Sarah Short has been face-to-face with a cobra in Egypt. She has had spears thrown at her by warriors in Kenya. She was in Tiananmen Square during the protests of 1989. But none of that scared her.

What does scare her? Not teaching.

Now into her 50th year of teaching, Short is still standing in front of classrooms full of students, educating them on nutrition. She never wants to stop.

While 50 years of teaching is a feat in itself, that commitment barely scrapes the surface of the life of the woman who has been a beloved Syracuse University nutrition professor since 1967.

As Short sits nestled in her office, nothing about the scene screams ‘daring world traveler pushing the limits of conventional education.’ The office is small and welcoming, dotted with vases of flowers.

So much is hidden in that simple space.

Short has been to 73 different countries. She’s been to every state in the United States and every province of Canada. She has been featured in the New York Times. She’s made appearances on “Good Morning America” and “The Today Show.” She has written diets for the likes of Reader’s Digest and Glamour. For the curious, her biggest nutrition tip is “eat a variety of foods, move twice as much and eat half as much.” She has even modeled for Vogue.

After graduating from SU with degrees in both nutrition and chemistry, Short accepted an offer to teach a class called “Foods” at SU.

“For 50 cents an hour, how could I say no?” Short said with a laugh and a warm and crinkled smile.

After teaching for a few years, Short went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for a semester but left when her boyfriend called her and told her to come home immediately and marry him after returning from war. She hopped on the very next train.

In true fairytale fashion, the two met when she was in kindergarten and he was in first grade. Soon she went to SU and he went to play football at Clarkson University before joining the navy. But they always stayed in touch. And they were wed in Hendricks Chapel.

Short’s face lights up as she describes their story, remembering her husband.

After the wedding, Short followed in her mother’s footsteps and worked as a chemist. In a time when women weren’t necessarily respected in scientific fields, Short would receive dead rats in the mail merely because of her gender.

“I got them back though. It was a time when men always wore neckties, so I stashed a pair of sheers in my pockets and when they weren’t looking — zippp — I cut them right off,” she said with a laugh. “They got the message: you don’t mess with me.”

Once Short had kids, she found it difficult to get back into chemistry. She was told she had been out for too long, that she didn’t have the current skills to be in the profession. So she got them back.

She went to the State University of New York Upstate Medical University and taught chemistry to the nurses, while continuing to educate herself. She described her Master’s degree in medical biochemistry as the “only degree she’s proud of.”

Realizing she had three kids to raise, Short decided to go back to teaching at SU in hopes of getting them through college for free, but, ironically, none of them ended up at SU. And while her plan to send her kids to school for free backfired, Short fell in love with teaching.

She loves the students, she loves knowledge, and while she isn’t out saving lives or inventing substances in a lab, she has been changing students’ lives. Teaching became the perfect outlet for her.

Short began to realize that she could be inventive in her teaching methods and get more out of her students. She would ride motorcycles down the stairs of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications into her lecture. She would leap out of a cake in front of the class. She would put strobe lights around her classroom to put on a display during class.

While these tactics seem bizarre even now, in the ’60s and ‘70s they were simply unheard of.

“When I rode the motorcycle down Newhouse’s brand new, blue velvet carpet, it was too much for them.” Short’s eyes gleamed with excitement as she described the memory. “The dean of Newhouse called up the dean of our school and said, ‘What the blankity blank is going on here?’”

Short’s wacky style got the attention of media companies all over the country. After a New York Times article detailed one of her classes and ran it with a striking photo of her on the Quad with her motorcycle, she was an instant nutrition celebrity. Since then, she has made thousands of TV, print and radio appearances and been across the world to speak at events. A large copy of the picture leans up against the wall in her office — a constant reminder of who she is at the core.

Even today, while certain injuries have prevented Short from participating in activities such as getting carried into her lectures on a surfboard, Short has a way of connecting with her students on a level that is deeper than just her being their professor.

Isaiah Johnson, a senior Public Health major, had a class with Short his freshman year, when he was on the football team. He and Short created a society for themselves called the “Two Concussions in Four Months Club,” after they both suffered head injuries around the same time.

Short said it’s all about getting her students the correct information in the most efficient way possible. She stands by the notion that knowledge is power, and be it her students or her children, it has been her goal for years to help educate everyone.

When her first son expressed interest in being a surgeon, she went out and bought him a beef heart to dissect. When her daughter, Sarah Hicks, became curious in computers, she would lug a computer home from school every weekend for her to fiddle around with.

“I was pretty lucky to get the mom that I got. She and my dad were always there for all of us,” Hicks said. “My mom is brilliant and she is one of the rare people who is brilliant and wants to pass on that knowledge to other people.”

And while Short’s kids have grown up and moved away, after 50 years she is still making the trek to SU every Monday and Wednesday to teach the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics’ sports nutrition class.

Short simply refuses to stop teaching.

Published on September 12, 2016 at 8:38 pm

Contact: ararcham@syr.edu