Jerry T. Smartt

is honored with a Brick from Daniel K. Smartt.

Jerry Traughber was born in Tyler, Texas. She grew up in Corpus Christi and attended W.B. Ray High School. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and English at the University of Texas in Austin in 1965. She also studied at the Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores in Monterrey, Mexico and at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

On June 18, 1966, she married Dan Smartt of Beaumont, TX. Soon after, he began Officers Training School for the Air Force and they moved to Wichita where Dan was a missile site commander at McConnell Air Force Base. In 1969, Jerry earned a Master's in Spanish Education at Wichita State University. Subsequently, she taught at Kapaun High School and Kapaun-Mt Carmel High School. In 1972, she started the Spanish program at St. Thomas Aquinas School. Since 1975, she has been a professor of Spanish at Friends University.

She has been blessed with three sons: Jason, Ryan, and Jeremy. For 20 years, attention to family dominated her life as she participated in the many activities of these three sons.

In 1988, she completed a Master of Arts in Spanish at WSU. She became certified to teach Spanish at the elementary school level at Kansas State University in 1989 and received ESL/bilingual certification through WSU in 1996. During the spring of 1994, Jerry began work on her doctorate at WSU in the area of Cross Language Communication. Her doctoral studies have focused on linguistics, native and second languages, methods of teaching a second language, and linguistic self repair behaviors. Her dissertation was entitled "Self Repair in the Evolving Oral Language of Adult Second Language Learners." The purpose of the study was to see if students who studied abroad used different linguistic repair behaviors than those who did not.

In 1993, Jerry oversaw the establishment of a sister university relationship between Friends University and La Salle University in Cancun, Mexico. Wichitans from various universities who studied at La Salle University during the summers of 1994-97 served as the experimental group. The control group consisted of Friends University students. The arrangement between the two universities was based on the long-time sister city relationship between Wichita and Cancun.

Through her volunteer work with the local Sister Cities Program, Jerry has served as translator for various mayors both in Wichita and in Mexico. She has coordinated individual exchanges and internships for students pursuing degrees in education, international business, medicine, and law. She has implemented international exchanges for professionals in the field of drug education as well as official exchanges for local City Council members.

Jerry has worked in a variety of educational settings. She has taught in private and public elementary, middle, and high schools. She has taught study/travel courses to Costa Rica, Venezuela, Spain, and Mexico. She received the W.A. Young Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1991. During the centennial year at Friends University (1998-99), she will serve as President of the Faculty.

September 16, 1998