The Mount Observer Sits Down with Its Previous Faculty Adviser
By Isabelle Mascary | Editor-in-Chief
In her twenty years at MWCC, Sue Goldstein successfully re-started the student newspaper and became a beloved professor and mentor to many students. In 2022, she retired from MWCC, but her legacy remains. As a woman of many hats and a great contributor to the college, Goldstein still teaches online courses. “I’m still teaching a few classes, such as college writing one and college writing two online.”
It might come as a surprise to many that this popular professor didn’t even get into journalism until about 1977, and she began her teaching profession in 2003. “They were kind of two separate things. I never envisioned myself teaching,” she explained, continuing to state that she didn’t start teaching until she was in her forties.
The Watergate scandal in 1972 was just one influential moment that inspired Goldstein to pursue journalism. It was a major political event that forced President Nixon to resign to avoid being impeached after it was learned that his administration was trying to cover up a break-in. “When I was in high school, Watergate happened. I was very impressionable and very political, and I remember thinking, “Wow, this is something I really want to get into.” Goldstein then attended UMASS-Amherst, where she majored in journalism.
After graduating in 1977, she began working at a weekly newspaper in Fitchburg called the Montachusett Review for five years. She started working in other areas of communication full-time but kept working part-time in journalism for The Gardner News, The Fitchburg Sentinel, and thenThe Worcester Telegram. “I ended up working for local newspapers, covering city council meetings or school committee meetings, and then a lot of feature stories.” Feature stories happen to be her strength.
While working for The Gardner News, Goldstein began her weekly family life column. She continued writing the column for one year with The Fitchburg Sentinel and then for ten years with Montachusett T&G. The column focused on Massachusetts regions like Fitchburg, Leominster, and Gardner. “I just wrote about my family, and that’s really all it was, but it was great fun, and it was tremendous discipline because I always had to meet a deadline, like every week,” she explained, chuckling. “I wrote a lot of feature stories, and eventually I ended up with my own column for ten years. It was called “That’s Life.”
When The Worcester Telegram went out of business, Goldstein went back to school and obtained another master’s degree in English from Fitchburg State University. After graduating from FSU, Goldstein started teaching English part-time at the Mount. “I really liked teaching English, so when there was an opening, I applied in 2003, and I was just really lucky that I was able to get in.” Two years after joining the Mount Community, Goldstein started the Mount Observer from the ground up. “I started the [school] paper from scratch,” she said. “There was no pattern to follow.”
Then, in 2007, Goldstein and the student newspaper found themselves faced with an obstacle that had an interesting turn of events that led the managing editor at the time to be nationally recognized for her due diligence in 2008.
During the night of graduation in 2007, many issues of their May 2007 paper mysteriously went missing. “The incoming editor decided to start her position as editor early and asked the campus police to look at the cameras,” she shared. “The campus police looked at the cameras and gave her a report and it showed the then president, tossing the papers away in one section of the college into the trash barrels.”
The students at that time tried to interview President Daniel Asquino right after the shootings on the Virginia Tech college campus. He was away at a conference and asked them to contact someone else at the college but a day later, he gave a long interview to the local newspaper, The Gardner News. Goldstein explained, “Students were upset, and they felt that the president had dismissed them as journalists, so they wrote a scathing editorial and printed it on the front page.”
“I think what bothered President Asquino was that when the issue came out in May 2007, Gov. Patrick Duval was coming to campus to give the commencement address to graduates, and I think President Asquino did not want that scathing front-page editorial to be visible on campus,” she said.
When student coverage of the president’s action received national recognition from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communications, Goldstein felt the president expressed a better understanding of free speech on campus and why newspapers on campus should not be thrown away. President Asquino supported the paper one hundred percent from that day forward and also gave the editor-in-chief at the time an award at the end of the year. She was the division winner of the 2008 Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism. “We have been fortunate because Dr. Vander Hooven is also a great supporter of the student press too!” she added.
Sharing her views on the importance of the student newspaper, Goldstein believes that publishing a student newspaper is critical for keeping democracy healthy on our college campus; if not, how else can students get their viewpoints across? She went on to say, “All colleges have a public relations department, but public relations departments have one main goal: to make the college look good by highlighting success stories,” adding, “The public relations department is not going to highlight problems at the college because that’s not their job. But the student newspaper can investigate all areas of campus, those areas that are working well for students and those that are not.”
Due to the fact that Goldstein had been a news reporter many years ago, she used her skills to gather pertinent information from other individuals that she knew who had retired. “What I realized is that there were four areas in life that you need to concentrate on when you retire.” Those four areas are the ones that are guiding her now. One of the areas a person needs to concentrate on during retirement is physical health. “Every day, I exercise.”
The second area is mental health. “I’m keeping my mind occupied and learning new things,” she said. Goldstein shared that she not only teaches classes but also takes classes and is a part of a couple of book clubs.
The next area of concentration is social interaction. “This is when you hang out with family and friends.” She continued, “Now that my children are older, they like me now. They’re adults, so we all hang out.” she laughed.
The last area to concentrate on during retirement is the community and giving back to it. Goldstein shared that she volunteers every week at a local cat shelter. “It’s about ten hours a week, and then I volunteer at the library.”
Although she used to write a lot, she’s working on incorporating that passion into how she structures her time. Reflecting on the many joys of retirement, she said, “One thing I’m loving about my retirement is that I can do more volunteering. There’s such a need, and there are so many animals.” Two of her biggest passions are animal rescue and reading. Her love for animals began in her childhood. She was born and raised in Worcester and grew up in her father’s home. A cat lover, Goldstein has three cats; one named Pickles who is eight years old, Jack, who is a Tuxedo cat; and last but not least, Rosie, who has a lot of spunk and is a tough cookie. She also has a five-year-old lab mix named Tucker, who was rescued right before the pandemic. Now residing in Gardner with her husband, Goldstein continues to enjoy her retirement with her children and two grandchildren.
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