GROSSMONT COLLEGE — A calm essence surrounds the patiently waiting Dr. Juanita Browne as she sits in her motorized chair in front of the Music Department building 222, waiting for her class to begin. Dr. Browne is not there to teach the class. She’s there to be a student.
Ten years into Retirement following a 25-year career as a member of the Grossmont faculty, she says she is enjoying this role reversal. “The role that I ‘play’ is the role of the student (which I am) nothing else,” states Dr. Browne. “I am not active on Grossmont’s Campus. I find it challenging enough to be a student.”
She has taken a multitude of classes at Grossmont including Cross Cultural Studies with Dr. T. Ford and A. Danny Martinez; Spanish I to IV and CSpanish Conversation I and 2 with Paul Vincent and E. Talamantes; Sociology with Israel Cardona and numeorous history courses.
In the Music Department, Browne has studied with Dean Steve Baker, Derek Cannon, Paul Kurokawa, Kenneth Ard, M. Grinnell. M. Rodewald and Kenneth Anderson, She is now studying with Professors Cannon and Anderson.
“I believe education is extremely important and that one can always learn,” she stated.
Browne said her passion for teaching increased and further developed during the days that she home-schooled her eight children, who now all are adults and Grossmont College alumni.
A strong willed African-American woman, Browne took the education of her children into her own hands at a time when “education was equal among only a few.”
“Everyone and anyone can always learn daily, read, think for yourself and not just accept,” she said. “Challenge.”
Lifetime learning is one of her great passions. Can you guess her hobbies? “Reading, Reading, Reading!” she emphasized.
Browne joined the faculty at Grossmont College in 1975 teaching African-American studies, and has not looked back since. Today she is a part-time teacher in Oceanside, as well as president of the private Imani Kuumba College.
She said that Imani Kuumba College and Graduate School (IKC) was founded in response to the alarming disintegration of the urban communities in and around San Diego as well as in the rest of the nation.
IKC, a Christian institution that approaches life from a Biblical view, is committed to rebuilding and bringing life and hope to the decaying inner cities.
The college is a center of learning where students, faculty, administrators, and support staff are also engaged in the pursuit of God’s cause, God’s truth and their applications to life.
Imani Kuumba College is also an Afrocentric institution which recognizes the legitimacy and validity of Black or African interests, goals, objectives, values and culture, and utilizes a Black frame of reference.
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Ellis is a student in Media Comm 132.
