April 1, 2019 | UHCL Staff
Jeanne deVezin didn’t have to go far to get a great education as a young child or as a college student. She graduated from Clear Creek Independent School District and enrolled at University of Houston-Clear Lake, where she received her bachelor’s, master’s and was among the first cohort to receive her doctorate in educational leadership in 2010.
As Clear Creek ISD celebrates its 70th year, deVezin marks her own 29-year career as an educator and administrator in the school district. “I really wanted to be part of that first doctoral cohort,” deVezin said. “I really liked the local feel at UH-Clear Lake, and that the people I worked with in CCISD were also getting their education along with me. I needed a sense of community and I got that at UHCL.”
DeVezin began her career as a high school math teacher, then became an elementary school assistant principal, and is now in her 11th year as the district’s prevention and at-risk services coordinator. “Education is in my heart. Seeing a kid succeed is in my heart,” she said. “Seeing an at-risk kid walk across the stage and apply for college are huge rewards. That’s an addictive thing for me. No one can tell me a kid can’t succeed. I will make sure he can.”
She said she’d actually begun her college career at a different university, but realized she needed more discipline. “I was an at-risk kid myself,” she said. “I transferred and finished at UHCL. It was an older student population and it felt better to me. I became much more serious about work and school.”
With the support of her administrators at Clear Creek High School, deVezin said she decided to return to UHCL and get her master’s degree. “I had been supported, so I wanted to give back in that way,” she said.
She felt UHCL understood her and her professors knew what it meant to work full-time and go to school. “I was advancing myself and I knew they would be with me the entire way,” she said. “It’s home. Where else would you succeed but with a group of people you know are going to support you? The College of Education at UHCL was always great and it had a reputation of turning out graduates that were going to do well. The culture of UHCL was always that the professors would do whatever it took to help.”
She brought that passion to her current role with at-risk students, believing that she’d been taught by her professors to become a service-oriented educator. “They instilled that feeling in me. I had professors who could create a paradigm shift just with a single statement,” she said. “They were leading by example. I wanted to be a service-oriented person because they were.”
Now, having spent nearly three decades in CCISD, deVezin said that her work is very spiritual to her. “I am so blessed by the district, by the people I have worked for, and the kids and their families,” she said. “We reach out to the community for assistance and they have poured their resources into helping at-risk kids. It’s the same culture as at UHCL surrounding me. We want everyone to be successful, too.”
CCISD and UHCL have a longstanding, multifaceted partnership. “The best thing is the pipeline of educators we get from UHCL,” deVezin said. “We also send students to counseling interns at UHCL, and I have worked with graduate students in the Social Work program at UHCL with homeless and alternative students. UHCL is embedded into our culture. It’s the first place we go.”
For more information about UHCL’s Educational Leadership Doctorate program, visit www.uhcl.edu/academics/degrees/educational-leadership-edd.
