"I was five in that one-room school.
The tiny teacher with a stick
Chased an 18-year-old boy
Around and around the room.
When I read aloud from 'Pinocchio'
They all stopped, astounded
To see what they'd thought were wooden words
Come alive and dance around."

Dr. Dorothy Moseley Sutton penned those words in a poem, "Rest of the Resume," which recalled her childhood in rural Christian County, Kentucky.

As an English professor at EKU, Sutton doesn't carry a stick, but she can still make "wooden words come alive and dance around."

Because of her uncanny ability to make centuries-old English literature and other subjects resonate even with "18-year-old boys" and students of all ages, backgrounds and gender, Sutton has been named an EKU Foundation Professor for 2002, the University's highest honor for teaching excellence.

Any student who was in Sutton's English literature class on Sept. 11, 2001 would second that accolade. "We were studying Keats," Sutton explained, "and he was saying that we mustn't retreat into the non-thinking world of the nightingale, tempting as it is. We must forge on through the dark times in our lives.

"I remember when Pearl Harbor got bombed, my mother put her arms around us kids and said, 'Don't worry, it's going to be all right.' So I put my arm around my students and told them that if anyone needs me, I'm a mother and a grandmother…We cried together. It was one of the best classes I ever had.

"Whatever a student needs, that's what I want to provide."

That might mean some fresh insight into a classic piece of literature. For students away from home, it has meant homemade bread and chili and a roaring blaze in the Suttons' fireplace.

"Former students always remember that," laughed Sutton, whose husband, Dr. William Sutton, has taught English at EKU for 35 years. "They say they can't believe that professors at a school this big would invite students to their house. I'm grateful for Bill's support, and for that of our daughters, Marybeth and Sandy."

The Sept. 11 experience illustrates how deftly Sutton relates age-old literature not only to contemporary events but to what today's college students need to succeed.

"What I try most to provide through my literature classes is a broad-based foundation for being able to think, to serve in any profession, to have a heightened awareness and understanding of themselves, others, and the natural world," said Sutton, who joined the EKU faculty in 1970.

"Literature is a record of what the wisest and most intelligent people have thought through the ages. I love to see students incorporate that wisdom, which will propel them toward rich, full lives. And so many become teachers, passing that wisdom on! A former student said to me just yesterday, 'I'm trying to be a good teacher just like you.' That's the best compliment a person could ever receive."

Reared on a farm, Sutton said she has a special affinity for students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds. "I don't mind sharing with them that I was lacking in a lot of ways, too, but you can make up for those deficiencies."

Sutton did overcome those deficiencies, going on to earn a bachelor's degree from Georgetown College, a master's degree from the University of Mississippi and a doctorate from the University of Kentucky.

In addition to receiving numerous other teaching awards, Sutton also is a celebrated poet. Her 1999 collection, "Startling Art: Darwin and Matisse," was nominated for a Pushcart Award, and more than 150 of her poems and short fiction have appeared in internationally prestigious magazines and anthologies here and abroad, including Poetry, where such poets as Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot got their start.

In 1995, she was the only U.S. writer chosen for the Guthrie Award, a poetry residency at Annamakerrig International Arts Centre in Ireland; in 1999, she received the Al Smith Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. For the past 10 years, she has served as co-director of the EKU Creative Writing Conference.

I'm surprised this poetry thing has gone as far as it has," she said. "The more I published, the more things opened up."

Generations after Sutton sat on her parents' laps for storybook time, and after she made wooden Pinocchio dance around that one-room school, it would be poetic justice if the students sitting in Sutton's classrooms today someday read their teacher's poems and stories to their own children.

"I make my students promise that they'll hold a child in their laps someday and read, so the little ones can begin experiencing that life-long love of learning that comes from good books."