University of Montevallo - Notable Faculty and Staff

Notable Faculty and Staff

• Eugene Bondurant Sledge, PhD, recounted his experiences in the Pacific theater of World War II in the book With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. He is portrayed in the HBO miniseries "The Pacific". He was a professor of biology and a specialist in ornithology at the university until his death in 2001.
• Eva Olivia Golson, PhD, a longtime professor of English, was one of the first female graduates of the University of Chicago, earning a doctorate in literature. An annual scholarship named in her memory is awarded to an outstanding rising senior majoring in English.
• Garnie W. McGinty, a Louisiana historian taught briefly at UM prior to his longtime association with Louisiana Tech University
• Julia Tutwiler, 19th-century champion of equal educational opportunities for Alabama women, secured the funding that enabled AGIS to open in 1896. She also served as the first president of Alabama Normal College (now the University of West Alabama) and wrote a poem, "Alabama", that was later adapted as the official state song.
• William Sledge Cobb, the university's writer-in-residence for 13 years, is a critically acclaimed novelist and short-story writer whose works include Coming of Age at the Y, A Walk through Fire (nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize), Harry Reunited, and A Spring of Souls. He is the 2007 recipient of the Alabama Writers' Forum's Harper Lee Award for a Distinguished Alabama Writer.