Record-holding Wingate professor’s writing and legacy continue in retirement

“It’s so dramatically different,” she said. 

Little-Sweat retired at the end of the fall 2023 semester, but still makes her way to her office in Burris Hall regularly as the university’s writer-in-residence. 

“The minute I enter the door, I’m ready to work,” she said. 

She’s written several books, including two about Wingate University. One is a history written in prose, another includes her poetry about the school. 

“I’ve lived it myself, not just done the research,” she said. 

Little-Sweat holds the Guinness World Record for the “longest career as a lecturer in the same university (female).” 

“I wasn’t working toward that. I was just teaching. You know how that is,” she said. “If you do what you love, you just show up and you do it and you do it and you do it.”  

She did it for 60 years and one semester. 

“Well, some will think ‘she was stupid to stay in the same place for 60 years and one semester.’ Some would think that. And others who bounced from one job to another job to another job to another job will never know the satisfaction of being a difference maker,” said Little-Sweat.

Dr. Sylvia Little-Sweat teaching. (Wingate University)

Still, she knew when it was time to retire. 

“I was sick to death of grading essays so carefully. And term papers. Oh, Lord, you know, 25-page term papers,” she said. 

Little-Sweat may not miss the grading of papers, but she misses the people, she said. 

Those people’s paths, crossed with hers, can be poetic, like that of her former student Rhett Brown. 

“It was always a pleasure to follow your mind,” she told Brown when they caught up at his office recently. 

He’s now Dr. Brown, president of Wingate University.

“It’s been a thrill always to me to teach students who end up doing better than I would consider I’ve done career-wise. And of course, you’re the only president that I know of,” she told him. 

Brown may technically be Little-Sweat’s boss now, but he said he doesn’t necessarily see it that way. 

“Well, I don’t think anybody is the boss of Dr. Little-Sweat. I still think of her as my boss,” he said. 

Dr. Rhett Brown, Wingate University president, and Dr. Sylvia Little-Sweat. (Wingate University)

“I remember her being just a talented lecturer,” Brown said. “Tough grader, high expectations. I remember red ink on some of my papers.”

“I know what my abilities are. I know how to use them,” Little-Sweat said.  

“I know how not to be pompous or think I’m a know it all. I’m just really interested in people and ideas, and that’s a good combination, you know? I know subject matter, but I don’t assume that that’s all I need to know,” she added.  

“I’ve always been just myself. And humor is part of that. And, very sophisticated language is part of it. I don’t have to dumb the way I talk down, because they may not understand certain words. But when they get out of my classes, they know more words. And I hope they know more authenticity,” said Little-Sweat. 

Little-Sweat wrote a poem for Brown’s installation as president in 2016. It now hangs in his office and includes the line, “Faces fade with time, but legacies last past each day’s dawning.” 

Little-Sweat said she hasn’t thought much about her legacy.  

“I’ve been too busy doing it,” she said. “I know I’ve made a difference here. I know the hard work has paid off.”

Brown knows the impact of her hard work firsthand. 

“I think her legacy just personifies good teaching that’s gone on here for decades and a century,” he said. 

She originally went to UNC to study medicine, but her love of teaching, poetry, literature and Wingate brought her back to stay. 

Her ties to Wingate go back even further than her 60 years as a professor. 

Little-Sweat grew up on a farm in Union County about four miles away from campus. Her uncle was also a professor at the school in the 1930s and 1940s. 

She’s written about her uncle in her history of the university and about life growing up on the farm in poetry, some of which was recorded on a CD, “The Way Home,” with music by her son and daughter-in-law. 

Dr. Sylvia Little-Sweat in her office at Wingate. (Spectrum News 1)

Little-Sweat said she even came to the campus as a child and performed piano recitals in the very building where she taught for all those decades and where her office remains. 

As tied as she is to the area, however, she loves to travel. 

Little-Sweat said she led hundreds of students on international trips through the university over the years.  

She said she never seriously thought about working anywhere but Wingate. 

“Well, I was offered other jobs making more money, and I thought about it. But life is more than a paycheck, I think,” she said. “And, I felt a real sense of identity here and even though Wingate University’s identity has grown and changed, I always was part of that growing and changing.”

Little-Sweat is currently working on publishing some of her journals. She said she’s been told she can stay on as writer-in-residence for as long as she likes and is savvy enough to step away when she stops having fun.