Dr. Dan Ferguson Named Professor Emeritus at AC
Amarillo College’s Dr. Dan Ferguson helped thousands of students write better with the creation of AC’s Writing Academic Success Center also known as the Writers' Corner.
Ferguson along with Dr. Frank Sobey created AC’s Writers' Corner to help students in Composition 1 and 2. Proof is in the scores that raised success rates by 20-30% in those first semesters.
“I wanted students to get all the help they needed,” Ferguson said. “And it (the Writers’ Corner) took off. Later I was part of the co-curriculum committee at the time, and I knew it would help students complete the courses on track as part of our course redesign. Writers’ Corner is also used successfully across the curriculum. It has proven successful time and again.”
This is just one of the impacts he made at AC. For this and other parts of his tireless work for students at AC, Faculty Senate will honor Ferguson as AC’s 2025 Professor Emeritus.
The come-go-event will be from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Friday, April 4 on the second floor of the College Union Building at the Washington Street Campus.
Ferguson who started teaching at AC in 2002 remembers being “a little nervous on that first day,” but recalls how much he enjoyed working with the students all his years at AC.
Frank Sobey, vice president of academic affairs, and Ferguson first met in 1998 at Texas Tech University where they were graduate students at Texas Tech. He said they enjoyed talking about the same authors, poets and literary works.
“In 2005, my family and I moved to Amarillo, and I was teaching as an adjunct and ran into Dan in his AC office grading papers” Sobey said. “I thought this might be the right place for me. It was.”
The two were office mates for a while and together they taught a course on the gun-slinging heroes of western literature. Then, in 2010 Ferguson was named department chair of English and Cultural Studies.
“I was delighted for him to serve as the chair of English,” Sobey said. “He is well respected and a staunch faculty advocate.”
Then, he was named the assistant dean of Arts and Sciences and then dean. Later he served as the department chair again and interim dean of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
In the English department, he continually worked to help students through his service on committees for 1301, 1302, technical writing, plagiarism, new faculty and others.
“The last bunch of students I had were in a co-requisite course and they worked so hard,” Ferguson said. “They were dedicated and took time to go to Writers' Corner and get all the help they could get, and they were successful.”
While teaching was always his first calling, he also wrote 7 publications and gave more than 21 different presentations at more than 20 conferences—all while serving on 10 various community committees and initiatives aimed at education and community outreach.