Frank Dobson, Jr. Ph.D. '73 -Scholar, writer and administrator

The tripartite

Part writer. Part professor. Part administrator. That’s the tripartite professional face of Frank Dobson, Jr., Ph.D. ’73.

Dobson characterizes his career as “strange,” although wide-ranging might better describe it. He trained at UB as a scholar – his dissertation was on the use of the oral tradition in African-American fiction – but he sees himself more as a creative writer. He also admits he’s been an administrator as much as a full-time faculty member, going back and forth between the two. “I’ve done that in part because of my social consciousness,” he says. The phrase “college administrator” rarely evokes images of activism, yet Dobson feels his administrative roles have offered him opportunities to effect change in ways his academic roles rarely have. “I enjoy both kinds of roles equally, but as an administrator I can affect programs in ways you can’t when you’re just in the classroom.”

Community Outreach

Dobson is the current director of the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. There, he says, “I can touch the entire campus. I can work with student groups from a wide variety of backgrounds and reach across artificial boundaries.” Much of Dobson’s work at the center is community outreach. For example, a group from the center has tutored at the local YMCA. In addition, the center transports seniors to campus for programs and yet another reaches into Nashville’s black community, bringing in people in their 70s and 80s to share their personal stories with students. “These seniors have so much to share that a 19- or 20-year-old doesn’t even know about,” says Dobson.

Dobson’s teaching and writing came to the fore during at Wright State in Dayton, Ohio. He started as an administrator there, but his second stint was as an associate professor of English. As he taught African-American and American literature courses, his interaction with his students stimulated his own work. “You’re working with students who are also writing, which gets your juices going,” he remembers. “During those years, I was as productive as I’ve ever been. I published a novel and some short fiction, and I won some awards for fiction.”

Buffalo Muse

Dobson’s experience as a native Buffalonian and UB student has helped mold his writing. “Most of my fiction is set in Buffalo. My new novel, The Race Not Given, looks at a young, gifted black professor struggling with possible terminal cancer. One early scene has the protagonist jogging around the Main Street Campus track that I used to jog on. Buffalo for me as a writer is my spiritual home,” Dobson adds. “UB is major part of that.”

Indeed, Dobson has fond memories of his UB career. “I loved the English Department, which was one of the best in the country,” he says. “Several professors were inspirations and role models. Coming from a department like that, I felt like I had the credentials and background to do well.”

In addition to his fiction, Dobson’s creative work has also included poetry. His focus these days, however, is the personal memoir. Some years ago, Dobson wrote an essay that he presented at a scholarly conference for academics with working class backgrounds: “I did a paper on being a black, working-class academic, looking at my background and my parents. I grew up in an era when many parents worked at factories, and that has oriented me in terms of how I look at work and how I look at myself in the workplace.” The piece eventually was published in a Rutgers University journal, and Dobson has continued the thread he began.

For instance, Dobson is working on an essay that focuses on his mother, who has Alzheimer’s Disease and lives in a nursing home in Houston. “My mom’s roommate is a 96-year-old white lady named Ms. Liz, who was raised in an orphanage in Alaska. Ms. Liz is more lucid than my mom, so my sister and I really visit her. She plays her keyboard for us, and she’ll sing songs like Can You Shimmy Like My Sister Kate? I write stories that touch on how I feel when I’m in that room.”

Dobson hopes that this particular story, along with a series of other pieces, will develop into a book, one that, like much of his career has, “touches human hearts and leaps over artificial boundaries.”

--Grace Lazzara

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