Spotlight
Mother
of wellness at UNM, staunch educator and Celtic mythologist,
Maya Magee Sutton leaves a trail of harmonic awareness in her
path.
Driven
by an informed inner voice, Sutton has been guiding UNM students
for nearly a quarter century. She was recognized recently with
an Adjunct Teacher of the Year nomination for her far and wide
contributions.
Part-time,
non-tenured status allows Sutton to embrace her own interests.
She created three distinct careers during her tenure at UNM
teaching teachers, health and wellness and Celtic studies.
First on
the venue was the College of Education where she began as a
teaching assistant in 1978. She taught Human Growth and Development
and Theories of Learning for almost 20 years. Since receiving
her Ph.D. in educational psychology and research at UNM in 1980,
she served as adjunct faculty.
A former
aerospace medical researcher, she took a crook in the road in
1985 to launch one of the first university wellness centers
in the country with grant funding. I became aware that
medicine didnt help people to be well, it helped people
who had something acutely wrong with them. I realized we were
missing the boat, says Sutton, who trained many of the
state's wellness directors.
She developed
expertise in stress management and taught the first graduate
level course in the field in 1986 at UNM. This fall, Sutton
will teach a freshly developed stress management course through
Women Studies. She authored the course text, In Harmony,
Resolving Stress.
To unravel
stress, we must first identify it. Sutton tells us why we are
frazzled. The pace of American life, the focus on money
instead of internal values, pressure to succeed as individuals
and disregard for a healthy lifestyle, says Sutton. She
lives by example and notes, I jogged before they had jogging
shoes.
Values-conflicted
work can also be a serious stressor, she adds. There is
so much pressure to be somebody other than who we want to be,
Sutton says. Take stock and redirect your life from your
own center. If you are very busy doing what you love you are
not going to be stressed. You cant do too much worse by
doing that and you might do a whole lot better.
A passion
for knowledge rooted in an ancient civilization fueled her jaunt
down a third avenue. A dual citizen of Irish descent, Sutton
coined the phrase, Im not Anglo, Im Celtic.
In Women
Studies, she created two courses Women in Celtic Society
& Myth and Goddess Mythology of the Celts that bring
Celtic wisdom of two millennia ago into the present, she
says. Under the aegis of European Studies in UNMs History
Department, she initiated the Celtic Studies concentration.
Sutton
reputedly also shares generously time and expertise outside
the classroom.
Does she
get stressed?
Oh, heavens
yes, she laughs. But I have a stronger framework
than a lot of people that I can draw on. And Ive also
been very fortunate in being able to do exactly what I wanted
to do.