Dual roles
Elaine Cloer is skillful manager, nurturing teacher
Before joining the Furman staff, Elaine Cloer had two different jobs — a secretary and schoolteacher. Her unique package of experience and skills proved the perfect fit for her job as administrative assistant in the Office of Academic Assistance.
As an office manager, she is unfazed by the flurry of activity, constant scheduling and telephone jockeying inherent in the department. But when a beleaguered — and often intellectually defeated — student comes calling, Cloer drops her phone, turns away from her computer and transforms into a supportive, nurturing teacher.
With a friendly smile, she offers comfort and encouragement before scheduling tutoring and counseling sessions for students who are often bewildered by the pace and demands of academic life at Furman. Cloer, the 2004 recipient of the Chiles-Harrill Award, has mastered the dual roles during her 28 years at Furman. She manages with the efficiency of a quartermaster while providing the comfort of a knowing mother.
Says one parent of a student touched by Cloer: “She has extended herself in a sensitive, caring, reassuring way to our student as well as our family. For our son, she has understood and responded to the stresses students face and helped to ease his path while bolstering his self-confidence to manage college life. For parents, she has been a responsive and genuinely caring resource in those times we needed to reach out to Furman.”
For Cloer, a native of Long Island, an unlikely turn of events led her to Furman and her home in rural Pickens County. In the early 1960s she was working as a secretary in a New York office. Her younger sister, Cindy, a high school senior, had just been accepted to attend Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Ky., near the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Cloer's parents were unsettled about sending their youngest daughter alone to a college so far away. With the help of their prodding — and her own desire to study education — Elaine decided to accompany her sister and also enrolled at Cumberland as a rising junior.
During registration she met Tom Cloer, a confident, friendly, “handsome young man” from Stinking Creek, Tenn. The Baptist, backwoods mountain boy with a country twang and the soft-spoken, refined New York Catholic girl soon became a couple.
“My parents were really concerned when they found out that I was dating a boy in Kentucky,” laughs Elaine, whose maiden name is Kowalski. “But I took Tom home for Christmas and he quickly won over my parents and all my relatives, as well, with his good manners and charm.”
The couple married in 1965, graduated two years later and moved to Pickens County (where Tom's parents had moved) to begin their careers as teachers. They landed their first jobs at Holly Springs Elementary School, where they taught in adjoining classrooms.
Elaine continued to work as a teacher while Tom earned master's and Ph.D. degrees from Clemson and the University of South Carolina. Tom came to Furman in 1974 as an education professor and director of the Office of Academic Assistance (then Office of Special Services).
As Tom's administrative duties grew, Elaine began helping her husband with typing and other office tasks during off hours. By 1976, she was working at Furman part time in a position that was converted to a full-time post two years later.
With Tom teaching day, evening and summer classes, meeting with advisees, conducting research, attending conferences and talking with students and parents, and Elaine running the office and coordinating the campus and community tutoring programs, the Cloers have led busy work lives. And although they work in the same office, Elaine says they have little time for idle chat during the day.
“We're really busy during the week,” she says. “I'm really glad I had the opportunity to work at Furman with Tom. Had I not, we would have rarely seen each other.”
“Team Cloer” will be retiring next month, but they're going out with a bang. While Tom has received numerous accolades, including the university's meritorious teaching and advising awards, Elaine was “surprised” when her moment in the sun came during Founders Week Convocation April 21, where the Chiles-Harrill winner was announced.
“When my name was called my heart raced and my legs trembled. As I stood up, they felt like rubber,” she says. As she walked down the center aisle, she was surprised when someone called to her and she turned to see her son, Tom III. With him were her daughter, Shana Newton; her mother, Veronica Kowalski; and her mother-in-law, Grace Cloer. Many other friends were in attendance as well.
“That really made it special,” says Cloer. “Awards are most meaningful when you can share them with the people closest to you.”
Inside Furman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
