J-Ramsey Sutter

Jaye Ramsey Sutter, MA, JD is celebrating retiring from HCCS in 2024.  She taught government and political science classes on the college and university level for thirty-seven years. Jaye has been teaching Texas and Federal Government for 31 years at HCCS.  She was the recipient of an Excellence in Teaching award from The National Society of Leadership and Success nominated by HCCS Northwest College students in December, 2020. Jaye was nominated by her students for a 2021-2022 HCCS Faculty Teaching Excellence Award.  And again in  2023.  She is a member of the National Women's Political Caucus. 

Jaye began teaching professionally in 1989 as an adjunct professor at Austin Community College.  Jaye worked at Houston Conmmunity College from 1992-2023. She taught upper division and "big box" freshman and sophormore government to classes with 500 people at a time at the University of Houston from 2011 to 2017. She also taught seminars on Western Political Thought and women in the law.  She helped many students go to law schools across the nation. Besides teaching federal and Texas government, Jaye also served students as a pre-law advisor. At the University of Houston as a adjunct lecturer, Jaye sponsored the University Democrats and the pre law student organization. Jaye has been teaching political science, state and federal government since 1985 as a graduate student at Baylor University.  Jaye holds a Bachelor's of Arts in foreign service from Baylor University with a special focus on American-Russian relations.  She was educated in the Soviet Union in 1983 during her junior year at Baylor University.  She holds a Master's of Arts in political science from Baylor University.  Her Master's thesis is Arrogance of Intervention: The United States Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1918-1920.  Jaye graduated from South Texas College of Law while working full time at Houston Community College in 2004. 

Jaye worked for Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox in 1988 as his legislative analyst and in the Texas Legislature with State Representative Betty Denton of Waco.  She also worked on Mattox's 1990 gubernatorial campaign.  Jaye then secured a Texas secondary teaching certificate in government at Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State University, in San Marcos in 1990.  She moved to Borger, Texas to teach U.S History and Texas Government at Frank Phillips Junior College in 1991. While teaching, Jaye took graduate history courses at West Texas State University, now West Texas A&M University at Canyon, Texas.

In 1985 Jaye met her husband, John Ben Sutter, at Baylor University.  John Ben has a successful career as a press secretary and political campaign consultant and was the press secretary and administrator for the McLennan County District Attorney, Vic Feazell. John Ben ran successfully as the Democractic Party nominee for McLennan County Judge but lost his runoff election after subpenaed by the FBI and Texas Rangers to a federal grand jury investigating Feazell. Feazell helped expose the Henry Lee Lucas bogus confession spree documented in the Netflix series The Confession Killer.  Feazell was indicted and stood trial on federal RICO charges and Jaye worked with Feazell's defense team which secured Feazell's acquittal.  Feazell sued WFAA-TV Channel 8 News for libel for repeating the RICO allegations.  He won a $58 million verdict, the highest jury award in a defamation trial in American history.

Jaye earned her Doctorate of Jurisprudence in 2004 from South Texas College of Law.  Jaye taught full time while attending law school part-time.  She clerked for People for the American Way and Houston Volunteer Lawyers.  Upon graduation, she worked at John O'Quinn's law firm while teaching full time for Houston Community College.  Jaye has taught pre-law classes at the University of Houston in 2011-2017 in judicial behavior, women in the law, criminal justice, Supreme Court cases, political theory and the law, and the history of American jurisprudence.

Jaye is a noted political commentator, television panelist, and public lecturer.  While at HCCS, Jaye edited two editions of Dialogue of Democracy, a reader used in HCCS political science and government courses.  Since 2016 she has been active in public political education and awareness and feminist issues in local grassroots political and social organizations.  She has lectured and written on the John F. Kennedy assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald's Russian correspondence.  

Present Company
W. S. Merwin
Now we come to the famous classroom
where every year a fortunate few
in the days of their youth study
autumn forgetting the numbers beforehand
as they have been doing
since the words were all in Latin no cameras
allowed in here notice the slight breeze
from the windows here among the trees
and the fragrance at the end of spring
notice the leaves outside the window frames
the new grass in the light of morning
notice the charts of colors on the walls
set in order and the moons in the calendars
the constellations and the dark dials
the portraits of flowers still as the tables
here they study what is too far away
ever to grasp and too near to recognize
notice the leaves changing as we watch
then it will be over and it will be autumn
and most of them will be forgotten
notice the bell in place outside the door
and the dog lying at the foot of the stairs
waiting for a time that she remembers

 

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