Meet History Professor Gretchen Bullock

I recently had the incredible chance to sit down with Professor Gretchen Bullock, a well-known figure in our history department. We discussed her background, her vision for the history department, and future collaborations for McMurry University. For those who don’t know about Professor Bullock, she has an extensive teaching background. From teaching in public high schools like Woodson Excellence and Abilene High to teaching on the Mercy Ships off the coast of Guinea and the Republic of Congo. Once you have the chance to meet her, you will understand how it would be an amazing opportunity to join her classes.

Let me tell you a bit about Professor Bullock. She’s super open about her journey, which is cool. She has traveled around the world such as Honduras, Indonesia, and Egypt. At first, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be a professor. She graduated from Adrian College in Michigan with a degree in Business Management and a minor in History. In her interview, she talked about how she switched her major while trying to figure things out. She mentioned, “I always wanted to have my own performing arts studio. So, when I first went to college, I started as a dance major but then realized I should pick up some business skills.”

After college, she moved back to Texas and opened a performing arts center in San Antonio, which she ran for four years. Once she closed that down, she took some time off while her husband was in the military, so they ended up moving around a bit—from Oklahoma to Italy. While living overseas and raising three boys, they returned to the States and got involved in mission work. That experience led her to teach on Mercy Ships, a hospital ship off the coast of West Africa. She took a part-time job at the Mercy Ships Academy, where she taught subjects like economics, comparative politics, and ancient civilizations for two years. That really sparked her interest in becoming a teacher, so she decided to enroll at McMurry University to get her teaching certificate and later earned her Master’s at Sam Houston State University. After all that, she spent two years teaching at Abilene High School, and her first year collided with the craziness of COVID-19.

Since she is now working at McMurry, she is getting her PhD at the University of North Texas (UNT), all she has left is to write her dissertation which is titled: “Beyond the Gridiron: Exploring the Artistic Roots and Enduring Influences of the HBCU Marching Aesthetic 1946-1974.” I hope it will be published, because the topic seems very interesting.

Professor Bullock envisions for the History Department to open the History Honors Society, it has not been up for a while. She wants to bring back things and add some new to the department. She wishes for history students to be able to focus on their career paths by having their work published and gaining more experience with different aspects of history. Some history students want to be more involved in events so she discussed the possibility of history students joining the Academic Symposium in the future, which is an event that faculty and students are advised to attend. The Symposium is on April 25 this year, so be sure to attend because it will be a fun experience. Another thing to mention is that she wants to build more community with the history and social studies (7-12 grade) education students.

She said, “I want to build more community with social studies education majors and history majors through Phi Alpha Beta. Also, I want to have speakers like outside historians discuss different topics. I think that would be really awesome.”

More local archive trips for history students to help build their skills are also in the future of the History Department. Speaking of the future, students may be able to go farther whether that be out of Abilene or out of state. All classes for history go in a four-year rotation so let’s discuss the classes she wants to teach. One of them is a world history course that focuses on women and she is excited about bringing a history course called: “Wives, Workers, and Witches in Pre-modern Europe” sometime in the future semesters. Some of the new courses, which I did not list, will focus on women’s views of the world, African American history, and Mexican American history. So, stay tuned history students!

Before this all over, I figured I should share a fun fact about Professor Bullock that not a lot of people may know is that she goes to ballet classes twice a week and she enjoys running marathons. Speaking of which she is going in May to Sedona, Arizona where she will run from there to Flagstaff, Arizona. That is 125 miles! Professor Bullock, I hope you have a great time.

To close up this article, I asked Professor Bullock what advice she would give to someone who wants to go into history. She replied: “If you’re wanting to get a history degree, you need to be cognizant of the fact that you would need to get into graduate school after undergraduate, either go with a Master’s or PhD in history or look at an archivist program, a librarian—there’s so many. History can also be used if they are going to law school or other careers. They can go into public history, such as being a teacher. Jobs are very competitive for professors. So, you really need to know where your interest lies and what you want to do with that history degree. Also, you are going to write a lot, it’s a lot of writing.”

This is great advice, so be sure you know what you want to do with your history degree or any degree you choose.

Stay safe fellow War Hawks!