Rosemonsters and Ravens: Meet Rosemont's Mother and Daughter Legacies

LeeAnn Piermont Camut ’92 and her daughter Carly

Rosemonsters & Ravens: Meet Rosemont's Mother & Daughter Legacies

By Joe Darrah ’11

For these four families, the experience of attending Rosemont College is tightening their bonds, even if they never planned to share an alma mater.

Stephanie Santoro ’93, DO and her daughter Marina

LeeAnn Camut and her daughter Carly

Kendra Palermo '94 and her daughter Gabby

T. Nicole Cirone ’94 UC, ’02 SGPS and her daughter Sabine

It was only meant to be a favor to mom, really. When Gabrielle Godwin '22 decided to tour Rosemont College as a high school student, she did so with her heart already set on another small school that was not located close to home. At least, that’s what she thought at the time of her visit.

She had done her due diligence and was ready to pack her bags. But she didn’t want to hurt her mom’s feelings. And so, when Kendra Palermo '94 asked her daughter to visit the campus, her alma mater — that school she attended some 30 years earlier that had a “castle that looks like Hogwarts” — Gabby obliged. Not reluctantly, and not to patronize her. She simply just felt bad to turn mom down for such a simple ask.

“I didn’t want to tell her no,” says Gabby, who will be able to call Rosemont her alma mater in about one year’s time. “I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with Rosemont that day. But when I got here, I said to myself, ‘Oh my, I’m home. This is exactly what I want.’”

Looking back on that visit today, she remembers the moment that changed everything for her while walking through Gertrude Kistler Memorial Library. “The library at the other school I was considering was basically nonexistent,” she said. “There were no books. It was more like a room that you could study in that had computers so that you could go online to read. But at Kistler, it was wall-to-wall books and the architecture made it feel like it was an important part of the campus. There was no comparison.” The original academic building on campus at Rosemont, the library has a history of captivating people of all ages.

Sabine Westfahl ’24 has been climbing the front reading room’s spiral stairs for as long as she can remember. The daughter of T. Nicole Cirone ’94, ’02, Sabine, even as a five-year-old filled with imagination, could not even begin to see herself as a Rosemont student during the days that she made the library her personal playground during mom’s regular visit to campus. “I never thought that my mom would want me to go here, even though I spent so much time here growing up,” said Sabine, who as a Studio Art and Art History major has had Rosemont in her life long before enrolling as a freshman this academic year. She’s previously attended events such as Oktoberfest and Christmas Mass, for instance. At five months old, she was at Commencement when Nicole received her master’s degree in English. At two years old, she joined mom at Reunion when the babysitter was unavailable. As it turned out, Rosemont was naturally an academic fit for her as well. “I always knew that I wanted to go to an arts school, but I really also liked the idea of a liberal arts education, and I felt that Rosemont offered me a more well-rounded education than I would have received somewhere else at a school that focuses on the skeletal part of the arts degree.”

These two mom-and-daughter pairs are among four current family legacies at Rosemont. The staff at Rosemont Magazine recently met with them to learn more about what led them individually and collectively to the College, and about how their shared experiences, as well as some differences, have created even stronger bonds than they already had.

The Power of a Small College Before the POWER of small

Today, all members of the Rosemont community are familiar with the tag line the POWER of small. We’re reminded of it every day and we live it on campus in a variety of ways. However, the inherent impact of this small school has always been seen so much more vividly through the lives of our students and alumni, especially among those of legacy status.

Consider Stephanie Santoro ’93, DO, an alumna who, as a scholarship recipient in the late 1980s, was still not convinced that Rosemont was the right place for her when she enrolled into the College as a young Catholic girl from Philadelphia.

“I was not thrilled at first to attend a women's college, as I was coming from a Catholic girls’ school in South Philadelphia and my high school experience was not exactly a fun-filled time,” said Stephanie, who today can trace her roots as a physician back to starting Rosemont’s first pre-med club as a student.

“But once I started at Rosemont, I knew that it was perfect for me. I loved the fact that I never felt ‘lost in the crowd.’ My teachers were always accessible and quick to offer assistance, and my own experience being with intelligent, strong women every day helped me to learn to develop self-esteem and confidence.”

Although the school is now co-educational, Stephanie says she sees the same opportunities being apparent for her daughter Marina Garagozzo ’24, a freshman who’s undecided on her major but, like her mother, a scholarship winner as one of the College’s most recent recipients of the Cornelian Scholarship, an award given to students who have maintained a grade-point average of 3.5 or higher and have exemplified excellence in academics and a commitment to social justice.

Named in honor of Cornelia Connelly, the founder of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, the scholarship covers full tuition and fees at Rosemont. Marina says that the interview process alone for the scholarship made her realize that she wanted to officially become part of the College’s lineage beyond the exposure she had to the school growing up.

“Everyone who interviewed me made me feel very welcomed and enthusiastic about possibly being a student at Rosemont,” she said. “I've always attended small schools, so I was happy to go here, where classes feel more comfortable, personal, and I can get to know my professors and classmates.”

Fellow freshman and Cornelian Scholarship awardee Carly Camut ’24, a Biology major and Biochemistry minor, says that she ultimately chose Rosemont when her degree choice became clear because of the connection the College has with other local institutions such as Salus University, which enables those who complete a bachelor’s degree at Rosemont to apply for a master’s degree and doctoral degree at the Elkins Park (PA)-based institution.

“For a while, I didn’t know where I wanted to go to school, because for a while I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my career,” Carly said. “But when I started to look at colleges and medical schools together, I became really interested in Rosemont. I liked the idea of the smaller student-to-teacher ratio and the connection that you can have with the professors here. And I began to take more of an interest in the campus when I came here as a visit for myself instead of for an event for my mom.”

The opportunity to walk the “silent paths” that mom once walked is a unique element among these legacy families, particularly because each mom alumna is certain that the approach to not pressure or sway their daughters into choosing Rosemont became an influential contributing factor to their enrollment. Letting the “natural” influence play out is a common theme for all.

“We’ve always raised our kids to be who they are and to do their own thing,” said LeeAnn Piermont Camut ’92, who studied Psychology. “So I really had trouble believing that Carly attending Rosemont could happen. But I’m back at Rosemont now, just in a different role.”

That role as parent sees each mom evaluating Rosemont on a new level, even though they enjoy the opportunity to create shared experiences with their daughters while reminiscing about their school days.

“It’s not the exact same school as when I attended,” said Nicole. “Yeah, there are connections to my traditions, but at the same time I had to think about whether or not I thought Rosemont was the right place for my daughter. Is the program competitive enough? Will Sabine get the skills to go on to the next level? Does the school fit her personally, academically, and in terms of what she wants to do with her life? Was there someplace better? I had to help her to weigh all of these things. And we found other places that we liked, but there was still always that ‘but’ everywhere else. In the end, Rosemont has a fabulous Art History and Studio Art program, and it always has.”

Nicole said that she never purposefully exposed Sabine to Rosemont, but the College has always held such an important place in her life, and so Sabine gained an appreciation at a very early age about the experience Rosemont could offer. “She’s met all of my friends from Rosemont and she’s heard all of the stories,” Nicole said.

Similarly, Gabby had experienced the likes of Oktoberfest and Founders’ Day well before the time came to choose her school. She was even familiar with campus landmarks such as “A Quiet Morning” because one of Kendra’s favorite College pictures, a shot of her hugging the statute as a sophomore, is a prized possession in their home. “So when I decided that Rosemont was where I wanted to go to school, we re-created the picture during an open house,” Gabby said. Below is a photo of mom and daughter at the statue present day.

Also determined to not persuade her daughter to choose Rosemont, Kendra instead decided to suggest the College when it became apparent that choosing a small school was all but inevitable for Gabby, who is double majoring in Criminology and Psychology.

“I had noticed that she was drawn to smaller schools, and so I said to her, ‘I’ve got a small school for you that you might like that’s closer to home,’” Kendra said. “And when we were getting that tour, I could just see in her face that she had felt the same way as me when I visited Rosemont as a student. I downplayed my excitement in the beginning, but I was rooting for this the whole time.”

Stephanie goes as far as to say that it may have occurred to her that Marina could attend Rosemont some day, but that there was never a sense of certainty that this reality would unfold. “I have raised her to be a free-thinker and I wanted her to be happy with her choice of school, no matter what,” Stephanie said. “I knew that she was seriously considering Rosemont when she was invited to apply for the Cornelian Scholarship, which included an essay on social justice, because she was eager to share her thoughts on that. When she told me that she had chosen Rosemont I was absolutely overjoyed and cried. I knew it was her decision and, as always, I felt so proud of her.”

Scholarship Commonality

The shared campus experiences are not the only commonality of these alumna-student legacies. In addition to Marina and Carly being awarded Cornelian Scholarships, LeeAnn was a Josephine C. Connelly Scholarship awardee as a student, as was Stephanie. Additionally, Sabine received the Rita Valencia Rizzo and Mary Fowler Wilson Scholarships, and Gabby received the Mary Stuart Williams Seidel Scholarship, which specifically is intended for daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters of Rosemont alumnae.

“When Carly won the scholarship, it felt like things had come full circle,” LeeAnn said. “It’s amazing that we have this experience. It’s all very familiar, but things have changed since my school days, too. Carly’s experiences are going to be different than mine.”

Sabine says that being a legacy has provided her with a deeper meaningful experience that goes beyond the sentiment of once playing hide-andseek under a library desk that she now studies at, as Nicole did as a student. “When you’re a legacy student, you get a different appreciation for the school,” said Sabine, whose grandmother attended St. Leonard’s Academy and great-aunt was a Holy Child Sister. “It’s a push to be involved in more things, not so much because of the influence of my mom, but because it means something to me to be involved. I feel like I’m being guided by my mom, but not in a pushy way. I’m getting the chance to continue the path that she started from a different track.”

Stephanie Santoro and her daughter, Marina, walk by Main Building in March 2021.

Of course, the coronavirus pandemic will forever mark today’s student experience as (hopefully) unique within the confines of legacy status. Still, mothers and daughters alike say they appreciate the attempts that the College’s administration has taken to help Rosemont to be as welcoming and safe as can realistically be expected, including the community’s focus on social justice.

“The change I am proud of most for Rosemont is the commitment to social justice and to diversity and representation in the student population,” Stephanie said. “It was very refreshing for me to realize that Rosemont had moved in the right direction.”

Despite the “distancing” guidelines in place on campus per COVID protocols, the feeling of closeness and community has prevailed.

“I have become really close with my friends and with my roommate, and with a small group of people, so I have had a lot of good times when I’m on campus,” said Marina. “I especially like how Rosemont tries to bring people together for events during the week, such as trivia nights, paint parties, bingo, and more.”

“My chance to interact on campus with others has been limited because of covid, but I’ve already met some great people,” Carly said. “I’ve made friends and I know that my professors care for us as students.”

When the College reopens fully, the families will be eager to recreate and explore the new ties that will continue to bind them all at once.

“I’m already looking forward to Sabine’s graduation,” Nicole said. “It will be a moment that would not happen for us had she gone to any other school. And I can see all of the wonderful things that she has in front of her, and she’s able to take advantage of all of the great things that I loved about Rosemont. I’m still waiting on my ‘Rosemont Mom’ t-shirt’ though.”

Rosemont was cited as a Top Performing College for Social Mobility by US News and World Report in September. Ranked #15, Rosemont is the only college in the Philadelphia region in the Top 25 for Top Performers on Social Mobility - Regional Universities North. According to the report, "Economically disadvantaged students are less likely than others to finish college, even when controlling for other characteristics. But some colleges are more successful than others at advancing social mobility by enrolling and graduating large proportions of disadvantaged students awarded with Pell Grants." We are proud to share the stories of students who have experienced advancements in social mobility by attending Rosemont.