The Citrus College student newsroom was moved to a new building twice before Meg O’Neil would leave it, and now she has to, at least for six months.
Many of O’Neil’s students were surprised to hear the communications professor, adviser to Logos magazine and former adviser to the Clarion was set to retire after teaching for more than 40 years.
O’Neil views her retirement as a requirement not to teach for six months. She said she intends to return, possibly as a communications adjunct professor, and intends to take the required coursework during her retirement to qualify her to teach distance education so that she could teach online or hybrid classes.
Even when O’Neil is not teaching, she still thinks of ways to improve the student publications at Citrus. She said she could see the room where she stores her office supplies and papers being converted into a radio room for the Clarion.
O’Neil tells her students that she thinks her passion for education and journalism started long before she was born. She grew up in a family of “newspaper people” and despite her grandfather’s lack of higher education, his passion behind a printing press is why O’Neil says she has ink in her veins.
Two of O’Neil’s five children are journalists, one of whom lives in Washington, D.C. covering the White House.
She has former students who are professional designers, reporters and editors at various publications, such as the current editor of the Claremont Courier, Kathryn Dunn.
In March, O’Neil was recognized as a retiring professor at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges, a conference and competition event for journalism programs across California held in Burbank.
Waleed Rashidi, adjunct communications professor who previously worked alongside O’Neil, gave a speech at JACC. He described her memory as “encyclopedic” and like a “steel trap.”
“She knows more about her students then they know about themselves,” Rashidi said. “She is the first to arrive on campus, typically before dawn and before any other faculty, students or administrators have set foot on the Citrus pavement … She has the stamina, the persistence and the focus that even her young and spritely students cannot match.”
Her husband, Rob O’Neil, praised and spoke to her competitive nature and workaholic tendencies at the JACC banquet.
Rob O’Neil shared stories about how competitive she was as his student. Meg O’Neil decided to return to college when she was in her 40s to learn journalism after completing her master’s in English. Already married, she registered for her husband’s news writing class at Pierce.
“It’s not easy, teaching your wife … I’ve learned more from Meg than she has from me,” Rob O’Neil said.
When Meg O’Neil stepped toward the microphone, she said she felt she has learned from her students.
“I really feel it is the students that have taught me to be a better person … now is the right time for me to retire because I feel that you are the future and I feel confident that you will carry on as men and women of integrity, that you will work very very hard and that you will be a credit to your community and do service to your country,” O’Neil said.
O’Neil is already itching to learn new skills. She is considering giving sound media a try by volunteering at a radio station.
