one-on-one interaction was always a helpful experience."

"An earthquake in our lives"

Haas' path to Franklin Pierce and full-time teaching was neither straight nor easy. She describes herself as "fabulously lucky," but her life has been touched with tragedy.

She and her husband, Michael Haas, lived in Indiana for 20 years, where he was rector of an Episcopalian church. They had six children, two by birth and four by adoption.

When their first son, James, was two, they adopted Jane, the first of three children from Vietnam. Jane was followed by Ann and Roy, also from Vietnam, then Terrence by birth. "At one point, we had five children under seven," Haas says.

In 1984, the family was struck by tragedy when James, 11, was killed by a car as he crossed the highway, coming home from the swimming pool. "This was an earthquake in our lives," Haas says. "It destroyed the pleasant illusion that everything will be OK. I expected never to enjoy life again. But I knew I had to not be fearful for the other kids.

"Michael and I were very lucky," she adds, "that this brought us closer together. Divorce is very high in families who have lost children."

The second "earthquake" in the Haas' life came two years after they moved to New Hampshire when Molly was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had surgery and continues to take medication. Still, she considers herself lucky: "The cancer had not spread much and was very responsive to treatment," she says. "Recovery was much faster than I anticipated and I had a lot of support from my family and colleagues."

She also joined a "wonderful supportive sorority of breast cancer survivors," many at Franklin Pierce. In fact, the experience gave her an idea for a book, the book she wishes she had when she was diagnosed. "I want to write a first person account," she says, "that is as hopeful as the stories of the many women I know who are survivors."

The problem is finding time to write, she says. As with many professors, teaching is a full-time-plus job. But Haas isn't complaining. "I don't plan to retire from Franklin Pierce until somebody makes me," she says. "I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing."

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