Betty Finklea Florey, a former UA student, has spent the last 25 years serving students as a teacher, mentor and writer throughout her career as a professor for both the English department and the Honors College.
Florey boasts a full resume of accomplishments, which include being inducted into The XXXI, being selected as one of 10 faculty members at the Capstone to be an honorary Fellow in Service Learning in 2010, advising the Anderson Society and working with Matt Wolf, British critic for London’s Independent magazine.
In 2009, she wrote a book titled “In Africa’s Forest and Jungle: Six Years Among the Yorubas,” which is housed in the libraries of universities such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge.
Florey said her greatest achievement of all is being able to write letters of recommendation for promising students who are about to go out into the world and move forward in their chosen careers.
“The students are everything,” she said. “I live to go in the classroom because my students are committed, polite, inventive and serious, although they know how to break loose and have a lot of fun, too.”
Florey said her favorite class to teach is UH 210: Beyond the British Mask, a class based on her trips to London, where she attended a wide variety of plays. She said she teaches her students to find the political and cultural components in the works she chooses. She said she thoroughly enjoys teaching classes that allow for subjective thinking because as a professor for the Honors College, she gets students of all majors and interests in her classes – many of whom are only used to thinking objectively.
Lauren Monacelli, a graduate student majoring in accounting, said she looks back fondly on her time with Florey.
“Mrs. Florey is one of the most kindhearted people I have ever met,” Monacelli said. “She genuinely cares about her students, and her class was very interesting and one I looked forward to go to.”
Florey said she wants to laugh when she thinks back to why she became passionate about writing in the first place. In high school, on one of her English papers, a teacher wrote, “You present such a perfect picture of frivolity; your depth of thought amazes me.”
Florey said the comment gave her the confidence she needed and allowed her to believe that she could be a great mind if she really wanted to be.
Florey said she is inspired by Shane Sharpe, dean of the Honors College, as well as the associate dean, Jacqueline Morgan.
Morgan said Florey is an important member of the Honors College team.
“She shows us all daily what it means to serve students holistically,” Morgan said. “Intelligent, engaging, witty and caring, she invites students to challenge their assumptions and investigate the truth. As a result, they leave her classroom a changed person. She has numerous former students who say her class was one of the highlights of their college experience – one of those students just happens to be Barrett Jones.”
