Dawn Dillon is Still Proud to be a Pacer
By Angel Sutton
Dawn Dillon, the director of the First-Year Experience here at Peace for 21 years, from Southern Pines North Carolina. She loves working at her alma mater as well as she loved attending as a student. As a student, she was able to experience what we couldn’t.
“Physically, there was no Flowe building and there was no Davidson when I was here and then Ruffin was like the maintenance building, and there was no Bingham, but other than that the exact same buildings are still there” said Dillon.
While attending Peace College, ⸺which we now know as William Peace University⸺, she lived in Main for 2 years being an RA on the third floor. When Dillon was a student at Peace College, it was an all women’s 2-year college. Since Peace was a 2-year college, Dawn went to NC State afterward.
“The addition of the gentleman has been good, but I wouldn’t trade my experience at a woman’s college for anything…I really enjoyed my time,” said Dillon.
Dillon has worked at co-ed schools before so, to her, it wasn’t a big change adding gentlemen to the school. Talking with her classmates, there have been discussions about the difference between adding guys to the school.
“We used to go to class and I didn’t really do it, but there are a lot of people that went to class in like their pajamas and there was a lot more you know, not dressing up because it was all women and so definitely adding gentlemen, you could see a change and how just the student body reacted with opposite sexes being represented” said Dillon.
When she graduated, Davidson was being built then, and when she moved back Flowe building was breaking ground. Some of the faculty members at Peace, most of them retired, were also students when Dawn attended.
“Dr. Robertson, I actually had her for calculus for about three weeks and then I dropped calculus,” said Dillon.
As an administrator, Dawn likes the improvements that Peace has made. She even would have stayed at Peace if it was offered as a 4-year college back then. Other than the improvements made in making the school coed, she enjoys the fact that it is more diverse.
“Peace was pretty homogeneous when I was a student. I mean, it was a lot of people that looked like me, and had similar backgrounds as me. There wasn’t a lot of diversity in the student body at all other than maybe people that came from out of state or from different parts of the state, but there wasn’t much racial distinction…not even in religion,” said Dillion.
She feels that with the changes made, it represents North Carolina and what the world really looks like.
Dawn believes that the main thing that stayed the same was how small the campus is and people get a chance to know each other. She wants students to be able to build that faculty-student relationship. From Dawn being a student at Peace to now being an administrator, she sees that Peace remains the same when it comes to being an aid for students.
“People come here because they want to teach students, they don’t come here because they want to do research. They enjoy teaching students and I think that really shows that was the same when I was a student. And now I see that as an administrator and hopefully, do that when I teach a class too,” said Dillon.