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Gipe maintained an interest in her alma mater,
particularly the literacy program. After her husband,
Dr. Charles Duffy, became assistant dean of the
Graduate Division at the University of California
at Davis, Gipe was drawn out of retirement and
back into the realm of literacy education and field
supervision for student teachers as a lecturer at
California State University at Sacramento, working
closely with elementary teachers and school leaders.
After five years, Gipe retired again, she said with
a laugh. “I still have a little hand in
literacy education,” she said. She works
with doctoral students enrolled at
Walden University, an online program.
She also tutors fifth- through seventhgraders in California.
of tuition, but it is also an honor in its own right,
“because of who and what it represents,” Patrick said.
Patrick and Gipe met for the first time during
Gipe’s visit to the college in the winter of 2016.
Patrick says she hopes to “pay it forward,” making a
difference for the better in the lives of people who
need to be empowered through literacy.
“Joan Gipe is such a phenomenal person and has
done amazing things in the world of education,”
Patrick said. “To be chosen for a scholarship that
Not long into her latest retirement,
Gipe began to think about her legacy
as an educator and decided to set
up a fellowship at the UK College of
Education.
That’s about the time that Patrick
had her “eye on the prize of becoming
a certified elementary teacher,” as she
put it.
In her undergraduate field
experiences, Patrick spent some time
with special education students as well
as regular elementary classes. “I often
saw students who were underpre pared
in reading and writing, and not getting
the support he or she needed in these
areas,” Patrick said. “I wanted to pursue
literacy in order to be that support
system for all students. I believe that,
no matter what the circumstance, all
students can be literate and can have
that foundational knowledge and power.”
Soon after graduation, she entered the Curriculum
and Instruction Department’s master’s degree in
literacy program and in 2015-16 received the Joan
Gipe Fellowship.
Patrick was ecstatic to be selected. “When I first
found out, I was so extremely excited that I could
barely function or speak for the first few minutes as I
absorbed the news,” Patrick said.
The scholarship not only helps offset the cost
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represents Joan and meets her criteria is such an
incredible honor, and I hope that I can follow in her
footsteps and make just an ounce of the difference
that she has made so far in her lifetime.” Patrick
hopes to get a Ph.D. and teach undergraduates while
continuing to work with elementary students, just as
Gipe has done.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be truly finished with
teaching,” Gipe said.
Through the legacy of her fellowship, that could
very well be true.