Dixie Sanger retiring from SECD after 41 years of service

26 Apr 2019     By Kelcey Buck

Dixie Sanger was just one course shy of her bachelor’s degree in business at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln when she took an elective class that would dramatically alter the trajectory of her career. The class was Intro to Speech and Language Disorders.

“I enjoyed the class so much that I thought, ‘This is the career for me,’” Sanger said. “So, I switched over from a business degree to a degree in speech-language pathology.”

That change in career pursuits set Sanger on a path that eventually led her back to Nebraska to pursue her doctorate full-time. She then transitioned into a full-time faculty position, and now, more than 40 years later is preparing to retire as a professor of speech-language pathology in the Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders.

“I think you should always pursue your scholarly goals, but you have to realize there may come a time when you’ll want to pursue additional studies or additional areas,” Sanger said. “It’s important to remain open and allow those opportunities to evolve.”

After completing her bachelor’s degree at Nebraska in 1967, Sanger began working as a speech-language pathologist at Tulare County Public Schools in California. She quickly realized there was more information she needed in order to be the best she could at her job. That led her to completing her master’s degree in speech pathology from California State University Long Beach.

Sanger’s late husband, Warren, was in the service in Korea at the time, which moved her from California to Virginia to Pennsylvania to Iowa. They returned to Nebraska in 1974, and she began working as an instructor in the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Monroe Meyer Institute. Once again, Sanger found herself wanting to gain more knowledge. 

“I realized from the different children and adolescents we were serving that there were so many complex issues, and I felt the need to gain more knowledge to serve their needs, particularly in the area of language and literacy,” Sanger said. “A colleague and I took a class from one of the professors at Nebraska in special education, and we enjoyed it so much that I went on to take another class and then another and another. Then I decided I was going to apply to be a full-time student, which I did.”

While pursuing her doctorate full-time, Sanger had the opportunity to teach a few classes and supervise student-teachers. She was then hired as an assistant professor in speech-language pathology, and has remained at Nebraska ever since.

Early in her career at Nebraska, Sanger’s research focused on addressing language and literacy issues of children who were struggling to learn. After several years in that area, Sanger began working with a master’s student on a thesis that focused on addressing the needs of male delinquents with communication disorders. As they discussed those issues, they discovered that the same information regarding females was nowhere to be found.

“As we examined the literature, we realized there were few, if any, studies addressing the communication skills of female delinquents,” Sanger said. “Yet female offenders existed. So, that started about a 16-year period where I focused more on the adolescent females.”

Over the course of that research, Sanger, her colleagues and students from Nebraska traveled to the Geneva Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center in Geneva, Nebraska, to perform a number of qualitative and mixed design studies with the females at the facility.

They began by focusing on pragmatic communication skills of the juvenile offenders. As they worked with them in small groups, Sanger and the Husker students found that the female delinquents understood what was expected of them in terms of society’s standards for properly engaging in conversation. 

“They were quite aware of what society dictates, what society feels they need to do to be a good conversationalist,” Sanger said. “As we worked with them over time, however, we realized that was not what we were seeing in the halls or hearing as we watched them. It was just the opposite.” 

That led to a second study aiming to understand the behaviors of female delinquents. For that study – A Cultural Analysis of Communication Behaviors Among Juveniles in a Correctional Facility – Sanger and the Husker students spent 51 days in Geneva immersed in activities with the female offenders. 

“I found that research to be very rewarding,” Sanger said. “Over the years, we changed more from understanding their behaviors to providing ideas about what to do. In one of our last studies, we came up with what we felt, based on empirical research, were some of the most important things that correctional educators could do for these young women. Working with them was definitely one of my most positive experiences that I encountered in life and in research. It was just so motivating and reinforcing.” 

Sanger and her colleagues were recognized with the 2012 Editors’ Award for Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) for the article, “Oral language competence, young speakers, and the law.” It remains one of her proudest achievements in a career full of gratifying experiences. 

As Sanger reflects on her career, she acknowledges that it has taken turns she didn’t anticipate, but she is grateful for the journey that has brought her to this point. When her husband passed away unexpectedly in 2015, Sanger returned to work and was amazed by the support she received from colleagues and students alike.

“You don’t know how life is going to present itself or how life is going to turn out, and when something unexpected happens you have to develop ways to cope with the situation,” Sanger said. “I found that this environment was very accepting and very positive, and that’s one of the reasons I stayed so long.”

As for retirement plans, Sanger doesn’t have any. She will continue as an adjunct professor next year, and beyond that she plans to see where life takes her, much as she has done the past five decades.

“I’ve not really come up with any ideas of what I’m going to do, but I think those things will evolve,” Sanger said. “I pretty much approach life that way. A lot of times I don’t make dramatic moves or change dramatically, but rather I just kind of let life emerge, and it’s been very positive for me.”