Roving the halls and greeting students, Dr. Jeff Walkington has already become a familiar sight around Uni High. "Doc Walk" took over as director in mid-July, replacing the now-retired Dr. Steve Epperson. Walkington has a Ph.D. in English and most recently served as vice president of academic affairs at the prestigious Latin School of Chicago. He has also worked as an administrator and teacher at the Webb School in Knoxville, Tenn., and the Cannon School in Concord, N.C. A native of central Illinois, Walkington earned his bachelor's degree in English and French at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., and his master's and doctorate in English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Gargoyle reporter Jenny Cooke recently interviewed Walkington via e-mail to get to know more about Uni's new director.

When you were growing up did you enjoy school?

I always loved school when I was little; I was lucky to go to some outstanding Illinois schools. I was one of those kids who would cry at the end of the school year. I adored my teachers. All this lasted until I was about early middle school when I started to act, as a lot of kids do, a little too big for my britches. Then I started liking most of my teachers, but not all of them, which was my loss.

What was your high school like?

I graduated from Normal Community High School in Normal, Ill., so it was very normal, but seriously, a very strong school. By the time I got into high school I still largely enjoyed school and like all my advanced classes, especially English, with the same small group of kids and some terrific teachers. I did a lot of speech and drama in high school, and that was a chance to be around kids who were really bright and pushing themselves.

How did you get into the educational field?

I pretty much always thought I’d be a teacher; probably from the first time we had reading in the first grade I had that inclination. I grew up in Springfield and went to two elementary schools named after poets, Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg, so poets were the big heroes — as they should be. We had a big Carl Sandburg Festival every year where the kids would recite and act out his poems and just party for poetry. So I think I always thought I’d do something with literature and learning.

In second grade I thought I’d be a baseball player (like Lou Brock of the Cardinals) and a lawyer in the off season (like Abraham Lincoln, except he didn’t play baseball), but that didn’t last too long. And I wanted to be a rock star all the way from the time the Partridge Family hit in third grade until now. I finally gave that up when I saw my son is really, really gifted in guitar, and I realized I’ll never be a 10th as good as he is at age 11. I would have really liked to be a rock star, or a country-rock star.

I didn’t get serious about making education happen for me as a career until I was out of college. I was in a very poor area of west Tennessee, doing social service work at a community center that helped severely disadvantaged people through medical clinics, day care, senior citizens activities and meals, etc. I went there to work with high school youth groups who came down to repair homes in the area, in a program kind of like Habitat for Humanity. I loved it and thought that if I were a high school teacher, I could work with young people, whom I liked so much, and keep up my academic interests, like English and French. So I went to graduate school, got my master’s in English and a teaching certificate, and taught in a large Tennessee public school for five years.

What are the differences so far between Uni and Latin School?

Well, the differences in Latin and Uni are several, but I like to concentrate on the similarities. First, Latin is right in the middle of a major city and has a very urban feel to it, but Uni has an unusual setting as well, right on the grounds of a major university. They’re similar in that they both have very open campuses; students have a lot of freedom at both places. And both schools value academics very highly while still allowing time for athletics and clubs. Uni has even higher test scores than Latin — it really does have one of the strongest student bodies in the country, I think.

What are your impressions of Uni now that you have been able to watch it operate? Were any of your first impressions of Uni changed when you have actually seen the school working?

I came here with great feelings about Uni as a top-notch school — extremely bright and talented students and faculty and a fun, intellectually stimulating atmosphere. My impressions later have been even more positive when I realized that students were more well rounded than I maybe thought at first, when I discovered that athletics and clubs were bigger here than I’d thought.

What was the craziest period of your life?

Probably the several years my wife and I lived way out in the country in Tennessee. At various times we had no phone or TV, heated with wood, and raised huge gardens and pigs, milk, goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and other critters.

What do you think are your most unique traits? What do you perceive as your greatest strength and weakness?

I think I have a good sense of what kids like and don’t like, what they perceive as genuine and phony, what they value. That’s hard to do when you’re 47, but I think I still try to remember what it was like to be a teenager. That trait might be my greatest strength as an administrator, along with my energy and desire to make very good situations, like our school, even better. My weakness might be impatience — sometimes I want change to happen too fast, but I’m a lot better with that problem now than I was 20 years ago.

How did you get your nickname?

I’m sure a student came up with “Doc Walk” shortly after I received my doctorate. I’m sure I encouraged it since they could have come up with something a lot worse!

What are your hobbies?

My hobbies are strange, but they almost all involve pop culture somehow. I like visiting famous hot dog stands and miniature golf courses and Mom and Pop restaurants and roadside attractions. I once made my family stay overnight in a motel in which each room was an individual concrete wigwam, as you see in the movie "Cars." I like to collect somewhat cheesy toys from my childhood, the “classic plastic” era.

But my interests now come from what my children are into, so I’ve seen a lot of dance with my daughter and done a lot of fishing and going to amusement parks with my son. I like baseball and hard-core, old country music and blues from the early 20th century and 1970s punk, like The Clash and a group called X, from my high school days. I like Bob Dylan a lot, The Rolling Stones, Cheap Trick, Public Enemy, and my favorite singer — Willie Nelson.

I was in the Willie Nelson fan club throughout high school, which was pretty weird then since he wasn’t quite as well known and certainly wasn’t that cool with 17-year-olds, and Willie and I kind of corresponded for a while. I sent him my high school graduation announcement, and he sent me a huge box of T-shirts, about five autographed songbooks and about five autographed records — all inscribed to me. It was great.

For more information about Uni's new director, see our previous articles here and here.