Always learning, always changing: Bocan recalls career helping others By Susan Hurley Corbran ’73
During the 1970s, well before remote learning became common in American universities, Dr. Carol Bocan ’59 was teaching distance learning classes. In a sort of precursor to today’s online classes, she developed and produced two dozen 30-minute videotapes for a graduate course in Home Economics Curriculum at Winthrop College. Graduate students across South Carolina gathered in small groups to watch her videos on open and closed circuit. They’d mail their completed assignments to Dr. Bocan and, once a month, she’d travel to each location for an in-person meeting. That was just one highlight of Carol’s long career as an educator. After earning a Mercyhurst degree in home economics, she taught in several high schools and produced homemaking programs for a Florida TV market. She earned a master’s degree from Penn State and joined the Mercyhurst faculty in 1967. She fondly remembers her time supervising the Home Management House, where home economics majors lived to get hands-on experience running a home, from budgeting to cooking to caring for children. Each term, the students cared for an infant from St. Joseph’s Orphanage. Though she had no children of her own, she laughingly recalls that friends who were new parents were soon turning to her for expert advice. In 1973, Carol earned a Ph.D. from Florida State University, still specializing in home economics but adding a focus in municipal planning as well. Teaching jobs followed at Northern Illinois University, Mississippi University for Women, Winthrop College, and fnally Utah State, where she became a professor and head of the home economics department. Throughout her career, she was in demand as a speaker, invited to lecture around the world. She published widely, not only academic papers but also inspirational articles and videotapes.
Working with a government commission, Dr. Bocan helped write grants to obtain funding for universities to defray student tuition, and coached hundreds of students to seek grants and scholarships for themselves as well. She says she encouraged students to obtain as much education as they could because education is something they can never lose and the more you get, the more people you can help. It’s a philosophy she absorbed from the Sisters of Mercy. Dr. Bocan explains, “When I attended Mercyhurst in the late 1950s, we had such wonderful nuns. Their attitudes were so positive. They encouraged us to help as many people as we can in life. They told us as long as you’re using the talents God has given you, you will end up helping thousands of people, and you will be successful.” Though she retired from Utah State as a professor, her career certainly wasn’t over. When her alma mater called in 1991, she agreed to help with the opening of Mercyhurst’s branch campus in North East. She stayed on for three years, teaching and helping get the program up and running. Carol had returned to her Conneautville, Pennsylvania, home after retirement to nurse her mother through a long illness. A few years later, she lost her beloved dog. After a year alone, she decided she needed another pet, but her brother and sister-in-law convinced her a cat might be a better choice than a dog at this stage of her life. Though skeptical, she says she prayed to St. Francis for help locating a cat who was a much like a dog as possible. She soon adopted a cat, Luna, who’s happy to curl up on her lap when she reads or watches TV, greets her when she comes home, and keeps her feet warm at night. Carol told the tale of Luna’s arrival, “How This Dog Lover Became a Cat Person,” in an article and video for Guideposts magazine in 2017. Luna was a huge comfort when Carol went through her own health scare, a three-year battle with breast cancer.
Dr. Carol Bocan came back to campus in 2019 for the 60th reunion of her graduating class.
Dr. Carol Bocan, right, joins classmates Dr. Barbara Chambers, left, and Emma Newby Mason during the 60th reunion of the Class of 1959.
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