Malcolm McAvoy Looks Back on Teaching Career
September 3, 2026
Professor Emeritus Caps 52-Year Teaching Career
During his 52 years at Walters State, Malcolm McAvoy became a beloved professor teaching
a course students dreaded: Speech Communication. Virtually every student had to take
the class, and many did so with a fear of public speaking.
McAvoy has seen students cry, freeze and almost pass out when they rose to give the
first speeches of the semester. Still, the vast majority of students completed the
class successfully thanks to McAvoy’s one-on-one sessions and his endless patience.
“I understood where students were coming from, as I had been in very similar situations,”
McAvoy said. “I was raised mostly by my grandparents in rural Scott County. No one
in my family had been to college. Growing up, I did not think college was possible.”
McAvoy was encouraged by his grandparents (Granville and Maggie Baker of Winfield)
and their neighbors to consider college. One neighbor worked at the state employment
office and told him that due to his chronic asthma, he might be eligible for a vocational
rehab program that would pay for his college. After meeting with a vocational counselor,
McAvoy was approved to attend Cumberland College. Four years later, he earned an English
degree from Cumberland College, now Cumberland University, where he also participated
in the College Debate Team. That experience would prove important to his Walters State
career.
After graduating in the Spring of 1969, McAvoy was awarded a Federal Fellowship to
pursue a master of arts in college teaching/rhetoric at the University of Tennessee.
As he was finishing his program, he happened to see a news segment talking about a
new college opening in Morristown. It was one of Tennessee’s new Community Colleges
named – you guessed it – named Walters State.
“I called Walters State and met with the Academic Dean, Darrel Simmons, and I was
hired as the first speech professor. I also taught English during those first few
years,” McAvoy remembers.
He joined the college in 1971, at the start of its second academic year. The college
had just moved classes from a downtown church to the first building on the Morristown
Campus. He began developing the foundation of the speech communication classes. His
work positioned Walters State among the early adopters of a human communication model
which would later become the disciplinary standard. He even authored one of the first
textbooks in the field.
“This new model made the class more than just public speaking,” McAvoy said. “The
class expanded to include interpersonal communications and the valuable role those
skills play in relationships and in work situations.”
McAvoy helped to grow the Communication Department from 3 sections in 1971 to over
20 sections at his retirement. When he moved to post-retirement service after four
decades with the college, he also gave up one of his passions, coaching the Walters
State Debate Team. The team brought home the college’s first trophy in 1972. In 2008,
he coached the team to the Pi Kappa Delta National Championship.
McAvoy received the college’s highest honor earlier this semester when he was named
Professor Emeritus.