Barbara Roquemore EddDr. Barbara Roquemore is an Associate Professor in the Department of Professional Learning and Innovation and Director of the Doctoral Program at Georgia College and State University. Before coming to GCSU 14 years ago, she completed a 34-year careerin K-12 education as a high school basketball coach, English teacher, principal, curriculum director, and an assistant school superintendent. A Tift College graduate, she got her M.Ed. at Georgia State University and her Ed.D. at the University of Georgia. In the author's words: If I had any doubt about my need for college, a summer working in a hot cotton mill settled it. When I wonder where I got the belief that I could be the first in my family to go to college, I remember my dad. He ran away from his orphanage with his younger brother during the Great Depression to join the circus where he became a trapeze artist. I paid my way through college keeping the books for the service station where I and other coeds, wearing bikinis, pumped gas for tourists going to Florida. After-hours and weekends, I ironed new shipments of clothing for a dress store, was a hand and foot model, and won a beauty contest for prize money to supplement a small academic scholarship. I tell my students, if a poor Appalachian girl with circus roots can complete college, anyone can. Read More Read Less