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You Worry LESS When You Prepare MORE Kim Shaw’s ’88 winding professional journey from English major to farm-to-table entrepreneur.
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Hollins Hollins Magazine Vol. 72, No. 1 July - December 2021 EDITOR Billy Faires, executive director of marketing and communications ADVISORY BOARD President Mary Dana Hinton, Vice President for External Relations Suzy Mink ’74, Associate Vice President for Alumnae/i Engagement and Strategic Initiatives Lauren Sells Walker ’04, Director of Public Relations Jeff Hodges M.A.L.S. ’11 CLASS LETTERS EDITORS Olivia Body ’08, Leah Abraham DESIGNERS Sarah Sprigings, David Hodge Anstey Hodge Advertising Group, Roanoke, VA PRINTER Progress Printing, Lynchburg, VA Hollins (USPS 247/440) is published quarterly by Hollins University, Roanoke, VA 24020. Entered as Periodicals Postage Paid at Roanoke, VA. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Hollins, Hollins University, Box 9688, Roanoke, VA 24020 or call (800) TINKER1. The articles and class letters in Hollins do not necessarily represent the official policies of Hollins University, nor are they always the opinions of the editor. Hollins University does not discriminate in admission because of sexual orientation, race, color, national or ethnic origin, disability, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, age, political beliefs, religion, and/or pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions, and maintains a nondiscriminatory policy throughout its operation. For more information, contact Chanelle Sears, director of equity, community, and Title IX, at (540) 362-6069 or searsct@hollins.edu. Questions, comments, corrections, or story ideas may be sent to:
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A Letter from President Mary Dana Hinton
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Staging Our Hidden History Two Hollins alumnae connect with Colonial-era Virginia and celebrate our history’s oft-overlooked voices. By Joseph Staniunas
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You Worry Less When You Prepare More Kim Shaw’s ’88 winding professional journey from English major to farm-to-table entrepreneur. By Sarah Achenbach ’88
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Building a Beautiful Legacy Hollins’ Black Alumnae Chapter’s Scholarship will help Black students thrive. By Karen Adams M.A. ’93, M.A. ’00, M.F.A. ’10
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The Dean of Dance Endalyn Taylor M.F.A. ’12 appointed dean of the School of Dance at UNC School of the Arts. By Karen Adams
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Class Letters
Magazine Editor Hollins University Box 9657 Roanoke, VA 24020 magazine@hollins.edu
Cover photo: Courtesy of Kim Shaw ’88
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Visit the online version of Hollins magazine at hollins.edu/magazine.
FROM THE
President
Calling Together an Assembly BY MARY DANA HINTON PRESIDENT
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onvocation is the opening ceremony of the academic year. Taken from the Latin convocare, it means to call together an assembly. On August 31, we did just that. We called together our campus community to welcome the academic year and to begin our shared pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. What I asked of those gathered for Opening Convocation was to think of ourselves as more than just gathering as an assembly. I asked that they think of us as a community embarking on a journey together. I asked that they hold in their minds and in their hearts the vision of Hollins as a community fueled by love. A love that binds us one to the other; a love that binds us to learning
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and to the liberal arts; and a love that binds us to this community of our beloved Hollins. I also asked those present at convocation to recognize the unifying, connecting gift of love as an imperative for the liberal arts. My favorite essay, William Cronon’s “ ‘Only Connect...’ The Goals of a Liberal Education,” beautifully explains the type of education we are so privileged to experience at Hollins: "Liberal education aspires to nurture the growth of human talent in the service of human freedom.”
They listen and they hear. They read and they understand. They can talk with anyone. They can write clearly and persuasively and movingly. They can solve a wide variety of puzzles and problems. They respect rigor not so much for its own sake but as a way of seeking truth. They practice humility, tolerance, and self-criticism. They understand how to get things done in the world. They nurture and empower the people around them.
Further, he argues that those of us educated in the liberal arts tradition share 10 qualities:
Cronon adds as number 10, “Being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make
FROM THE
President
sense of the world and act within it in creative ways.” I believe with my whole heart that those 10 traits are what we do daily at Hollins and reflect who we are at our core. Cronon’s concluding sentiment is, for me, his most compelling: “Liberal education nurtures human freedom in the service of human community, which is to say that in the end it celebrates love. Whether we speak of our schools or our universities or ourselves, I hope we will hold fast to this as our constant practice, in the full depth and richness of its many meanings: Only connect.” My goal for our campus community this year is a variation of “only connect.”
I want us to look out for one another, to support one another, to lift one another. Our liberal arts education commands that we truly connect. When we choose to see one another’s humanity; when we choose to see the purpose of our work and liberal arts as connecting, it leaves us no choice in the end but to work — daily — to become the beloved community. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: “But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. The type of love that I stress here is not eros, a sort of esthetic or romantic love; not philia, a sort of reciprocal
love between personal friends; but it is agape, which is understanding goodwill for all. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.” My most fervent hope for each of us individually, and all of us collectively, is that we work toward goodwill for all. That our collective responsibility and mutual accountability will extend to how we see and care for each individual as we accept responsibility for creating the beloved community. This will be daily work; difficult work; enduring work. But it is the work that we — a community fueled by love — can undertake. Levavi Oculos!
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Loop U.S. News Recognizes Hollins for Social Mobility, Value Among National Liberal Arts Colleges
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he latest edition of the U.S. News 2022 Best Colleges ranks Hollins #16 among the country’s Top Performers on Social Mobility and #32 on the list of Best Value Schools. Hollins received both rankings in the National Liberal Arts Colleges category. To determine the Top Performers on Social Mobility, U.S. News & World Report explains that it looks at “colleges that enrolled and graduated large proportions of economically disadvantaged students who were awarded federal Pell Grants. The vast majority of these federal grants are awarded to students whose adjusted gross family incomes are under $50,000.” The Best Value Schools ranking “weighs a college’s academic quality alongside the net cost of attendance for a student who received the average level of need-based financial aid,” the guide, now in its 37th edition, reports. “The higher the quality of the program and the lower the cost, the better the deal. Only schools ranked in or near the top half of their categories are included because U.S. News considers the most significant values to be among colleges that are above average academically.” Hollins is ranked #105 overall in the National Liberal Arts category, and is also cited as an A+ School for B Students. “To judge the level of quality at each institution on the A-Plus Schools for B Students lists, U.S. News & World Report first examined two variables: the school’s performance in the 2022 edition of the Best Colleges rankings and the average freshman retention rate. Since the U.S. News rankings are a gauge of excellence, schools in National Universities, National Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Universities, and Regional Colleges all had to first be ranked in the top three-fourths of their 2022 Best Colleges ranking categories to be eligible for the A-Plus Schools for B Students ranking list.” In addition, the guide notes, “colleges had to admit a meaningful proportion of students who didn’t get straight As in high school.”
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#16 #32
among the country’s Top Performers on Social Mobility
#105 overall in the National Liberal Arts category
on the list of Best Value Schools
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School for B Students
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Loop Hollins Among The Princeton Review’s “Best 387 Colleges” for 2022
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ollins is one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduates according to the 2022 edition of The Princeton Review’s The Best 387 Colleges. Hollins is also featured in two of the “Great List” categories the education services company curates: “Most Politically Active Students” and “Great College Theater.” Each list names 16 to 29 colleges in alphabetical (not ranked) order. In the guide’s profile of the university, students praise Hollins as “a great place for people who want life experience” that provides “a lot of incredible opportunities for anyone willing to take them.” They also cite internship and study abroad opportunities as “exceptional” and describe faculty as “amazing, talented, dedicated, and compassionate.” The Princeton Review adds, “The alumni
network is similarly solid, and many students land jobs and internships through previous graduates.” “We salute Hollins for its outstanding academics and we are genuinely pleased to recommend it to prospective applicants searching for their ‘bestfit’ college,” said Rob Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief and lead author of The Best 387 Colleges. Only about 14% of America’s 2,700 four-year colleges are profiled in the guide. The Princeton Review chooses the colleges based on data it annually collects from administrators at hundreds of colleges about their institutions’ academic offerings. The company also considers data it gathers from its surveys of students at the colleges who rate and report on various aspects of their campus and community experiences.
Students praise Hollins as “a great place for people who want life experience” that provides “a lot of incredible opportunities for anyone willing to take them.”
“Amazing, talented, dedicated, and compassionate” faculty.
“Most Politically Active Students” and “Great College Theater.” The Princeton Review’s The Best 387 Colleges “Great List”
“Exceptional” internship and study abroad opportunities
“The alumni network is similarly solid, and many students land jobs and internships through previous graduates.”
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Loop Children’s Literature Association Honors M.F.A. Student
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manda Becker, who is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts degree in children’s literature at Hollins, has received the 2021 Graduate Essay Award from the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA). A four-member committee of children’s literature scholars selected Becker’s essay, “A Story in Fragments: An Analysis of Poetry and Perspective in October Mourning,” as the winner of this year’s master’s-level award. The Graduate Student Essay Awards recognize outstanding papers written on the graduate level in the field of children’s literature. They are considered annually and awarded as warranted. In 2008, the ChLA Board approved giving two separate awards each year, one for an essay written at the master’s level and one for an essay written at the doctoral level. “A Story in Fragments” focuses on Leslea Newman’s October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, a novel in verse responding to the 1998 murder of Shepard, a gay 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming. “Written with love, anger, regret, and other profound emotions, this is a truly important book that deserves the widest readership, not only among independent readers but among
Theatre Major Wins National Kennedy Center Award for Sound Design
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students in a classroom setting, as well,” noted Booklist in its review. “Most importantly, the book will introduce Matthew Shepard to a generation too young to remember the tragic circumstances of his death. Grades 8-12.” Of Becker’s essay, a judge stated, “One thing good scholarship does is strengthen its readers’ commitment to the literature it discusses: it prompts some to return to works they thought they knew and others to pick up those works for the first time. I think this is good scholarship. The analysis of the poetic effects of diverse perspectives…is sharply focused, sensitive to textual detail, and above all resists the temptation of reductive readings.” Another judge called it “original and interesting— not just related to interpretation of the specific text but also to the larger genre of poetry.” Becker received a $400 award, a one-year complimentary ChLA membership, and an invitation to present her paper at the ChLA’s annual conference, which was held virtually this year in June. ChLA is a nonprofit association of scholars, critics, professors, students, librarians, teachers, and institutions dedicated to the academic study of literature for children.
nna Johnson ’21 is among this year’s national awardees of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF). Johnson received the Kennedy Center Award for Excellence in Sound Design for her work on Hollins Theatre’s production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which was presented virtually in October 2020. She and other student artists were selected for outstanding achievement in a range of disciplines from eight virtual regional festivals that were held in January and February of this year. Johnson’s sound design for Curious Incident won first-place honors from the KCACTF Region IV, which includes colleges and universities from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Virginia. Kennedy Center first-place awards for excellence in scenic, costume, lighting, and sound design each come with a $1,000 cash prize. “This has been a remarkable year that forced students to adapt, and in doing so these students found new ways of working that have expanded their toolkits in ways that will make them stronger artists and changemakers in the field,” said KCACTF Artistic Director Gregg Henry. A theatre major, Johnson graduated from Hollins in May and is pursuing an M.F.A. in sound design at the University of Memphis. Presented by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., KCACTF encourages and celebrates the finest and most diverse theatrical productions from colleges and universities throughout the United States. Since its establishment 52 years ago, KCACTF has reached millions of theatregoers and made important contributions to the professional development of countless college and university theatre students nationwide.
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Hollins Honored as Tree Campus Higher Education Institution Hollins Alumnae Share in Winning Innovation in Diversity Award for Black + Abroad Series
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partnership led by five Virginia higher education institutions, including Hollins University, has been honored with the GoAbroad Innovation in Diversity Award for 2021. The award recognizes strategic efforts to expand international educational opportunities to traditionally underrepresented groups. Hollins, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), RandolphMacon College, Bridgewater College, and Shenandoah University were chosen as this year’s award winners for their initiative Black + Abroad. This virtual series, held during the 2020-21 academic year, curated a space for Black students to share their thoughts, questions, and reservations about travel (and study abroad) by engaging in conversation and storytelling with experienced travelers and study abroad alumni of color and education abroad advisors. The series was organized by the education abroad staffs from each of the five schools taking part in the collaboration. “The mission is to close the gap between being Black and going abroad. Black students hear from their peers, engage in candid conversations, and learn about how to overcome challenges to studying abroad, whether those are financial, practical, or racial,” said Jasmine Carter ’19, who along with fellow Hollins alumnae Nya Monroe-Stephens ’20, Tori Carter ’21, and Saffron Dantzler ’21 participated in Black + Abroad. All volunteered to share their experiences as Black travelers, overseas residents, and study abroad participants. Black + Abroad was first launched at VCU as an annual event created by study abroad alumni students of color. It subsequently evolved into this year’s virtual series, which featured six free sessions and welcomed 724 international educational professionals and 258 students. Recordings of the sessions, as well as additional resources for support and guidance, are now available on the Black + Abroad website as a tangible resource for students of color. “Studying abroad can be a scary prospect for many students, even for those who know they want to travel,” explained Carter. “Black students have their own unique concerns and challenges, which can often be overlooked or misunderstood by advisors, peers, and programs.” Carter added that by fostering discussions around “Blackness” and “Black perceptions” abroad, Black + Abroad is ensuring students “feel inspired and gain insight from experienced travelers who had to take the leap to travel for the first time at some point. At the same time, advisors will see the perspectives of Black students in order to better understand their needs and serve them in a more effective and equitable way.”
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he Arbor Day Foundation has recognized Hollins University as a 2020 Tree Campus Higher Education institution. Launched in 2008, the program honors colleges and universities and their leaders for promoting healthy trees and engaging students and staff in the spirit of conservation. “Over the past year, many have been reminded of the importance of nature to our physical and mental health,” said Arbor Day Foundation President Dan Lambe. “[Hollins’] campus trees provide spaces of refuge and reflection to students, staff, faculty, and the community.” To obtain this distinction, Hollins met the five core standards for effective forest management, including establishment of a tree advisory committee, evidence of a campus tree care plan, dedicated annual expenditures for its campus tree program, an Arbor Day observance, and the sponsorship of student service learning projects. “Your entire campus should be proud of this work and the leadership of [Assistant Professor of Biology] Elizabeth Gleim ’06 and the committee,” Lambe noted.
Sixty Green and Gold Student-Athletes Make ODAC All-Academic Team
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onoring their excellence in the classroom, 60 Hollins University student-athletes have been named to the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) 2020-21 All-Academic Team. This is the second consecutive year that 60 Green and Gold studentathletes have earned this designation. Hollins was led by the riding and swim teams, which each placed 12 members. Eligibility for the ODAC All-Academic Team is open to any student-athlete who competes in a conference-sponsored sport, regardless of academic class. Prospective honorees must achieve at least a 3.25 grade point average for the academic year to be considered for recognition. A total of 2,556 studentathletes from the ODAC’s 17 member institutions made the team this year.
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FACULTY RETIREES
Congratulations, Best Wishes, and Thank You to Our Faculty Retirees Hollins pays tribute to those whose impact in the classroom and beyond was invaluable.
PETER COOGAN
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his year, Hollins said farewell to six faculty members who announced their retirement from the university. They represent a variety of fields including art, art history, English and creative writing, history, and theatre, and they all possess a level of skill, knowledge, and commitment that enhanced the Hollins experience for countless students. In many cases, they also generously shared their talents with the community at large on a local, national, and international scale. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to these exceptional educators, and wish them well as they embark on the next chapter in their lives.
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ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY EMERITUS
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Coogan
or much of his career at Hollins, Peter Coogan was one of the most sought-after faculty members for speaking engagements at schools, civic groups, and other organizations in Southwest Virginia. And with good reason: Coogan drew upon his expertise in presidential leadership and other facets of modern American and world history to present entertaining and thought-provoking lectures such as “Myths of the Second World War,” “The War in Vietnam,” and “Presidential Character and Leadership in the 20th Century.” “…historians like Coogan look beyond legend,” the Danville Register & Bee reported following his presentation on the “Presidential Character” topic to students at Chatham Hall in 1996. Community audiences were getting a taste of what undergraduate and graduate students had enjoyed since Coogan joined the Hollins faculty in 1988: incisive explorations of topics ranging from the Cold War and America’s rise to power to foreign relations and national security policy designed to enlighten, prompt debate, and probe conventional wisdom. “Studying under Peter Coogan and [Associate Professor of History] Rachel Nuñez in the history department inspired a curiosity to learn about and question the world around me and the world that existed before me,” said Meika Downey ’17, who went on from Hollins to pursue a Master of Arts in history at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Academically, professionally, and personally, my time at Hollins was a transformative experience and informed who I am now. Perhaps the most important and transferable skills with which I emerged were the abilities to think critically and communicate orally and in writing. The academic rigor with which Professors Coogan and Nuñez taught their classes also invariably prepared me for graduate school.” When asked in what ways her Hollins experience had influenced her since she graduated, Megan Stolz Rogers ’09 stated that among other benefits, “I learned in one of Professor Coogan’s classes that it’s important to bring something of value to the conversation, rather than talking simply for the sake of talking.”
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PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH EMERITA One of Coogan’s lasting contributions to Hollins began in 2006, when he and other academic division representatives were tasked with identifying an aspect of student learning and not only developing a plan to improve it, but also to launch an initiative that would actually be transformative for Hollins students. “The first thing that struck us was that all our so-called ‘signature’ programs, such as internships and study abroad, were closed to first-year students—there was nothing specific for them to help them get going,” Coogan recalled in a 2013 interview for Hollins magazine. “We also figured out our first-year students were coming out of high school needing help with writing and thinking. What made sense to us was a program that focused on the first-year experience.” Coogan and his colleagues developed the idea for the university’s first-year seminar program (FYS), and it proved to be an outright success: Hollins’ scores in a number of National Survey of Student Engagement categories improved dramatically. As noted in the Quality Enhancement Plan that Hollins completed for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, “These seminars [emphasize] not just the traditional skills of research, writing, and verbal communication, they also [seek] to improve students’ passion for learning, their ability to learn collaboratively and to make connections between ideas across disciplines, and their abilities to solve problems actively and creatively.” At its inception, Coogan served as codirector of FYS and even taught one of the seminars, History Rocks. Among his students over the years was Aditi Sharma ’21, who came to Hollins from Nepal. Adjusting to the new environment, speaking English all the time, and missing her family were at times stressful, and she credits Coogan and the seminar with boosting her confidence. “Professor Coogan and that class encouraged me to speak out. I’m very vocal now about a lot of things. My high school friends wouldn’t recognize me. I was so timid then and in the shadows. In [Professor] Coogan’s class you were obliged to talk, and once that started happening, my confidence grew. History Rocks really helped me, and I can’t thank him enough.”
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athryn Hankla ’80, M.A. ’82 has been passionate about writing, especially poetry, since she was 12 years old. “Poetry combines many things I love: music, phrasing, concision, image-making, precision, shape making,” she told The Roanoke Times in 2018. “It’s a way of thinking and knowledge that only exists in poetic form; poetry cannot be paraphrased and retain its force and meaning.” Throughout a nearly 40-year teaching career at Hollins, Hankla has been devoted to her craft and equally focused on helping students understand the process of writing. As she explained in a 2012 interview for Hollins magazine, “Hollins has changed tremendously during that time, but the one constant has been the creative community I was seeking and I’ve tried to make possible for other people. If you’re a writer you’ve got to do your work in solitude, but that doesn’t mean you’re not nurtured by community.” She continued, “[Writing] happens in stages— generating ideas, drafting, revising, and editing. You also have to grow yourself spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally in order to write your best stuff. That takes time. You have to be the kind of person who can delay gratification. If you’re not, you won’t stay with it. “I hope I inspire my students to endure and maintain humility about what that means—not mastering something but remaining a student of it for a lifetime.” Hankla has remained committed to that philosophy throughout a remarkable span of creativity and productivity as well as dedicated support of new writers. After completing her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Hollins, she joined the faculty in 1982; the following year, her first collection of poetry, Phenomena, was published. Eight more volumes of poetry have followed, including Afterimages, Negative History, Texas School Book Depository and Great Bear (both finalists for the Library of Virginia Poetry Prize), Emerald City Blues, Poems for the Pardoned, Last Exposures, and Galaxies. Her works in other genres include fiction (Learning the Mother Tongue, A Blue Moon in Poorwater, The Land Between, and Fortune Teller Miracle Fish) and nonfiction (Lost Places: On Losing and Finding Home).
FACULTY RETIREES
CATHRYN HANKLA
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Carly Lewis ’21 remembered feeling both excitement and trepidation when she enrolled in her first advanced creative writing workshop, which was led by Hankla. “I was scared to read something from one of our random writing exercises during class because I thought it wasn’t going to be good. She told me, ‘No first draft is good. Just read it and you can fix it later. It’s not meant to be good at first.’ That’s always stuck with me. Even if you think it’s good, there’s always work to do. She’s always encouraged me to have confidence and trust my writing.” For Gabriel Reed M.F.A. ’21, working with Hankla during his second year in the creative writing M.F.A. program at Hollins was when he began “shifting my thinking about my poetry. I narrowed in on what I was attempting to write, and Cathy was perfect for me in helping me find that voice.” Based on Hankla’s recommendation, Reed’s debut poetry collection, Springbook, was accepted for publication by Groundhog Poetry Press. The Richlands, Virginia, native twice served as department chair; under her leadership in 2018, Hollins’ Jackson Center for Creative Writing introduced an undergraduate major in creative writing to complement its concentration and minor in creative writing and its Master of Fine Arts in the field. Directing the Jackson Center from 2008 to 2012, Hankla spearheaded partnerships with the Roanoke Regional Writers Conference and Studio Roanoke, and helped expand scholarship support for graduate students. In 2012, she began a two-year term as the Susan Gager Jackson Professor of Creative Writing. She is poetry editor for The Hollins Critic. Hankla’s commitment to both writing and teaching has earned admirers both on campus and beyond. “Her productivity has been truly astonishing [and] her work ethic sets the bar for all of us,” a colleague stated in 2018. In a 2003 book review for The Roanoke Times, Barbara Dickinson noted, “…her prodigious stream of poetry and fiction has been consistent in one respect: excellence. The unexpected aspect of her work is its far-reaching range of subject matter, which she brings to ground with accuracy and grace.” Beth Burgin Waller ’04 expressed those sentiments succinctly but no less powerfully in a 2006 Roanoke Times interview: “She’s a great person, writer, and mentor. People like her inspire me.”
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FACULTY RETIREES
KATHLEEN NOLAN PROFESSOR OF ART EMERITA
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athleen Nolan shaped the art history program into a multi-faceted program and taught majors, minors, and nonmajors the skills to perceptively and thoughtfully interpret images from the past and present alike. She focused on medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art history during her 35-year career at Hollins, and her scholarly interests include the history of women in the Middle Ages and the works of art commissioned by women to tell their stories. She co-edited Arts of the Medieval Cathedrals: Studies on Architecture, Stained Glass and Sculpture in Honor of Anne Prache. Her book Queens in Stone and Silver: The Creation of a Visual Identity of Queenship in Capetian France (Palgrave 2009) looks at queens’ personal seals and effigy tombs. Her articles and essays have appeared in The Art Bulletin, the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Studies in Iconography, and Gesta. Hands-on research was a hallmark of Nolan’s teaching. Thanks to a loan of decorative objects from the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia to Hollins’ Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Nolan’s 2017 Islamic Art class engaged with rare artifacts from the Near East, including rugs, pouring vessels, a traveling scribe set, a dish, a manuscript page firman, and bath sandals that date as far back as the 11th and 12th centuries and originated in Iran, Syria, and Turkey. “The students and I were thrilled to have these,” Nolan said at the time. “There was great excitement in the vault of the Wilson Museum when we got to experience these objects firsthand.” The following year, students in Nolan’s Gothic Art seminar conducted original research on a handmade French volume of prayer from the late 15th century called a book of hours that came to Hollins in the 1940s as part of an extensive collection of manuscripts donated by industrialist Samuel Herbert McVitty in memory of his wife Lucy Winton McVitty, who served as a member of the Hollins Board of Trustees. Produced throughout the medieval period, the books contained devotional text and also “some of the greatest paintings and drawings of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance,” according to Wendy A. Stein of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nolan’s class centered on the book’s images, or “miniatures,” and created detailed catalogue entries for Wyndham Robertson Library’s Digital Exhibits website. “I wanted the students in this particular
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seminar to develop a visible record of their research and enhance the online presence of this gorgeous manuscript,” she explained. For students in the Gothic Art seminar, examining the book of hours left an enduring impression. “I never thought I’d have the opportunity to come into such a close encounter with a manuscript like this that isn’t behind glass in a museum,” said art history major Clara Souvignier ’20. “It’s a prize that we have something this old and this worthwhile. The trust that Professor Nolan and the library placed in us means a lot.” Another memorable experience for a number of students was Nolan’s January Short Term course, “Julie and Julia and Me: French Cooking and Food Culture for Everyone,” where they immersed themselves in books and videos about French culture and also got to gather at Nolan’s home to try their hand at preparing French cuisine. “Years later, equations and theories may have no applications in daily life,” a Roanoke Times columnist wrote in a January 2012 article about the course. “But I’ll bet some of Kathleen Nolan’s students at Hollins University this term will never forget how to make French onion soup, flip an omelet, or truss a chicken.” Among the honors Nolan received during her academic career at Hollins was the 2002 Herta Freitag Faculty Legacy Award, which recognizes a full-time teaching faculty member who has received external recognition of professional excellence in the form of publications and papers, exhibits and performances, prizes, and other related expressions of their work. Nolan once called teaching at Hollins “one of the best jobs in America.” It’s easy to see why she found it so gratifying.
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RETIRED ADJUNCT LECTURERS IN ART
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onna Polseno and Richard “Rick” Hensley played a crucial role in expanding the breadth and scope of the art department at Hollins to provide creative opportunities for students and strengthen the university’s outreach to artists of all skill levels throughout the country. Before coming to Hollins in the early 2000s, the married artists were already internationally renowned for their work—Polseno for her hand-built vessels and figurative sculpture, and Hensley for his porcelain pottery. After graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute and then earning their graduate degrees at the Rhode Island School of Design, they settled in Floyd, Virginia, and started their own pottery studio. Separately and together, they were subsequently featured in many prestigious exhibitions; notably, both were in the “Young Americans” juried exhibition at the American Craft Museum early in their careers. In addition, their work has been widely published in ceramic books and magazines. “I strive to make pottery that carries with it a sense of energy and life that can only be enhanced when used for the presentation of food and flowers,” Polseno once noted in an artist statement. Of her sculpture, she said, “My work has been centered for years around the metaphor of women as the spiritual containers of life. My interest is in portraying the essence of a woman; her capacity symbolically and in the flesh, to give life, to nurture, and exhibit vulnerability, beauty, and strength.” Polseno and Hensley also taught classes and sessions and served as visiting artists in programs across the United States and around the world. The venues ranged from Alfred University and the Rochester Institute of Technology to the La Meridiana International School of Ceramics in Certaldo, Italy,
Bronte Hoefer ’22
FACULTY RETIREES
DONNA POLSENO & RICHARD HENSLEY
Polseno & Hensley
Turkey’s International Ceramics Symposium, and the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute in China. When Polseno and Hensley started team teaching at Hollins in 2004, they created the first in-depth ceramics program for the university, concurrent with the opening of the Richard Wetherill Visual Arts Center and the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum. In its catalogue for the exhibition Duo: Donna Polseno & Richard Hensley, which was on display this fall, the Wilson Museum stated, “Over the years, Polseno and Hensley’s ceramics program and the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum have grown up like siblings in the Visual Arts Center.” During the past 17 years, their work has been featured in several museum exhibitions, including Donna Polseno: A Mid-Career Survey (2006), which showcased Polseno’s sculptural work. “The two have dedicated their lives to creating, promoting, and experimenting with the possibilities of clay, and fostering generations of new artists in the field,” the museum noted. Polseno developed and founded the Women Working With Clay Symposium in 2011 to honor the accomplishments of women ceramic artists and create an environment that promotes ideas, images, artwork, and discussions. The symposium celebrated its 10th anniversary this summer with a virtual program featuring over 40 ceramic artists focusing on topics such as mentorship, social justice, and apprenticeships. Visiting Lecturer of Art Josh Manning paid tribute to the pair in an essay that describes Polseno and Hensley as “architects. Over the years, they have been known as potters, sculptors, ceramists, professors, or artists…as all of which Donna and Rick have rightly been addressed, and yet somehow they are all of these things at once. I settled on this word, architect, not because they are practitioners of architecture but because they physically and conceptually helped to build the scaffolding that I and many of my peers find ourselves standing upon.” Manning concluded, “Rick and Donna are knowing participants within the continuum of humanity that is ceramic art and they are helping to carry this conversation forward.” Polseno and Hensley are founding members of the nationally known 16 Hands Studio Tour, which since 1998 has highlighted the artistry of craftsmen in the Floyd area every May and November. They continue to work in their studio, teach workshops, and exhibit their work, and spend part of each year at their small house in Liguria, Italy.
IN THE
Loop
ERNIE ZULIA
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THEATRE EMERITUS
E
ver since he was a student in the fourth grade, Ernie Zulia has steadfastly believed that “not only can theatre be key to a strong community, but it can change the world.” Zulia brought that philosophy to Hollins in 2005 and it profoundly affected the world on campus. Under his leadership as associate professor and artistic director, Hollins Theatre became a dynamic and creative force on the stage. The theatre department brought national acclaim to Hollins, earning multiple Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival awards and a place on The Princeton Review’s list of the top college theatre programs in the country. In 2019, OnStage Blog named Hollins Theatre as the top undergraduate theatre program in Virginia. Before coming to Hollins, Zulia had already directed more than 100 productions of plays, musicals, operas, and world premieres in theatres around the United States and abroad. He was perhaps best known for his stage adaptation of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, based on the series of bestselling books by Robert Fulghum. The production premiered at Roanoke’s Mill Mountain Theatre (MMT) in 1992 and went on to receive thousands of productions around the world. At Hollins, Zulia built upon that distinguished reputation, challenging and entertaining audiences with a mix of dramas, musicals, comedies, children’s theatre, and new work by Hollins playwrights. In 2011, Hollins Theatre launched the Legacy Series, showcasing plays, musicals, and original theatre pieces based on works by Hollins’ most recognized writers and rising stars. Beginning with the classic children’s book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown ’32, the Legacy Series has included A Woman of Independent Means (Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey ’60), Bellocq’s Ophelia (Natasha Trethewey M.A. ’91), Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Annie Dillard ’67, M.A. ’68), Good Ol’ Girls (Lee Smith ’67 and Jill McCorkle M.A. ’81), and Decision Height (Meredith Dayna Levy ’12, M.F.A. ’18). Zulia estimated that about 4,000 schoolchildren, families, “and people of all conceivable demographics” saw Goodnight Moon during its 2011 run (the production enjoyed a revival in 2015), while Bellocq’s Ophelia, which Zulia adapted for the stage with Associate Professor of English T.J. Anderson III and Lexie Martin Mondot ’12, was invited to be presented at the Kennedy Center’s 11th annual Page to Stage Festival of New Play Readings after its February 2012 premiere at Hollins.
Zulia
On Labor Day weekend in 2016, Zulia and Hollins joined forces with the City of Roanoke, MMT, and Roanoke Public Libraries to organize the first-ever Starcropolis, an evening of live theatre beneath the Roanoke Star on Roanoke’s Mill Mountain. The event featured a series of short plays created specifically for the festival, including works written by playwrights from the Playwright’s Lab at Hollins University. “In this fast-paced world where we are all trapped in front of one kind of electronic screen or other, the live theatre event is more valuable than ever,” Zulia said of Starcropolis. “It brings us together in one place at the same time to share a laugh, shed a tear, and experience the power of great stories.” With Zulia’s creation of the Hollins Theatre Institute, the department’s undergraduate and graduate programs came together under one umbrella to foster unique opportunities for innovative theatre artists. One of the artists Zulia brought to Hollins was Todd Ristau, founder of the Playwright’s Lab. A $3 million gift from the James S. McDonnell Family Foundation to Hollins Theatre in 2009 gave Zulia the opportunity to transform and update the theatre space. In an April 2021 interview with The Roanoke Times, Zulia said, “I’ve had a fantastic run at Hollins. In many ways, it was a marriage made in heaven.” He emphasized that even though he has retired, he intends to stay actively involved with directing, writing, and especially college theatre. “Hollins and Wendy-Marie [Martin M.F.A. ’14, Certificate in Directing New Work ’17, Zulia’s successor as chair of the theatre department] have invited me to return as a visiting artist and consultant, and I plan to take them up on the offer.”
Fall 2021 13
S TAGI NG OUR
HIDDEN
History
Two Hollins alumnae connect with Colonial-era Virginia and celebrate our history’s oft-overlooked voices. BY JOSEPH STANIUNAS
A
s Hollins tennis player Julie Westhafer Basic ’96 was looking for something to do one off-season, she decided to take a swing at fundraising, landing a paid position in the Hollins advancement office's telephone fund drive. And she found that she loved asking people for money. “I was talking with alums, talking about the campus,” she said in a video chat in July. “At the end of the night, I was adding up how much I had raised through all of these conversations and all of the pledges and thought, ‘This is really important; I’m doing a lot of really
important work.’ It was like thousands of dollars, and I just felt so really good about it.” For some 20 years now, Basic has been involved in raising money for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation (JYF), the last 10 as senior director of development for the agency that oversees the sites of the Jamestown Settlement and the climactic victory over the British in 1781. “What we do here is tell stories of the cultures that converged in Virginia: the English, the Indigenous people, and the west central Africans,” she said. “And there are so many lessons and so much relevance that can be learned through those experiences.”
Julie Basic ’96
Julie Basic ’96 (left) talks to an interpreter in the Colonial Garden Living History Exhibit at the American Revolution Museum.
Basic outside the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown.
Fall 2021 15
At nearby Colonial Williamsburg, the living history museum recreating life in Virginia in the era between Jamestown and Yorktown, Claire Wittman M.F.A. ’21 is one of nine members of the Jug Broke Theatre Company. The group creates and performs short musicals featuring 18thcentury characters whose lives can reflect contemporary themes. “I’ve always loved research, and every play is an opportunity to learn new things about
reading books, teenagers enraptured, parents juggling two kids and a dog,” she said. “To put the needs of the audience first and foremost is one of the most valuable lessons, to have one eye on the audience — how are they feeling at every moment.” Even if a few of them walk out of a performance. In different ways both women are using their talents to bring more diverse and inclusive experiences to visitors to America’s Historic Triangle.
“People are interested in these stories and that’s what I think is so exciting. There’s a lot of conflict and polarization with it, but learning about these cultures is something that I see everyone enjoying, and for us to be able to tell those stories is so important.” the period that I’m writing in, about a historical figure, about a book, about myself, about the world that we live in,” she said over coffee one morning just after the debut of The Peddler’s Opera, a piece she and two colleagues created. It’s based on an early American folktale about a seller of wooden bowls and spoons who convinces townsfolk that their porcelain pottery carries the plague. “At a single show we can have babies in strollers, elderly people, teenagers on their phones, teenagers 16 Hollins
Julie Basic entered Hollins expecting to be a teacher and developed a passion for history and the way it was taught by Professor of History Emerita Ruth A. Doan and other professors. “It wasn’t necessarily what to think about history but how to think,” she said, “to do your research and look at primary sources and come up with your thesis and justify that and be prepared to come to class and wrestle with it with your classmates.” An interest in history, love of education, and awareness of how fundraising can
do so much to advance both means that “everything has come together for me here, and that’s why I’ve been here so long.” Her previous work in advancement includes stints for the University of Virginia law school, Mary Baldwin University in Staunton, Virginia, and for the University of North Carolina Cancer Center. Since coming to JYF, she’s been involved in the campaigns for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the 2019 commemorations of the arrival of the first African slaves and the birth of the Virginia legislature, and the annual fund drives that help not only to operate the museums and living history exhibits but to broaden the visitor experience to include the stories of the Black Americans who fought with and against the Continental Army, and the intersection of women at Jamestown from three different cultures: English, Indigenous, and Black. “People are interested in these stories and that’s what I think is so exciting,” she said. “There’s a lot of conflict and polarization with it, but learning about these cultures is something that I see everyone enjoying, and for us to be able to tell those stories is so important.” A native of Bedford County, Virginia, Claire Wittman recalled visiting Colonial Williamsburg “dressed in my American Girl dress with my matching doll,” though she and other patrons would have never encountered a program like her short musical, The Ladies of Llangollen, about two 18th-century women who live as a couple in Wales. She first heard about Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby on a podcast and thought that “it was always what we look for in our shows. It was sweeping, it was adventurous, it was romantic, it had the possibility for music.” And it was authentic, based on primary sources. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t write “My beloved wife’ in my personal private diary to anyone who is not my beloved wife. And I thought this was lovely and romantic, and we don’t really have a romance, so let’s write this one. And I didn’t realize this would be the first public program at Colonial Williamsburg to address queer themes.” Wittman says the audience reaction
Claire Wittman M.F.A. ’21 (left) as Eleanor Butler during a performance of The Ladies of Llangollen.
has been approving and warm, though some people have left once they realized what they were seeing on the Play House open-air stage on the site of the first colonial theatre. Visitors should expect to see more programs like this throughout Colonial Williamsburg in coming years, Wittman says. “It’s worth mentioning that the reason we have these primary source documents is because these were wealthy white girls. We know this history because we have
this history, and there are stories from even more marginalized communities that are lost to us.” Communities whose hidden history is continuing to emerge thanks in part to two women of different generations, united by a love of the past and ties to Hollins University. Joseph Staniunas is a visiting lecturer in communication studies.
Wayne A. Hill
Wayne Reynolds
Wittman (right) backstage at the Colonial Williamsburg Play House before a performance of The Ladies of Llangollen.
Fall 2021 17
You Worry
LESS When You Prepare
MORE
Kim Shaw’s [’88] winding professional journey from English major to farm-to-table entrepreneur. BY SARAH ACHENBACH '88
Photos by Kim Shaw ’88
18 Hollins
im Shaw ’88 made peace with North Carolina’s weather years ago. Worrying about when it would rain, how much it would rain, and how hot it would be used to be a daily worry when tending to Arkansas Travelers and Early Girl tomatoes, and the dozens of other vegetables, herbs, fruits, and flowers she grows on the three-acre farm she and her husband Rohan Gibbs established within Charlotte’s city limits 14 years ago. “When we’d put down rows of drip tape for irrigation, it was guaranteed to rain,” says Shaw of Small City Farm, their 24/7, year-round, farm-to-table enterprise that supplies several Charlotte restaurants with produce and lush bouquets, wreaths, or garlands she arranges. “We learned that there’s nothing you can do about the weather. You worry less when you prepare more.” Being a farmer was never part of the plan. After graduating from Hollins in 1988 with a degree in English, Shaw took a position as editor and legislative liaison for the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office in Richmond before moving to Charlotte. After temping for a few years, Shaw, who likes to cook and organize events, took a job at a catering firm. In 1998, Shaw launched her own wedding planning business, Moonlight & Magnolia, and penned The New Book of Wedding Etiquette: How to Combine the Best Traditions with Today's Flair (Penguin Random House, 2001). “I loved being a wedding planner and think it’s fun to have things be perfect or have the illusion of being perfect,” she says. [Full disclosure: Shaw was my roommate during our senior year, and I can confirm that she probably is the only wedding planner in the history of the industry to have a passportsized tattoo of the Doors’ Jim Morrison on her back.] But running a start-up was far from perfect, and Moonlight & Magnolia folded in 2002. Shaw quickly shifted to a job as an event planner for a catering company, then director of catering for a private club in Charlotte. “I tend to fly by the seat of my pants,” Shaw explains with a deep laugh. “I like to worry about the details later and just forge ahead.”
K
Fall 2021 19
20 Hollins
Shaw
Further proof: her college search. “Hollins was the only school I applied to. I had no back-up plan. My dad wanted me to go there,” says Shaw, who moved from her native England to Beaufort, South Carolina, as a young girl. “Even as much as I remember not wanting to go there, I remember my first day at Hollins, what I was wearing, and how it felt when we drove through the gates. I knew I was home.” Having a rewarding career in a field light years away from her major is hardly unique. A 2013 New York Federal Reserve study found that only 27% of college graduates were employed in the field of their major, a percentage verified by Inside Higher Ed two years ago. Shaw doesn’t see it so much as a winding path from writing and editing to farming but a deliberate, new one. “I did so much stuff within my major early on,” she explains. Yes, Hollins’ liberal arts focus certainly helped plant the seeds for lifelong curiosity, but much of her agricultural career was forged by her personality. “I don’t love sitting around talking about doing things,” she says. “I want to do it. Then you can talk about it.” When she married Gibbs, an Australian transplant, in 1997, they started gardening. For her new catering position, she and the club’s chef, Paul Verica — he now owns Charlotte’s renowned restaurant The Stanley, and just opened Orto, an Italian restaurant — also carved out a small kitchen garden at the club. “The local farm-to-table movement had just started, and the garden wasn’t part of my job, but I made it part of it,” Shaw recalls. “It became my favorite part. There is something super magical about growing something and having a chef take it and create something incredible. I was learning everything — I was not a good grower at all [then]. We had a fair amount of failure.” When the 2007 financial downturn eliminated her position, she briefly considered another catering director job, but decided to jump into farming: “A week before I was laid off, I had a conversation with Paul and asked him if we grew more food at our house, would he buy it?” His assurance was all she needed to take the leap. Within a few months, Shaw was selling beets, kale, chard, and carrots at the Charlotte Regional Farmer’s Market. By 2010, her 20 raised beds in her yard couldn’t keep up with the demand, so she and Gibbs moved Small City Farm to its current seven acres, bought chickens, and started a CSA (community-supported agriculture) membership. With a USDA grant in 2017, they added a 30'x70' hoop house for year-round growing. “Every jump in farming is a blind landing,” Shaw says, her accent a charming muddle of English slang and Southern drawl. “As hard as you think farming will be, you end up wishing it was that easy.”
Her days start at 5:30 a.m., often in pajamas and farm boots. During the week, Shaw is the only one tending the crops, picking produce, arranging flowers, handling orders for the food wholesaler, and making deliveries. Gibbs, who works full time as vice president of operations at Hope Haven, a residential facility for those recovering from substance-use disorders, drives the tractor on weekends and handles the mechanical work. Each January, they start over 3,000 seedlings, and everything requires advance planning. “In September, we’re thinking about December,” Shaw adds. “Last spring, we thought Orto would be opened, so we planted more Roma tomatoes than usual, but because of the pandemic, he couldn’t open it. Even for chefs, it’s hard to make them understand that each tomato plant yields 10 pounds.” Life took another turn in 2017. While Shaw was pulling a cooler out of her pickup truck for a delivery, a hinge caught her left breast nipple, causing it to bleed. She didn’t give it much thought — injuries are common in farm work. After visits to several doctors and a diagnostic mammogram, a biopsy revealed stage three breast cancer. Her diagnosis on October 1, 2019, is not lost on Shaw, who is a poet and was editor of Cargoes, then Hollins’ only literary magazine. “How symbolic to be diagnosed on the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” she says. She began chemotherapy soon after, followed by a lumpectomy and radiation (and five blood transfusions). Shaw found solace in the rinse-and-repeat rhythms of sowing, weeding, watering, and harvesting. “I used to get mad at her, but that’s how she kept herself going,” Gibbs explains. Her friend Verica concurs: “Kim is too feisty, and she wasn’t going to let something like cancer keep her down.” Her local community and Hollins friends rallied around her. “My Hollins friends were awesome,” says Shaw, who is now cancer free. “I don’t know how other people’s friendships are at other colleges, or if it is only Hollins. I always thought we’d all still know each other this far down the road, but it’s kind of amazing that it came true.” Sewing also bolstered her spirits. At Hollins, the self-taught Shaw sewed custom dresses for students. Every February, Shaw thinks about quitting. “I always say that I am not doing this anymore,” she admits. “Farming is too hard for too little money. But going back to working in an office, I really can’t see it.” She’d miss how her hollyhocks take her breath away or shaking dirt off freshly harvested rainbow carrots. Or how her cats and dogs tail her through crop rows while she pulls onions or picks pomegranates. But mostly Shaw would miss the ways Small City Farm brings her closer to the people. “It’s super rewarding to go to a restaurant and know it’s my stuff,” she reflects. “Growing food for people is a very personal thing — farming is a way to be connected with people.”
Learn more at smallcityfarm.com. Follow Small City Farm on Facebook @smallcityfarmer and on Instagram @smallcityfarmer
Sarah Achenbach ’88 is a freelance writer living in Baltimore.
Fall 2021 21
BUILDING A
Beautiful Legacy
22 Hollins
Hollins’ Black Alumnae Chapter’s Scholarship Will Help Black Students Thrive BY KAREN ADAMS M.A. ’93, M.A. ’00, M . F. A . ’ 10
O
ver the past year, when so many things were ending or constricting, one wonderful thing was growing: Hollins’ Black Alumnae Chapter. The chapter became more active during the pandemic, despite lockdowns and widespread isolation. It also gained new members through focused communication efforts. The rebirth was the work of the chapter’s leadership team: Shaneka Bynum ’07, Krishna Davenport ’96, Kim Dokes ’06, and LaNita Jefferson ’07, all of whom had held leadership positions while they attended Hollins. Davenport formed a Facebook page for the chapter several years ago, and last year Jefferson began to think about how to grow it. “We decided to get together to discuss how to help Black students really succeed at Hollins,” Jefferson said. The chapter now has more than 200 members, with more than 140 new since early 2020. Besides the Facebook page, it also has an e-newsletter, created by Dokes. The first step in growing the chapter was making connections. “We wanted to know what other Black alums were doing around the country,” Bynum added. The group held several online meetings via Zoom and promoted the Facebook page that Davenport had created. Dokes offered her editing and computer skills to start the quarterly e-newsletter, to supplement the Facebook page, and to reach members who are not on social media. “We have tripled the number of engaged Black alumnae/i in well under two years,” said Suzy Mink ’74, vice president for external relations. “It is phenomenal, and we are so grateful for this exceptional level of growth from this creative grassroots effort.” Jefferson, a sociology major who now works as a mental health therapist in Columbia, South Carolina, and her longtime friend Bynum began talking at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown about how they could connect with other Black alumnae/i.
Fall 2021 23
Bynum
“I did learn how to advocate for myself while at Hollins.”
24 Hollins
“We asked what we could do to impact other Black women and how we could help them,” said Bynum, a women’s studies major who works as an administrative and training coordinator at Duke University’s school of medicine and is earning a master’s degree in higher education at UNC-Wilmington. Those conversations led to a coordinated effort to create a Hollins University Black Alumnae (HUBA) scholarship to support Black Hollins students who accept internships requiring extra money that they or their families may not be able to provide — a reality that may cause them to decline those opportunities. The scholarship idea arose while the four friends were discussing their own Hollins experiences. “We wanted to raise money for a student who identifies as Black and wants to study abroad or accept an internship but whose family would find it hard to pay for,” said Jefferson, who was not able to study abroad herself. Some students cannot ask for additional funds from their families, Bynum explained, to cover the cost of traveling abroad for a semester or for the added expenses of an internship far from home, such as housing, transportation, work clothes, and other needs.
Davenport
She recalled her own experience of wanting to study abroad and accept an internship far away but not being able to. “I grew up povertystricken, and I could not just ask my mom to help with the extra cost,” she said. “But I did learn how to advocate for myself while at Hollins.” She found a good on-campus internship that led to a job in alumnae/i relations. As part of a generous gift from John Belk of $500,000 to the Hollins endowment in 2007, the Claudia Watkins Belk ’60 International Scholarship Fund was established. Intended to honor his wife and former Hollins trustee, the fund specifically aims to address similar financial concerns related to study abroad opportunities. The fund provides financial assistance to Hollins students who have demonstrated financial need for funds to meet their college expenses and who desire to participate in Hollins Abroad or in one of Hollins’ other international study and/or service learning programs. Presently, however, money to address similar concerns for students with internship opportunities is an identified need that lacks sufficient funding, Mink noted. Even as certain alumnae/i do not intend to be regular donors to the annual Hollins Fund, they are increasingly motivated by a specific current need that connects them to their own past experiences. After finalizing the HUBA scholarship idea, the group’s leadership team met with President
Dokes
Mary Dana Hinton to explain their purpose. Hinton offered her enthusiastic support. The chapter announced an initial goal of $2,500 to support at least one student in need for the first year but quickly surpassed that goal and had raised over $4,000 by August 2021. The chapter also created special T-shirts and hoodies for sale, with proceeds going toward the scholarship. “This amount means we can possibly help two students this school year,” said Jefferson. “When Hollins alumnae/i know of a need that is personal to them, a need that can help others in a similar situation, they work diligently to make giving a reality. There’s something incredibly rewarding and empowering to that experience for all of our alumnae/i,” said Hinton. “I’m grateful for the energy and passion our alumnae/i have brought to this effort, and I’m optimistic that we will see more and similar efforts like this from our alumnae/i in the years to come.” Their mission is to help Black students succeed at Hollins, the four leaders said, because — even during hard times, past and present — Hollins has shaped their character and helped them grow. Jefferson recalled a day in her second year at Hollins when she thought she would need to drop out due to a lack of funds, brought on because of her mother’s expensive medical bills at the time. The late sociology Professor William Nye saw her crying in a computer lab and sat with her.
Jefferson
“He talked to me for half an hour. He said I needed to stay and fight for myself, and he told me where to get help.” She did get assistance, including a work study job, and remained to complete her degree. Now a wife and mother of three as well as a therapist, she is also studying for her doctoral degree in counselor education at the University of South Carolina. “His talk changed my life,” Jefferson said. “I would not be who I am today without that experience and without Hollins.”
“When Hollins alumnae/i know of a need that is personal to them, a need that can help others in a similar situation, they work diligently to make giving a reality.” Dokes, who majored in dance and German, lives in Fremont, California, with her husband and three children and is both a general manager for Bath and Body Works and a teacher of hip-hop dance. During the height of the pandemic, when her retail stores were closing, she was
Fall 2021 25
home on maternity leave and far from most of her Hollins classmates. Deeply affected by the Black Lives Matter movement and the divisive political climate, she reached out to the chapter. “I was searching for a way to get involved and make a difference for our community,” she said. “We wanted to create something so that Black students can turn to this resource for help.” Recalling her own challenges, she described how expensive it was for her to attend the prestigious Alvin Ailey dance program in New York one January Term. She stayed with a friend in New Jersey and took the daily train to Manhattan because she could not afford nearby housing. Support for the scholarship has blossomed, but Dokes noted that support for each other has been just as important. “I’m really grateful for these ladies, especially during a difficult time,” she said. “This has changed my life.” Davenport, who majored in economics, has worked on Wall Street since graduation. She noted that as a student she was able to accept an internship in expensive New York because she was from Brooklyn and could live at home. She recently formed her own trading and consulting company, which focuses on helping Black women, especially mothers, understand the stock market. “I want to help all women, but it’s especially important for Black women, who don’t often get the financial information they need,” said Davenport, a mother of two herself. Her experience in a male-dominated field taught her many things, one of which was that women need to support each other. She finds it remarkable that during the pandemic, a time when so many women were isolated, the chapter was able to make new and stronger connections. “It was the pandemic that got us together, and it was the pandemic and President Hinton that helped us make this scholarship a reality,” she said. “Our work is being recognized.” Hinton has made diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) a key and ongoing priority at Hollins, and noted that the increased connection with and between Black alumnae/i is part of the efforts. Nakeshia Williams, who began her role as vice president for DEI at Hollins in July, sees the long-term on-campus goals of this work as inextricably linked to building stronger bonds between the university and its alumnae/i of color. “HUBA is actively working with us to establish a legacy of learning and becoming something better and greater for young women 26 Hollins
of color at Hollins,” Williams said. “Together we are creating meaningful pathways for our students to start practicing the power of their voices so that our next generation can lead and deliberately foster change within their communities and beyond.” Davenport noted the full-circle feeling of creating a scholarship that grew from the needs she and the others had while students at Hollins. “We are using our voices as catalysts for change,” she said. “It’s a beautiful legacy.” Karen Adams (M.A. English/creative writing ’93, M.A. ’00 and M.F.A. ’10 children’s literature) is a local writer and teacher.
Interested alumnae/i are invited to consider purchasing a sweatshirt or T-shirt, with profits from the sale going to support the Hollins University Black Alumnae/i Scholarship dedicated to Mary “Miss Emma” Bruce and Hazel Lawson, two women who provided significant years of service to the Hollins community. This HUBA scholarship will be utilized by a student who identifies as a part of the African Diaspora and who seeks additional financial support for pursuing an internship. BOTH STYLES HAVE THREE DATES THAT SIGNIFY THE FOLLOWING:
1842—
First enslaved
1966—
First Black student enrolled
2020—
First Black president of Hollins
T-shirts ($25-$27) and hoodies ($51-$56) can be purchased through the Hollins Store (hollinsbookstore.com). Prices vary depending on size.
If you are interested in more information about the scholarship and/or joining the Facebook group, please contact the alumnae relations office at alumnae@hollins.edu.
n a e D T e h T e c n a D f o Endalyn Taylor M.F.A. ’12 is appointed Dean of the School of Dance at UNC School of the Arts BY K AREN ADAMS M.A. ’93, M.A. ’00, M . F. A . ’ 10
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he new dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA), Endalyn Taylor M.F.A. ’12, aims to help young dancers strive to be their absolute best, as artists and as contributors to society. “For our students, I hope there is a sense of balance in that they not only become incredible technicians as dancers but also become good citizens of the world,” she said. Taylor, a conservatory-trained dancer as well as a choreographer and educator, has performed on Broadway and stages worldwide, including as an original cast member of the Tony Award-winning Broadway productions of The Lion King, Aida, and Carousel, roles that included acting and singing. She was director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) School when she came to Hollins in 2011 to earn her M.F.A. Influenced by DTH School founder and mentor Arthur Mitchell, who had encouraged dancers to expand their minds, Taylor had heard friends and colleagues speak highly of the Hollins program. “They noted how it took into account your life experience,” she said. “In dance, there is so much learning in the doing.” The Hollins dance faculty also drew her. She welcomed the opportunity to work with program director Jeffery Bullock, Tommy DeFrantz, Irene Dowd, and others. “The faculty had such a wealth of experience and perspectives different from my own,” she said. “They inspired me to dig deeper and look at the multilayers of dance and what it had to offer to me as an artist, as a teacher, and as a citizen of the world.” Studying with and learning from her fellow students, some of whom she had danced with before, also shaped her Hollins education. “The community experience was so special, aligned with the academics and learning and challenging the mind.” “With dancers, the kinesthetic intelligence is obvious; we may hone in
on our physical ability,” she said. “But when you strengthen the element of who we are as thinkers, as critical thinkers, it builds a sense of confidence in your ability to contribute to society, as leaders and as changemakers.” Taylor’s commitment to diversity and accessibility has been a hallmark of her career. “As a woman of color, ballet didn’t always show me a clear path for myself,” she said, an experience that led her to help dispel the “myth of elitism” in the field. She has long been a voice and a role model for Black ballerinas. Taylor grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the daughter of evangelical Baptist ministers James and Lillie Taylor, and loved dancing from an early age. “Music and creativity is in my lineage,” she said, noting that her maternal grandfather was a pianist, singer, and entertainer. She often danced with her family and friends at house parties and block parties. “Dancing was in my culture and in my community. It was innate; it was natural.” One day, while seven-year-old Taylor and her mother were visiting a family friend, she was so moved by the music she heard on the TV that she climbed up on a table to dance. Her mother’s friend commented on Taylor’s natural gift and recommended dance training. Soon Taylor was enrolled at the Mayfair Academy of Fine Arts, and later at the Ruth Page School of Dance, a top ballet training center. She joined the DTH School in 1984 and became a principal dancer in 1993. During her time there, she performed leading roles for Coretta Scott King, Colin Powell, President Bill Clinton, the late Princess Diana, the late Nelson Mandela, and many others. As a dancer, she became known for her strength and ability to leap high, a fitting image for her life of activism as well. As DTH School director from 2005 to 2013, Taylor taught, choreographed, and staged a variety of works, and in 2010 was invited to bring her students to the White House by President Barack
Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as part of their new arts initiative. Prior to joining the UNCSA faculty in August, Taylor spent seven years teaching ballet and musical theatre as an associate professor of dance at the University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign. Over her illustrious career she has received a number of awards, including an Initiative for Multi-Racial Democracy
and Eivory, a student at Southern Illinois University — Taylor is committed to helping people of all backgrounds shape the future. There is an important difference between being shaped by the past and being stuck in the past, Taylor noted. “Being stuck prevents progression and innovation, but we can build on our past,” Taylor said. “For students and the next generation, all these layers of
“There’s a wellspring of beauty and passion and learning and understanding in diversifying, and if we can mirror that in what we do as artists, that becomes contagious to the world.” Award and an Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Illinois, and was profiled in the Big Ten Network’s documentary short Illinois Artist: Endalyn Taylor, which earned a MidAmerica Emmy in 2019. With her wide experience, Taylor was an ideal choice for UNCSA, which trains students in both classical ballet and contemporary dance. The school’s emphasis on innovation, inclusion, diversity, collaboration, and unity also fits with Taylor’s own life vision and activism. As she told Dance Teacher magazine earlier this year: “There’s a wellspring of beauty and passion and learning and understanding in diversifying, and if we can mirror that in what we do as artists, that becomes contagious to the world.” The mother of two sons — Eddie, a firefighter and professional dancer,
history are essential for moving forward.” UNCSA’s prestigious dance program has been “a blessing to come into,” Taylor said. “My vision is to maintain and move forward the technical excellence, rigor, and training of our dancers,” while continuing to celebrate diversity, she said. She also hopes that young dancers will think beyond the edges of their art. “We need peacemakers, we need civic engagers, we need people who will challenge and question. I seek to help them gain a sense of their voice as artists and contributors to the world,” Taylor said. “Never underestimate what you can access through the arts.” Karen Adams (M.A. English/creative writing ’93, M.A. ’00 and M.F.A. ’10 children’s literature) is a local writer and teacher.
REUNION 2022 IS GOING TO ROCK!
CELEBRATING CLASSES ENDING IN
2s & 7s
| 1s & 6s | 0s & 5s
PLUS THE RECENT GRADUATING CLASSES OF
2020
| 2019 | 2018
After two years of virtual reunions, Reunion 2022 will be a wonderful and long-awaited time to reconnect in person with friends and bask in the beauty of the Hollins campus. Return to the rocking chairs on the Main porch. Spend quality time with your classmates and friends, and celebrate your days at Hollins. Visit hollins.edu/reunion or call 1-800-TINKER-1 with any questions.
