Sue O’Donnell: The End of the Story Hasn’t Happened Yet
By: Megan Stewart
Every professor has had to adjust to the stressful and frenzied life of teaching. But not everyone has had to do so during the deadliest terror attack in U.S history: 9/11.
Dr. Sue O’Donnell, a professor of the George Fox University (GFU) Psychology Department, had only just received her doctorate when she applied to work at the college. Originally from Minnesota, she and her family moved to Newberg in 2001 after accepting the position to teach GFU’s developmental courses, with the potential to take on some open psychology classes, as well. She was one month into her new career when disaster struck, leaving her students, colleagues, and the rest of the country reeling from the impact.
Sue O’Donnell Photo courtesy: GFU
“It was trial by fire right off the bat,” O’Donnell said. Despite earning her degree in development, instead of psychology, many of her students turned to her for guidance.
“I was teaching a psychology class and everyone was like, ‘Help me!’” O’Donnell said, “and I was like, ‘I don’t know anything!’”
“Normal support I can do because I’m a human being, but they were looking for psychological stuff and I don’t have any background in it,” she said. “I had no preparation at all.”
However, almost twenty years later, O’Donnell has become one of the department’s go-to professors for students in times of crisis, be it personal strife or larger scale tragedy. Though she remains best known for her rigorous Child, Adolescent, and Adult Development courses, she has taken on several more psychology classes since then and, prior to the pandemic, hosted legendary social events for students at her house. Among these were Back to School parties, exam review sessions, and perhaps the most iconic of all: Survivor Nights, where students could mingle, eat snacks, and watch episodes of the reality TV show Survivor.
Manesha Ram, O’Donnell’s former student and a current first-year PsyD candidate at GFU, described the social events as a “refuge” for her, where she could spend time around “people who felt safe.”
“Pre-Covid, we would just sit around and talk about what was going on in our lives,” Ram said, adding that O’Donnell created a “low stakes” environment without “any expectations for how you were going to show up in that space.”
One of O’Donnell’s close friends, GFU Research and Instruction Librarian Andrea Abernathy, referred to the professor as a “good listener” with immense “compassion” for others.
“She won’t impose advice, she just listens,” said Abernathy. “She values where you are and who you are--a rare trait in a friend.”
Abernathy met O’Donnell when she moved to Newberg from Alabama in 2017, just three months after O’Donnell’s husband, Sam, passed away. Despite the fact that O’Donnell was still grieving, Abernathy said “she made space for me, my new life, and recognition for who I was a person.”
Whitney Mendenhall, another former student and first-year PsyD candidate at GFU, recalled a time when she was going through family troubles and O’Donnell stepped in to support her when none of her friends were in town.
“I knew I could reach out to her and she would be there,” Mendenhall said. “She cares how you’re doing personally; it’s not just about classes.”
O’Donnell’s former students also painted a picture of a challenging but ultimately fair professor.
“If you’re not meeting the mark, she’s going to tell you,” said Mendenhall, adding that “she doesn’t want to waste your time” but instead “wants you to be as correct as possible.”
Mendenhall said that while sometimes O’Donnell’s “directness scares people,” she appreciates that the professor doesn’t “sugarcoat” anything and you never have to worry that she’s “hyping up your ego”.
“[My students] are forever telling me that I’m intimidating,” O’Donnell said, but noted that she believes “most people come to realize that I have high standards because you’re capable of it.”
While she acknowledges that it is “possible to support somebody too much” and takes active precautions to make sure she doesn’t lower the bar, O’Donnell is always willing to help students meet her standards if they are struggling to do so. In her own words, she is a “marshmallow with high standards.”
“She’s intentional with courses,” said Abernathy, adding that “she structures classes to be equitable and tries to remove barriers students might have.”
Tyler Jackson, a recent psychology graduate and former Psychology Club president, expressed gratitude for O’Donnell’s “free day” policy and willingness to grant extensions in the case of emergencies, no questions asked or proof needed. Jackson described her as a “gracious professor” who she didn’t have to worry would “fail me or hate me if my life started to affect academics.”
Ryan Spengler, another one of O’Donnell’s students who is now in GFU’s PsyD program, said O’Donnell once spent hours combing through the study guide to one of her essay exams with him until he understood each concept.
“She’s one of those professors who sees that you need her help and will seek you out,” Spengler said. “She wants all her students to succeed. She will lend herself to any student who needs her.”
Even though she’s no longer his professor, Spengler said she continues to help him improve in his weak areas and bring the quality of his work up to the level of a doctorate student. He described her mindset as “If this is the direction you want to go, let’s get you there.”
“I had an upbringing that reminded me that not everyone gets unconditional love, and so that’s part of how I orient my life now, is everyone gets unconditional love,” O’Donnell said. “I may not be their actual parent, but everybody gets unconditional love, everybody gets another chance.”
“I listen to some of the stories of people and think, ‘I don’t know how you got here, but I’m not going to be the one to stand in your way or slap you down,” she said.
Despite her seemingly natural talent for teaching and working with students, O’Donnell’s path was not always so clear. After she graduated high school at 17, O’Donnell said she “started out like a lot of people” and jumped right into college, but eventually quit, due to being what she called “not academically-inclined”. She then moved to Seattle and tried out various office and retail jobs until she got married and had a child.
“Suddenly retail was a horrible fit because daycare was available 8-5 and I was working retail 10-8,” O’Donnell said. “And at the same time, I was getting older--I was early thirties--and it was a situation where I was like, ‘This is not good,’ and I was vaguely dissatisfied.”
O’Donnell decided to take action after she was passed over for a job promotion at a maternity shop where she worked as a store manager. The woman who got the district manager position did not display a high level of competency during training, and when O’Donnell reached out to her supervisors for an explanation as to their choice, they said the woman simply had a college degree.
Determined to earn a business degree and work her way up the corporate ladder, O’Donnell returned to college as a non-traditional student. Upon talking with her admissions counselor, however, O’Donnell discovered an interest in child development and, after taking several classes, became enamored with the subject. Originally her plan was to obtain her undergraduate degree and return to the workforce after a year and a half, but that soon morphed into six more years of school, after which she received her doctorate.
Through all these changes, from career trajectory to moving across the country, O’Donnell’s husband, Sam, remained endlessly supportive. When he passed away suddenly from a heart attack, O’Donnell said her “world cratered.”
“It was like a massive bomb went off. I didn’t even realize before he died how very, very much intertwined we were,” she said, adding that it felt as though half her soul had departed with him.
“And it’s never going to come back. He was my soulmate, and I don’t know if that means I’ll never find someone and never get married again, or whatever. I’m not even 60 yet. [I just know] the end of the story hasn’t happened yet,” O’Donnell said.
“I believe that the things we go through, God doesn’t necessarily prevent them but that he walks with us through them, and that he redeems the things that happen and turns them into what is needed for me to then speak into somebody else’s life,” she said. “Somebody spoke into mine and I will speak into somebody else’s.”
Since Sam’s death, O’Donnell has visited multiple countries, and continues to create connections with students and maintain connections with friends and family.
“The story continues. I’ve got amazing people and amazing things, even after it happened,” she said.
“We don’t have an end to our story until we die.”