Raising Lazarus and Coming Home: Beth Macy M.A. ’93
Returns to Hollins
“Just remind yourself why you’re here.”
Two Hollins alumnae have devoted their professional lives to higher education.
How one Hollins alumna uses her psychology expertise to humanize the workplace
Hollins Magazine
Vol. 73, No. 1
December 2022 - February 2023
EDITOR
Billy Faires, executive director of marketing and communications
ADVISORY BOARD
President Mary Dana Hinton, Vice President for Institutional Advancement Anita Walton, 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
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, 7916 Williamson Rd., 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 Nakeshia Williams, vice president for student success, well-being, and belonging and Title IX coordinator, at (540) 362-6587 or williamsnn1@hollins.edu. Questions, comments, corrections, or story ideas may be sent to:
Magazine Editor
Hollins University
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8 Raising Lazarus and Coming Home: Beth Macy M.A. ’93 Returns to Hollins by Marin Harrington M.F.A. ’23 and Julia Mouketo ’23
12 “Just remind yourself why you’re here.”
Two Hollins alumnae have devoted their professional lives to higher education, one in advancement and the other in academic administration, both because of beliefs borne from their Hollins experiences.
by Ruby Rosenthal M.F.A. ’2416 A People-Centered Approach
How one Hollins alumna uses her psychology expertise to humanize the workplace
By Marin Harrington20 Nearer to Vital Truth
Poems by T.J. Anderson III, Thorpe Moeckel, Professor Emerita Cathryn Hankla ’80, M.A. ’82, and Annie Woodford ’99, M.A. ’00.
4 In
Last summer, I knew that I would soon be making a major “ask” of faculty and staff: At the onset of the 2022-23 academic year, we would begin developing a new five-year strategic plan for our institution.
A strategic plan is basically just a roadmap that outlines institutional priorities and guides our daily work for a time. But for our strategic planning process to truly be transformational for our university, I realized that my colleagues at Hollins and I would have to step out with trust and take some risks. Frankly, the process would likely require us to be uncomfortable at times. I decided that I wanted to spend some time this summer intentionally putting myself into those same challenging situations: risky spaces, vulnerable spaces, learning spaces.
I was the learner; the student. I was in a space of critique, risk, and vulnerability. It was uncomfortable. It was humbling. You see, I expected the task to be fairly easy: get on the horse and ride. As someone who is used to getting things done, I found myself fearful of what would happen if I messed up. I found myself sweaty, nauseous, out of control, not in charge, and afraid of falling. I had to accept that I wasn’t going to be cantering by my second lesson. And while I doubt I’ll ever be a seasoned equestrian, I loved every minute of it and did learn a great deal.
In fact, I believe that some of the principles I gathered on horseback can have particular meaning for any group going into strategic planning.
On horseback, every rider must be aware of these three factors: position, path, and pace. Likewise, in strategic planning, you must start by being attentive to where you are currently positioned. What are your strengths and challenges? What’s the context in which you dwell? To move forward you must understand your present position.
So, I took horseback riding lessons on campus.
I confess, I never even touched a horse before I came to Hollins, and riding would turn out to be the hardest physical and mental activity I have attempted in a long time. In the ring, I was suddenly no longer the leader.
Next, how do you want to move forward as a result of that context? What path do you want to be on, where do you want to go, and how quickly do you want to move? Your path and your pace, on a horse and on a strategic plan, must resonate and align. As you think about your institutional position, you will likely learn there will need to be some urgency to your pace, but you have to be careful that you don’t confuse
“In the ring, I was suddenly no longer the leader. I was the learner; the student. I was in a space of critique, risk, and vulnerability. It was uncomfortable. It was humbling.
“fast” with “forward.” You must plan forward and set your pace accordingly.
There’s a saying in riding that you have to “ask and allow.” When you ask a horse to do something (it’s called “delivering an aid”) and the horse responds, then you have to let go. The same is true for planning: based on your position, path, and pace, ask for what you want and then allow those who can, and are willing, to do the work. Otherwise, progress is hampered. In riding, if you keep pulling the reins after the horse has stopped, you end up going backward. In strategic planning, if you want to grow, you deliver the aids and allow the work to happen.
I spent a lot of time last summer thinking through how to send clear, consistent directions when riding My Way (my steed’s actual name, not merely a convenient metaphor), and that is also extremely important when it comes to planning. Once you settle on where you want to go, you have to consistently work in that direction and keep moving forward. When you make a mistake, you don’t freeze and retreat. You regroup and deliver the aids. And above all, you don’t lose trust.
Riding and strategic planning parallel one another in a couple of other crucial ways. First, you have to coordinate opposite movements. Often, your left hand and right leg (or the opposites) have to work in unison, and you have to coordinate those movements with the horse’s. It’s not easy! On an institutional level, you have to excel at this mentally
when planning. You may have different priorities, but, as on horseback, those different coordinated movements must work together in order to progress and transform your institution.
Additionally, a coordinated forward movement necessitates mutual reliance and consensus building. Neither My Way nor I fully got our way in the ring. We each had to give and take. That, too,
me to learn (he’s a good-looking horse!). But I discovered that if I wanted My Way to move, I had to look at where I wanted to go before delivering the aids. This is the great truth about strategic planning, too: you have to look up and ahead. You have to look in the direction you want to go. You have to deliver the aids. Then, you have to allow the momentum to unfold.
is essential in planning. A good plan won’t reflect any individual person, but it will reflect the entire community in unison.
The most important thing about riding a horse is that you cannot advance if you spend your time looking down at the horse. That was hard for
At Hollins, these ideas will guide both the priorities and the process of strategic planning. We may feel discomfort. We may sweat. We may not want to be vulnerable or take risks. But our institutional future demands those experiences if we are to move forward.
“This is the great truth about strategic planning, too: you have to look up and ahead. You have to look in the direction you want to go. You have to deliver the aids. Then, you have to allow the momentum to unfold.”Boyd Pearman Photography
Hollins is one of the founding partner institutions for a new women-focused professional development program that offers students technology and career readiness skills.
Hollins and Sweet Briar College are joining with technology company Cognosante as the Falls Church, Virginia-based firm launches its Women in STEM Alliance, which seeks to prepare women for careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
According to Jeffrey White, director of Career Development and Life Design at Hollins, the partnership offers students of most any major the opportunity to engage their liberal arts competencies in a tech and government work environment. “Although the program emphasizes STEM,” he explained, “Cognosante also has a need for interns in a variety
of departments such as human resources, research, and communications.”
“Proactively addressing gender inequity in the workforce is essential to enhancing diversity within the federal government contracting industry,” stated Cognosante Chief Administration Officer Jennifer Bailey. “The women’s colleges we partnered with share our commitment to eliminating gender bias through meaningful opportunities and developing the next generation of leaders.”
The Women in STEM Alliance features a 10-week paid Summer College Analyst Program and a semester-long paid Scholars Program.
“This opportunity can help take Hollins students to a new level of career readiness and marketability,” noted White.
For her dedication to higher education and student success, Assistant Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences Mary Jane Carmichael has received the 2022 H. Hiter Harris III Rising Star Award from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges. After teaching high school science at the beginning of her career, Carmichael decided to pursue an advanced degree with a goal of becoming a faculty member at a small liberal arts institution. She completed her M.S. in biology at Appalachian State University and then returned to her alma mater, Wake Forest University, where she earned her Ph.D. in biology.
Nora Kizer Bell Provost Laura McLary noted that Carmichael, who joined the Hollins faculty in 2017, sees higher education “as a true and clear calling. Students are attracted to her radiant confidence and natural care for their growth and development, as well as her humble kindness and generous spirit. As developing scientists in a field still largely dominated by men, her students draw strength from the example she sets.”
Carmichael’s research has taken her from belly crawling in caves in eastern Tennessee to mucking through wetlands in coastal North Carolina. At Hollins, she has supported student research on a variety of topics, from the human microbiome to cave ecology to the physiological ecology of high-elevation spruce fir forests in the Appalachian Mountains.
Adigital video production by students in Hollins’ Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) program in screenwriting and film studies has been cited by two renowned film festivals. Bless Your Heart, a four-episode comedic web series written by Bri Kaisen, Michael Greenwald, and Ian Deleon, was named Best Web Series in the November 2022 monthly competition sponsored by Top Shorts, a leading online film festival that was selected by Motion Array as one of the best short film festivals for up-and-coming filmmakers. Top Shorts is one of the best-reviewed festivals on the website FilmFreeway, with over 200 five-star reviews.
The production also earned Honorable Mention in the Best Original Story category in the New York International Film Awards’ (NYIFA) monthly film and script competition for November 2022. NYIFA’s goal is to acclaim films and filmmakers from around the world and to serve as the next stage in their careers.
Kaisen believes that “none of this would be possible” without the guidance and support she has received as she pursues her M.F.A. in screenwriting at Hollins. “I’ve completely evolved throughout the program. I’ve gained confidence in my writing and learned so much from the amazing teachers we have. Hollins’ screenwriting program has given me a real chance to succeed in the industry.”
Hollins has received $428,000 in federal government funding to enhance dual enrollment offerings for high school students in the Roanoke Valley region. The appropriation is part of $200 million in funding secured by U.S. Senators Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine for community projects in Virginia.
“Dual enrollment courses make higher education more accessible and affordable for many of Virginia’s students, and it’s important that our schools have access to the qualified workforce they need to offer them,” Kaine said. “I am glad this funding will support Hollins University in expanding access to graduate studies for teachers in the Roanoke Valley to further their educations, qualify them to teach dual enrollment courses, and better serve students in the region.”
The Hollins project, which will be coordinated with Roanoke’s Virginia Western Community College, is designed to support the development of a new program for local teachers who seek to complete graduate-level coursework in English, history, mathematics, or art in order to build dual enrollment teaching capacity and opportunities.
“In an increasingly complex world, education matters. Given the need for investment in advanced manufacturing, technology and communications, health care, and other industries that require advanced degrees, the Roanoke Valley is eager to produce more students prepared to complete bachelor’s degrees,” said Steven Laymon, vice president for graduate and continuing studies at Hollins.
Hollins students earned multiple honors at the annual Appalachia Regional Model Arab League (MAL) conference in November. MAL is the flagship Youth Leadership Development Program of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations.
Hollins was named the conference’s Overall Distinguished Delegation, and the university’s participants captured several group and individual awards:
• Distinguished Delegation in the Council on Palestinian Affairs: Ava Kegler ’25 and Sammy Stuhlmiller ’25
• Outstanding Delegation in the Summit of the Arab Heads of State: Kayla Richardson ’24 and Phil Anh
• Outstanding Chair: Harper Dillon ’25
• Distinguished Chair: Sofia Olivares ’25 and Claire Ross ’23
Hollins students also served in key leadership roles at the conference, including Bianca Vallebrignoni ’23, secretary general; Chanmolis Mout ’23, assistant secretary general; and Jenna Johnston ’25, chief justice of the Arab Court of Justice simulation.
John P. Wheeler Professor of Political Science Edward Lynch and Assistant Professor of Political Science and Gender and Women’s Studies Courtney Chenette ’09 jointly organized the 2022 conference, which was held at Hollins.
“This is an important element of the university’s emphasis on experiential learning,” Lynch said.
Eight delegations composed of student representatives from George Mason University, Georgia Southern University, Georgia State University, Hollins, Roanoke College, Virginia Military Institute, and Roanoke’s Community High School participated in the event, now in its eighth year.
To develop Hollins’ philanthropic priorities and activities and promote engagement with alumnae/i and friends of the university, Anita B. Walton has been named vice president for institutional advancement.
I am delighted to welcome Anita to our community,” said President Mary Dana Hinton. “She has enjoyed deep experience and success with fundraising and alumnae/i engagement and also brings a thoughtful, generative, and student-centered perspective regarding how and why we do our work. I am confident that she will be an impactful leader and coach to the Institutional Advancement team and valued and beloved supporter to our Hollins alumnae/i and friends.”
Walton comes to Hollins from Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) in North Carolina, where she served as vice chancellor for university advancement and executive director of the ECSU Foundation, Inc. In that capacity, she was the university’s chief development officer, creating an infrastructure of high-performing staff, volunteers, and boards. She developed fundraising and engagement strategies to increase funds and implemented technology upgrades to enhance operations and customer experience.
“As a first-generation college student, I know the power of support and advocacy for an institution and the difference it can make,” Walton said. “It has been my personal mission to ensure that current and future students are afforded the opportunity to receive the resources and support needed to achieve their dreams.”
With support from the U.S. Department of State’s Increase and Diversify Education Abroad for U.S. Students (IDEAS) Program, Hollins and Kenyatta University (KU) in Nairobi, Kenya, are launching a faculty-led study abroad program in gender and women’s studies (GWS) and public health during the 2024 January Short Term. The two schools are also creating internship opportunities for availability beginning in the 2024-25 academic year and exploring a possible articulation agreement with KU’s Master of Public Health program.
“Hollins’ collaboration with KU is our sole partnership in Africa, which in turn is critical for providing our students with a diversity of study abroad experiences in terms of location and disciplines,” explained Assistant Professor of Public Health Abubakarr Jalloh. “Partnering with KU means our students can gain practical field experience on crosscultural issues related to GWS and public health. In addition, this partnership will enhance career
Hollins is partnering with a national nonprofit organization that focuses on protecting the emotional health of young adults to build upon the university’s existing student mental health, substance use, and suicide prevention efforts.
Through The Jed Foundation (JED), which for more than 20 years has helped colleges and universities strengthen their support networks and emotional safety nets, Hollins is participating in an initiative called JED Campus Fundamentals, which will guide the university through the
development of systems, programs, and policies that prioritize student well-being.
In conjunction with experts from the fields of adolescent psychology, suicidology, and public health, JED worked with the National Suicide Prevention Resource Center to produce a comprehensive strategy for promoting mental health and lowering suicide risk. “Everything Hollins is going to go through as a JED campus relates back to that approach,” explained Ethan Fields, director of higher education program outreach and promotion at JED. “It starts
readiness for GWS and public health students through the establishment of international internships with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Nairobi.”
“Our long-term plan is to develop an exchange program to benefit both Hollins and KU students as well as to create joint faculty research projects and teaching exchanges,” added Director of International Programs Ramona Kirsch. “There are many potential directions with this partnership, and Hollins will work with KU to nurture these directions in both depth and breadth.”
with helping the campus really look at and evaluate how it can infuse natural, therapeutic life skills development throughout the student experience.”
Together, Fields said, Hollins and JED will consider an array of factors, including social connectedness; identifying students early on before a crisis occurs; evaluating current services on campus and in the community related to mental and physical health and substance use; and crisis management.
The Williamson Road apartments, located directly across the main thoroughfare from campus, faithfully served more than 40 years’ worth of Hollins students, most often seniors, as a trusted and beloved—if not always perfect!— living space.
Plans were to demolish these apartments once a majority of their replacements, the Student Village located on Faculty Road between the Hill Houses and the barn, were completed in 2020. However, the arrival of COVID-19 necessitated using them as quarantine and isolation spaces for students who tested positive or were exposed to the virus during the 2020-21 academic year and for parts of the 2021-22 year as well.
Within the year, the apartments will be razed in order to make way for a new phase for Hollins and for the larger Hollins area, and options are being explored for ways to make the best use of the property to serve our campus community and to, potentially, generate revenue in service of the school’s budgetary needs.
In the next issue of Hollins magazine, we will look to share more information about the plans for that property, but we also invite our alumnae/i to share their memories and their photos of good times past in those apartments and in the courtyards and parking lots around them!
If you have stories and photos to share, please email magazine@hollins.edu.
BY MARIN HARRINGTON M.F.A.
’23 AND JULIA MOUKETO ’23
For Beth Macy M.A. ’93, there is nothing better than talking to strangers and telling them what she has witnessed, heard, and felt. She’s been at it since she was four years old. Indeed, Macy recalls that it was during that time that she ran away from her home on her tricycle with her beagle mutt, Tessie.
She was later found in the grocery store by a neighbor who brought her back to her mother, interrupting Macy’s chat with the butcher. When she was 10 years old, it was only normal that her first-ever job was that of a papergirl—and the first girl to do it in her neighborhood. Macy recalled that delivering the paper taught her to talk to all kinds of people. She explained that besides delivering the paper, she had to collect it from the printers on Fridays and Saturdays. This series of interactions with different people allowed her to understand that she had to negotiate, do math, and much more.
While her frantic childhood and first job drew the path of her career and life, Macy also believes that going to a university changed her life. Though fully on federal financial aid and some scholarships, Macy worked hard, sometimes taking multiple jobs to sustain herself. Experiencing life beyond her hometown of Urbana, Ohio, and escaping the small world she had known to that point, was very important to her, as was holding onto the life-changing idea that the world was a lot bigger than her small Ohio town. And so she did.
She went on to become a talented journalist. Indeed, Macy worked with
The Roanoke Times and contributed to publications such as The New York Times and The Atlantic—which she recalled not even knowing existed when she was in college.
She studied journalism at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and later got her M.A. in creative writing at Hollins University. She returned to Hollins last November as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series to talk about her newest book, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, and deliver a lecture stemming from topics explored in the book.
In her lecture, Macy discussed the activists, health care workers, addiction specialists, and patients who are the focus of Raising Lazarus, a follow-up to her New York Times bestselling 2018 book, Dopesick: Doctors, Dealers, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (which was also adapted into an Emmy award-winning Hulu miniseries). While Dopesick focused on the rise of the opioid crisis, Macy described Raising Lazarus as being about “people having that aha moment” with regard to successfully helping individuals who live with opioid use disorder (OUD).
“When I first started talking about Dopesick, I would tell people how we’ve lost 72,000 people in the last year and we know that’s an undercount. Plus, it doesn’t consider addictionrelated suicide, hepatitis C, HIV, and endocarditis. Now I say we’ve lost 108,000—every one of them a tragedy,” Macy said. “I think what’s happening when we make the dope easier to access than the treatments is that people are falling through this giant chasm.
They are dying because of this yearslong divide between treating people like criminals and moral failures or treating them like people who have a medically treatable condition.”
A number of statistics strike Macy as emblematic of the problems— and solutions—facing those on the front lines of the opioid crisis: “We know addiction is a chronic relapsing disease. It takes the average person four to five treatment attempts over an average of eight years to get just one year of sobriety. We also know that we have a treatment gap of 87%, which means that in the past year, only 13% of folks have been able to get treatment for their addictions. That’s largely because we make the medicines for opioid use disorder—buprenorphine and methadone, the gold standards of care— almost impossible to get in the United States.
“The reason I thought this book was so important to write now is because of the opioid litigation settlement dollars about to come down. In fact, some of it is already landing in communities. Every dollar that we spend on treatment can save $12 or more on reduced criminal justice and health care costs,”
Macy explained. “When I talked about Dopesick after it was published, I started to hear really innovative, exciting things that were happening and I decided I wasn’t done yet. I think this will be a way for people to have a guidebook on what to do with the opioid litigation money.”
In Macy’s purview, the most essential work being done right now is increasing patient access to medicationassisted treatment for OUD. “About 5% of folks with OUD were able to access buprenorphine in the past year, but a local couple, the Doctors Hartman, run an outpatient clinic for Carilion and they continue to increase their capacity to help more people,” she said. “I wrote a piece for The Atlantic in March 2020 about this addiction pioneer I had met named Nikki King. She started working as a mental health and addiction specialist at a rural hospital in Indiana, where the community had just voted that their number-one problem was the opioid epidemic. Judges and the cops are trying to come together and Nikki says, ‘Well, what are we doing now for people when they’re getting out of prison or jail? Their addiction hasn’t been treated in
jail and they are 40 times more likely to overdose and die if they return to use, so it’s a really vulnerable moment.’
“Nikki designed a program working hand in hand with probation and the courts to bathe folks getting out of jail in services. When she met with the first group she asked them what their goals were, and one person said he wanted a second pair of pants; another person said he wanted to taste salmon for the first time. They were all food insecure; they all had spent their entire teenage years, 20s, and 30s cycling in and out of jail, so the program provided them services: nighttime intensive outpatient treatment so they could work during the day, help getting jobs, food security, and signing them up with Medicaid. They were able to get on their buprenorphine, and in 18 months they had zero overdose deaths. That’s astonishing.”
Macy is also full of suggestions for citizens of the Roanoke area who want to be involved in harm reduction movements. “I would suggest contacting the Virginia Harm Reduction Coalition, which is running mobile now. They now have an outreach worker in Southeast Roanoke and they’re doing amazing
Beth Macy M.A. ’93 signed copies of her newest book and chatted with attendees in the Wyndham Robertson Library following her talk.
work. You can go pack Narcan kits, make donations, and use your voice as a citizen if you know judges or other members of law enforcement.
“A lot of people think I called the book Raising Lazarus because of the overdose antidote Narcan, which is part of harm reduction, but it’s really because it’s a story a harm reduction worker I know, Michelle, uses to get people who haven’t bothered to educate themselves about the opioid crisis to check their blind spots. She’ll say, ‘Jesus brought Lazarus back. He performed the miracle, but then he had the disciples roll the stone to bring Lazarus out. He had the disciples unbind Lazarus and remove his burial cloth.’ And what she says to groups that aren’t so sure they want to do this work is, ‘It’s messy, it’s stinky, you might get a little something on you, but only by getting close to the ground will you experience the miracle of raising Lazarus.’”
Marin Harrington is a current student in the creative writing M.F.A. program who will graduate this May.
Mouketo is a senior majoring in communication studies.
Julia
“When I talked about Dopesick after it was published, I started to hear really innovative, exciting things that were happening and I decided I wasn’t done yet.”
Two Hollins alumnae have devoted their professional lives to higher education, one in advancement and the other in academic administration, both because of beliefs borne from their Hollins experiences.
BY RUBY ROSENTHAL M.F.A. ’24When Michelle DeRussy Dodenhoff ’85 was a senior at Hollins, the only thing she knew she wanted to do after graduation was move to New York. “I was senior class president. We were at convocation, and Hollins had just hired a new vice president for institutional advancement (Executive Director of Development and College Relations Nena Whittemore),” she said. “We were talking, and she asked, ‘Why don’t you come intern in the development office?’ So I did.” And through her internship, Dodenhoff was sent to a CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education) conference as a student delegate. “And I thought, ‘Okay, this is really fun,’” Dodenhoff remembers.
“So I graduated, I went to New York, and within three weeks, I had a fundraising job,” she said. “And I’ve been doing it ever since. But without that initial conversation with the VPIA at convocation, if she hadn’t given me that opportunity to learn about a field that I had no idea existed, I would be on a different path. I attribute 100% of my career to Hollins.”
Christa Davis Acampora ’90 also forged her path to a career in higher education a bit unconventionally. “I wasn’t destined to be an academic. I’m the first in my family to even attend, much less graduate from, college,” she said. “I loved learning as a young person and as a student, so I probably always imagined that I might go to college, but I had no sense of what college life was like.”
While at Hollins, Acampora was a Hollins Scholar, which included an advisory program with a faculty mentor. She recalls this as being “tremendously formative” for her, especially her relationship with her advisor, the late English Professor John Cunningham, who worked at Hollins from 1969 to 2003. “John spent a great deal of time asking me a lot of questions that at first seemed irrelevant, but he really took a lot of time to understand me as a person,” Acampora said. “He wanted to know what I found interesting and what types of academic activities I enjoyed. He really got to know me as a
person. And he made recommendations for me—I wouldn’t say that it was focused on career or professional goals—it was more questions about the kinds of things I like to think about and trying to assess those.”
Through Cunningham, Acampora was able to discover her love of philosophy, majoring in it at Hollins and later getting a Ph.D. from Emory University. “I was introduced to a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of being a student and engaging with my colleagues and professors,” she said. “It taught me a lot about how to be a learner, how to be a thinker, and it changed my life.”
Today, both alumnae are leaders in higher education. Dodenhoff is the University of South Carolina’s vice president for development and Acampora
is the dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia.
Dodenhoff’s first job after graduation ended up being the alumni coordinator of the annual fund at Marymount Manhattan College. Later, she went back to her hometown, New Orleans, and did alumni work at Tulane for 11 years. Then she was recruited and hired by USC and helped organize the launch of Carolina’s Promise in 2011, the university’s first billion-dollar campaign.
Dodenhoff instantly lights up when she talks about her job.
“Of course, working in health [for example] is incredibly noble, changing and saving lives every day. But you know, we’re doing the same thing in higher ed, but in a different way,” Dodenhoff said. “I think there’s not
“I was introduced to a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of being a student and engaging with my colleagues and professors. It taught me a lot about how to be a learner, how to be a thinker, and it changed my life.”
a week that goes by that I don’t cry at something. Just the stories that the students [tell me], they’re so energizing. I tell my team, ‘If you’re having a bad day, go walk in a classroom building, just walk the halls, just go sit outside in the hallway and listen to a class, just remind yourself why you’re here.’ I love it.”
To motivate her team, Dodenhoff tells them she wants them to feel valued; she wants them to come to work and leave every day knowing that they’re doing something bigger than themselves; and she wants them to have fun. “This is a donor-centered program. Every decision we make and every act we perform is done with our students’ and faculty’s best interests at heart, because that’s why we’re here. It’s not about the money, it’s about the impact. And so rarely do we talk money, or even say “fundraising.” It’s about matching individuals’ passions to priorities and needs, finding ways to be creative and innovative for the benefit of our students and faculty.”
Acampora is similarly passionate. She worked at Emory University as a deputy provost and professor of philosophy. Prior to Emory, she taught at Hunter College and the City University of New York’s Graduate Center. Acampora was also Hunter’s associate provost for faculty affairs and research, as well as the editor of The Journal of Nietzsche Studies. Through her many experiences at universities around the country, she believes that a liberal arts education matters more today than ever before, and she learned that from Hollins.
“Hollins taught me quite a lot about how to ask big and important questions. The kinds of questions that we’re confronting when we look at the inevitability of global climate change, the explosion of data, the ability to draw on and make important policies and conclusions, using artificial intelligence, the emergence of synthetic biology that will essentially allow us to create new forms of life—these are challenges that we’re facing as human beings that are of scale and that were unfathomable, even a generation ago,” Acampora said. “We need the arts and sciences to tackle the complexity, and the scale of challenges that we face today.”
Acampora knows that with modern technology, higher education is changing rapidly before our eyes, but that our academic institutions are more enduring than we sometimes give them credit for. Even with more traditional institutions closing, she notes that new ways to learn and connect have emerged that enable people to be a students across a lifespan.
“We’re also seeing public skepticism about the value of higher education. Some of this is healthy. Some of it is also connected with some other social and political challenges that we’re facing, where higher education kind of gets caught up in those disputes and disagreements,” Acampora said. “But I also think there’s no better place than
me on my professional course,” she said. “You never know when those kinds of unexpected opportunities will land if you’re not out there, if you’re not engaged.” Dodenhoff reflects that she was not the best student, but the skills she learned by being a student leader, by being active and having a lot of interaction with administration taught her skills that she carried through her entire career.
Acampora thinks about inclusive excellence when she reflects on her Hollins experience. As a dean at UVA, she says she asks herself and her colleagues, “What does it really mean to belong here? One of the things that I continue to draw on as an academic leader is thinking about what inclusive
our colleges and universities to serve as an example of how you can disagree with each other fiercely and intensely yet nevertheless pursue common goals and common ends, which is what we need to do together in a democracy. So higher education generally needs to demonstrate and defend its value. It should be held accountable by the public. I also think it’s the most likely source for preserving our democratic institutions.”
Both Dodenhoff and Acampora cite their Hollins experiences as impactful in their current careers. Dodenhoff recommends active engagement in college. “Get involved. Plain and simple. If I had not done that, [if I was not] the senior class president, I would never have had the conversation that started
excellence looks like in the contemporary world, what achieving it would demand of us,” she said. “And something that was tremendously powerful for me at Hollins, and is deeply important to me now, is how is the vision of inclusive excellence really stretched in a maximal way? When we think about what it means to belong, to actually contribute to the presence and meaning of a place, that was part of my Hollins experience—all of the special ways in which an intentional community, like the one at Hollins, can create senses of belonging and can be reimagined to fit our current circumstances.”
Ruby Rosenthal is a current student in the creative writing M.F.A. program, currently on course to graduate in May 2024.
“Get involved. Plain and simple. If I had not done that … I would never have had the conversation that started me on my professional course. You never know when those kinds of unexpected opportunities will land if you’re not out there, if you’re not engaged.”
BY MARIN HARRINGTON M.F.A. ’23
For Elizabeth Brownlee
Kolmstetter ’85, her selfdescribed “practical personality” is the perfect fit for a career in public service.
In November 2022, Kolmstetter joined the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as the organization’s first-ever chief people officer. “It’s wonderful and thrilling to be asked and thought of for this position,” she said. “This model of having a chief people officer focused on workforce strategy, workplace culture, and the people who are here to get work done is pretty new to the government. Now we have the focus and capacity to use a human-centered approach to understanding and addressing what’s happening within the organization. Is our culture healthy, and what is the employee experience? Are people getting what they need to bring their best selves and talent to their work every day?”
Kolmstetter earned her B.A. in psychology and computer science from Hollins before completing her M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Virginia Tech. “Industrial and organizational psychology is a science dedicated to improving the well-being and performance of people and the organizations that employ them, which includes finding proven ways to create a healthy workplace culture,” she
Elizabeth Kolmstetter ’85 (fourth from right) poses with CISA colleagues for a “Wear Blue” in support of Human Trafficking Awareness Day in January 2023.explained. “A lot of organizations put a bunch of words or core values on a poster and they have a few informational sessions and maybe even a campaign, but until you feel those values and see them in the behaviors of the leaders and the employees, they aren’t the culture yet. The culture is how things actually get done.
“An organization’s culture is important, particularly an intentional focus on cultivating a strong culture versus just hoping it happens. We can do evaluations, we can set specific goals, and we can measure to see if we’re achieving these goals. I’ll be putting a lot more of the strategy and more deliberation around how we’re doing as an organization and if we’re meeting the goals surrounding our cultural principles at CISA.”
In addition to an emphasis on a healthy workplace culture, Kolmstetter is equally invested in researching and growing workforce engagement and strategy. “We measure workforce engagement through different surveys and ways of researching how people
bring their best selves to work every day. What are the barriers that they’re facing? If we remove those, we tend to see engagement go up—which is critical because it helps us attract new talent and retain the talent we have. People want to feel good about the work they’re doing and be able to bring their talents to that work.”
“When it comes to workforce strategy, I’m a big believer that there aren’t really prescriptive career ladders anymore, where you do one thing and then another and go up the hierarchy. Work and jobs are just not that static anymore, especially with the pace of technology advancements. Careers are a combination of experiences and skill development, and each one is going to be different, just like every person is different, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t help people understand how certain experiences and skills will open opportunities for them. If someone aspires to be promoted to a certain position, we want to help them understand what skills and knowledge they need to get there, so that even if that exact job changes or goes away, they are set to advance in their career.”
After more than 25 years in the field, Kolmstetter was recently selected by President Biden to receive a 2022 Presidential Rank Award, which honors senior executive service, senior-level, and scientific-professional employees for their performance and service to federal agencies over an extended period of time. She was recognized in the Meritorious Executive category for her work as director of the Talent Strategy Engagement Division for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Only five percent of senior executive service employees across all government agencies can receive the Meritorious Rank award each year.
Kolmstetter is eager to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to workplace innovations. While a student at Hollins, she wrote a paper about a little-known concept called artificial intelligence. In 2017 and 2018—years before the coronavirus pandemic created a workfrom-home surge—she led a study at NASA which piloted remote work to much success. Now, as CISA’s first
“People are better able to perform their best when they are healthy and feel a sense of belonging.”
chief people officer, she hopes to be at the forefront of a national movement toward human-centered workplaces.
“The pandemic has really highlighted well-being and health. How can people bring their best talents to work if they’re dealing with their own or their family’s stress and health issues? There’s no compartmentalizing of a worker doing work from a person with outside-of-work responsibilities anymore—there is a total blending of lives in and out of work,” Kolmstetter said. “Action-forcing events in our country tend to be big, tragic ones. Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, anything involving the loss of life. Our brains are going, ‘How could this have happened?’ But all of a sudden, we become more focused on humanity, and we understand that society does not work if we don’t take care of each other.
“I just read a study where the number one thing people said was important during the pandemic was knowing somebody at work cared about them— having someone ask, ‘How are you doing? Are you and your family okay?’ Not, ‘Did you get these 10 things done on your task list today?’ We’ve got to keep this as part of our model of a healthy workplace. Mental health care is a huge need now, and some employers are still in a mindset, ‘Isn’t that someone else’s business to take care of?’ The top-rated workplaces are those that recognize it is their business to provide assistance programs, supportive leaders, and well-being focus because people, not ‘cogs in a wheel,’ are coming to do work for them. People are better able to perform their best when they are healthy and feel a sense of belonging.”
Kolmstetter’s time at Hollins in particular shaped her passion for fostering caring environments. “I went through a really serious health condition my entire time at Hollins, and my friends were always there for me, even when I studied abroad in London and had to be hospitalized. There’s a sense of caring and I never felt I was on my own. The faculty, staff, and whole community will work with you if you need something.” Also a member
of the university’s Board of Trustees, she added, “With President Hinton, I think we were very purposeful about hiring a president with a big heart. She embodies that heart of Hollins, which includes learning how to care for others as evidenced by the superb Culture of Care that got us through the pandemic as a community.”
Kolmstetter’s mother, Paula Brownlee, was president of Hollins from 1981-1990. Kolmstetter did not attend Hollins until her sophomore year, after transferring from a coed university. “My first year of coed college, the guys were the ones running everything. They were in the student government, they were the heads of clubs, we all watched the male sports teams. I picked up on that because I was trying to get engaged, but it was hard. Once I attended Hollins, I was able to get into student government, be a student tour guide, group leader at orientation—participate in any activity that I wanted to try. If I wanted to move into a leadership role, I never felt like it wasn’t an opportunity.
“That self-confidence, especially for women, is critical. The foundation I received during my time at Hollins was essential. We had to write essays, we had to think critically, we had to express and defend our thoughts out loud— both because of the small classes and the amazing, dedicated professors who weren’t just giving multiple-choice tests. I think that all women need to have the freedom to develop and practice those skills.”
Just like she aspires to encourage her colleagues to bring their whole selves to the workplace, Kolmstetter is also optimistic that Hollins will continue to nurture compassion. “I hope students take advantage of what we call the ‘Hollins Bubble.’ It’s kind of an oasis that’s different from the real world because it’s such a caring place to try new things and be supported no matter who you are. It’s important that students feel valued so they can go out in the world and treat other people the same way.”
Marin Harrington is a current student in the creative writing M.F.A. program who will graduate this May.
Hollins has long been championed as a creative hub, and perhaps in no category is this better known than in its creative writing. Its online Hollins Authors (hollins.edu/authors) database includes over 1,000 alumnae/i who have had works published across a wide range of topics and categories, with a sizeable portion of those in the areas of fiction and poetry.
Since October 2022, three current and former Hollins professors and one alumna have had books of poetry published, and we highlight a selection from each here in the closing “Creative Corner” section of this issue. T.J. Anderson III recently published t/here it is in January 2023. Thorpe Moeckel published According to Sand: Poems in October 2022. Professor Emerita Cathryn Hankla ’80, M.A. ’82 published Immortal Stuff: Prose Poems in February 2023. Annie Woodford ’99, M.A. ’00 published Where You Come From Is Gone: Poems in October 2022.
So flesh comes to this: hawkweed & monarch, sweetflag in clumps, densities of ochre, new vowels up from cutbank’s loam, some dot to dot the eyes trace to spell a way into flame azalea, pink azalea, laurel buds, so many, about to burst. Bless, double, the startled raccoon, the eight wood ducks taking off. Goldfinch, hermit thrush, how flowering blackberries unbramble the dusk. And bless this breath, the next. Each rill and mewl, cohosh’s glances, trillium in fruit, the gash & gush of a tributary entering under black locust, brief flurry of blossoms in the breeze, spring’s plunder & wheeze.
T.J. Anderson IIIAll the little calves rising all the mud all the sarvis berry wild cherry the valentine tips of maples and plum all the lavender of unopened oak velveting the mountainside all the morel all the smell of chicken shit spread on fields all the suffering stink of it lay me down beside your dying my shame is that I wasn’t there to hold you keep you clean conjure lambs and measure morphine moisten your lips tell you the story you told me how your father once hid a case of moonshine from the law that was knocking on your door by tucking jars all around your mama dog and her new puppies suckling on a pile of rags in the basement and you knelt there tending them while the men shined flashlights over your mama’s canning the inside of her chest freezer the wardrobe full of clothes and found nothing while the puppies whined and struggled to draw closer to their mother their eyes still closed their bellies still tender from their bitten umbilical cords knotted blood you could feel against your palm as you lifted them to your cheek their paws scrabbling the air and they searched blindly with their perfect snouts trying to lift their heads
Annie Woodford ’99, M.A. ’00
20 Hollins
Here’s about to, the prepwork, saprise & seepdrip. Here is all there isn’t to know.
* Schisms in the soilsphere— toothwort, violet, cleaver.
* Early April, poplar’s green shiver, visibility for glades.
* This ridge Terrapin Mountain, that one, White Oak Knob— no morels yet, many ferns still curled.
* Plungepools & pocketwater— trillium there, & there, trillium.
*
Don’t call it work what the boulders do, but what they don’t do, the rest.
*
The punchbowls, the hollows in every hollow.
* Here is lair, and the waterthrush at evening piping up, at morning, too.
* Still a little bite in the air, still a little gobbler scratch, & rue.
* The duff a treatise on parchment, weather’s imprint, notes on the future, the last next generation all at once.
* Buckrub & split trunk, a tick in your flanksteak, deadfall, more deadfall. If zest, if spritz.
* That it go on, the hellebore, the black birch’s shelf life, polypore & parasitic burls.
* Anemone, anemone. Thorpe Moeckel first published in Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review
Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant across the tracks in my town in 1920. My mother was also born at home in the same town in 1918 and named Joyce. After being dropped in Clover when her mother died, Henrietta had to plant and harvest tobacco until her hands were sticky and stained. Growing up, my mother spent as much time as possible in the public library, turning pages of books. In college, she got a summer job there. Joyce and Henrietta both married in 1941, one couple in April, the other in June. Henrietta already had two children and would have three more. Ten years later, Henrietta Lacks died from cervical cancer in Johns Hopkins hospital the year my mother gave birth to her first child. Nothing touched the pain Henrietta endured. Without her knowledge, her cells were harvested and cultured for medical research. The HeLa immortal cell line is still doubling and redoubling in test tubes around the world. Both of the houses where Loretta/Henrietta lived in my town have been torn down. The houses where my mother lived are still standing. My mother died in 2016 of old age without any grandchildren. I asked her to spit into a vial, so I could learn more about my ancestry. She was skeptical but took the test for me. When her results came back they revealed mostly what she’d said, British Isles. I have no idea where I’m going with this. There’s really no comparison to make between my mother and Henrietta Lacks.
Cathryn Hankla ’80, M.A. ’82, professor emerita, Immortal Stuff: prose poems (Mercer University Press, 2023)is May 26-28, 2023
Reunion 2023 will be a wonderful time to reconnect 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.
Please scan the QR code or visit alumnae.hollins.edu/reunion
2023wishes to take our brief survey about your ideal reunion.
HOLLINS DAY OF GIVING is April 13
Last year, we received 718 DONATIONS and raised $187,405 on our Day of Giving. We’d love your help in topping those numbers in 2023!
hollins.edu/dayofgiving
Residential Summer Workshop: June 11-15, 2023
Since 2005, Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop has nurtured and empowered over 750 writers. Intimate and inspiring workshops encourage participants to fuel their passion and transform their writing. Join a workshop and leave with a new manuscript, or with new ideas for your existing work.
Visit hollins.edu/tmww to learn more.
June 12-14, 2023
Women Working with Clay Symposium is about women who work with clay to create pottery, art vessels and sculpture, and whatever point of view may come with that distinction. The symposium includes demonstrations by presenters, a presentation of attendee works, a small object exchange, and a closing reception and dinner.
Visit hollins.edu/wwwc to learn more.
