Love in Department: The story of married couples at Mercer University

By Summer Perritt

When it comes to marriage, most people would agree that it is important to have something in common with the person you choose to share your life with. Whether it be a set of values, hobbies, passions or interests, most couples share many aspect of their lives.

But what happens when you share just a little more than the average married couple?

Dr. Alana Alvarez and Professor Jimmy Arellano and Garland and Jennifer Crawford are two married couples who not only teach at Mercer University, but also work in the same department.

“Like with anything in a marriage, it’s a lot of communication,” Garland Crawford said about working with his wife.

Jennifer and Garland Crawford’s story began in the same department they would end up: Chemistry. The two met while completing their graduate degrees at the University of Kentucky.

“I worked in a lab and she ended up working right across the hall from me,” Garland Crawford said.

“We just started going to movies and doing some stuff and it developed from there,” Jennifer Crawford said.

After seven years, they had both graduated with their degrees and decided to settle down. Just before moving to Washington, D.C. for their new job together, Garland proposed to Jennifer in the apartment they shared.

“He was down on one knee with a dozen roses and the ring and asked me marry him. I had no idea any of it was coming,” Jennifer Crawford said.

Dr. Alana Alvarez and Professor Jimmy Arellano also found love while still in college. They met through mutual friends while both studying Literature at the University of Venezuela.

“We had met numerous times… (but) he would never speak back to me, he would ignore me completely,” Alvarez said.

But eventually Arellano did speak, giving Alvarez a bar of chocolate before asking her on a date.

The two would be inseparable for the rest of their undergraduate careers, until Alvarez chose to continue her education in the United States at Vanderbilt University.

“So I went to Vanderbilt and according to his mother, he felt miserable and depressed and he didn’t go out of his room. So he started saying, ‘Well maybe I should just go with you,’” Alvarez said.

Arellano did just that, earning his graduate degree from Vanderbilt University just two years behind Alvarez.

During that time, Alvarez had begun teaching at Mercer University and when the time came for the two to be together again, a position opened up right alongside her.

“When he finished his coursework the first thing he said was, ‘I need to be with you, I need to be in Macon,’” Alvarez said.

The rest of the Spanish department, quickly growing fond of Arellano with his frequent trips to visit his wife, were integral in finding a place for him in the department. The couples credits their colleagues for bringing them back together. The two now teach different sections of the same Spanish classes and enjoy working together closely.

“I love every day with her… I grow with her,” Arellano said.

The shared space has allowed them to see sides of each other that other married couples might not be privy to. The intimacy in every aspect of their lives has brought the couple closer together after all the time they have shared apart.

“Working together shows me how kind and generous of a person he is. I don’t think I would have seen it if we weren’t working together,” Alvarez said.

But being so close is not without its challenges. The two teach just one classroom apart, share an office space and even ride to work together every morning. This closeness, while rewarding, creates tension due to the privacy they lack.

“We only have one car so we ride together everyday. I am a morning person and he is a ‘five more minutes’ person, so I am always late. I think that is one of our biggest arguments,” Alvarez said.

The shared office space also causes issues between the couple. While Arellano likes his things strewn about, Alvarez prefers to keep a tidy space, the catalyst of many arguments.

“Being together. Everyday. Twenty-four hours. It is very crazy, it is the most challenging problem day by day,” Arellano said.

All of these challenges are things the couple is learning to overcome. With the choice to work so closely together, they discover new strengths and weaknesses in their relationship every day.

But overall, the couple finds their work relationship to a happy and conducive one to their marriage.

“I can’t stand him and then when he is not here…the office feels lonely,” Alvarez said.

The Crawfords, on the other hand, address their work relationship with a more reserved approach than their counterparts in the Spanish department.

“We joke that we are Dr. Crawford and Dr. Crawford, no relation,” Garland Crawford said.

Garland Crawford, an undergraduate alumni of Mercer University, came back to the school when a position opened up in the Chemistry department. At the time, Jennifer Crawford was working as an independent science writer, but sought a less isolated career.

“Working with students sounded interesting. Since we had been involved with Mercer for several years, I knew most of the faculty in the department and most of the students,” she said.

So when a temporary teaching position became available, Jennifer Crawford was the one for the job. She has since moved to a permanent lecturer position and this will be her second year in the department.

But while the two both teach Chemistry, their schedules couldn’t be any more different. Jennifer Crawford teaches general Chemistry, dealing mainly with freshman students, while Garland Crawford teaches upper level biochemistry.

“We do our own thing at work. We both have other stuff going on…we just treat it each as our own job,” Garland Crawford said.

This privacy has allowed them to respect one another’s space and value the time they do get together all that much more.

“During the day, other than walking past each other’s offices, we operate separately. It makes ‘home-time,’ time for us to be together,” Jennifer Crawford said.

However, despite this separation, the Crawfords do still like working in the same department and see the value in sharing a workplace.

“It is a little easier to appreciate the other person’s situation,” Jennifer Crawford said.

This was really put to the test when the two decided to teach a University 101 class together this past fall. While they like the independence of their careers, the Crawfords said teaching a class together takes some of the pressure off the individual professor and fosters a conducive environment for a range of students with different learning styles.

“We have very different personalities, sometimes one person clicks with certain students and the other one clicks with others. It works out well,” Jennifer Crawford said.

Even with the intimacy of sharing a classroom, the two still manage to keep their relationship private.

“We were a month in before the students realized we were married,” Garland Crawford said.