A Montclair State Legacy of French

Everyone has a favorite teacher in high school – a teacher who sparks an interest in a subject, inspires a student to reach for a goal or simply makes a class fun. For four Montclair State alumni, that teacher was a fellow Red Hawk, Dorothy Rudeen Paul ’83, who taught – and continues to teach – French at Manchester Township High School in Manchester Township, N.J.

Not only was Paul a favorite teacher, but she inspired some of her French students to enroll at her alma mater. Montclair State’s Director of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Indiveri-Gant ’07, 12 MA and Jaclyn Hoesch Smith ’06 are two of those former students of Paul’s who followed her lead and enrolled at Montclair State.

“We both decided to come to Montclair State and be French majors in large part due to the fact that Dorothy Paul, simply known as ‘Madame,’ is a graduate of Montclair State,” says Indiveri-Gant. “When we were looking for colleges, we kind of idolized and adored her and wanted to follow in her footsteps, so that’s how we ended up here.”

Indiveri-Gant says that a couple of years after they entered Montclair State, Smith’s sister, Kaitlin Hoesch ’10, and her best friend Andrew Stafford ’08, did the same thing and ended up at the University as French majors. “We’ve all gone out into the world and done different things now with varying degrees related to French but we definitely ended up at Montclair State because of this alumna French teacher,” he says.

“[In high school] she told us about her experiences; she would regale us with stories of the different faculty members that she interacted with during her time here, so we grew up, in a way, hearing about Lillian Szklarczyk who was kind of an eccentric professor in the French department,” explains Indiveri-Gant. “And Jackie and I ended up having Dr. Szklarczyk for phonetics class so taking some of those kooky stories and matching them up with reality was interesting for us.”

“[Dr. Szklarczyk] had a really ‘out there’ way about her. She would get your attention by saying ‘coo-coo, coo-coo’ in class, and we heard that while we were in high school – Madame would do that mimicking the professor she had 25 years before. And we got to go back [to Manchester Township High School] and share that with her, and she thought that was really neat.”

Indiveri-Gant’s interest in French began early. “When I was in sixth grade, you had the option to take either French or Spanish and my mom wanted me to take Spanish, so I took French,” he laughs. “And I was good at it so I wanted to be a French teacher for a long time mostly because of Madame Paul’s influence but I ultimately determined that it wasn’t for me. I got all the way up to right before my student teaching but I realized that I don’t have what Madame Paul has.” 

Although they have since gone their separate ways, the four French major alumni still keep in touch through Facebook and see each other occasionally. “Kaitlin works for the 9/11 Memorial in Washington, D.C. and Jackie is a marketing executive for a major skincare company,” says Indiveri-Gant. “Andrew is the ‘French success story’ of any of us – he is finishing up his doctorate in French.”