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Alumnae Accomplishments
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Valer Clark Austin '62 was featured in an online video at Washingtonpost.com about her environmental work on the U.S.-Mexico border [Restoring Natural Life on the Border, 6/22/09]. At Reunion 2007, Austin shared photos and stories of her inspiring work on preserving and restoring the biodiversity of the borderland region between the United States and Mexico, and a story on her work was in the summer 2007 HOLLINS magazine.
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Nicole Harrell '96 is the recipient of the 2009 Walter E. Hoffman Community Service Award from the Norfolk and Portsmouth Bar Association. The award is presented to a young member of the association for outstanding service to the community. Harrell has two dogs that are certified through Therapy Dogs International. The dogs work for a program called PAWS for Reading that she helped start at Nansemond-Suffolk Academy, where first- and second-grade children read aloud to the dogs to improve the children’s skills and self-confidence. As the pro bono coordinator for Kaufman & Canoles, Harrell coordinates training sessions for attorneys to take protective order cases for victims of violence. She is hoping to work with the Norfolk and Portsmouth Bar Association and with the Young Lawyers Division of the Virginia Bar Association to expand the program to Hampton Roads.
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Ruth Foster ’03 has had her senior honors thesis for the International Studies major translated into Arabic and published by the Cadmus Press in Damascus. The journey from thesis to publication began in 2002 when she went to Egypt during January Term to work on an archaeological project in Thebes, directed by John Darnell, Professor of Egyptology at Yale. During her time there, she became quite interested in the issue of the treatment of animals in Egypt and did field work in Luxor, Cairo, and a small village near Thebes. She then wrote her thesis, titled "The Treatment of Animals in Egypt from Pharaonic to Modern Times." A few years later, by chance, Simon Samoeil, the curator librarian of the Near East collection at Yale, heard about Foster’s thesis. He encouraged her to submit it to a publisher in the Arab/Islamic world for possible translation into Arabic, believing her findings and conclusions would be of great interest to readers of Arabic. Cadmus Press is one of the major publishers of scholarly Arabic books.
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Beth Macy M.A. '93 has been named one of 24 fellows by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism. She will spend the 2009-2010 academic year at Harvard University. During her fellowship, Macy will be able to take classes, attend seminars, and participate in other special events. Macy has been a reporter at The Roanoke Times since 1989. Her work on immigrant communities has won national awards, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and inclusion in The Best Newspaper Writing, 2007-2008 Edition. She has taught journalism at Hollins and written freelance articles for Salon.com, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Christian Science Monitor. She has covered the families beat for the past two and a half years of her 20-year career at The Roanoke Times and intends to continue the work she started with last year’s award-winning “Age of Uncertainty” series, which detailed the impact of the aging population and the crisis in long-term care. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University has awarded mid-career fellowships to more than 1,300 journalist from 89 countries since 1938. It is the oldest such program for journalists in the world.
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In an interview on WRAL.com (N.C.) in March 2009, Sadie Tillery '05 spoke on behalf of this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, to be held in April in Durham, North Carolina. Tillery is director of programming for the festival, now in its twelfth year. This year’s theme, “This Sporting Life,” attracted 1,200 submissions, of which 100 were accepted for the festival.
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The short story, "Magic Words" written by Jill McCorkle M.A. '81,
has been chosen for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2009 and also has been selected for New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2009. It was also chosen as one of the top five stories of the Best of the Net in 2008. "Magic Words" is from her new story collection, Going Away Shoes.
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In February 2009, Jamilyn Cole ’00 left North Carolina for Uganda, where she will be living for the next 6-12 months working for the UNITE project of the North Carolina Zoo, as a conservation education trainer. Jamilyn is living in the small village of Bigodi, Uganda which is on the perimeter of Kibale National Forest. She provides training and materials to teachers in eight schools that boarder the National Forest, to aid them in the development of environmental and conservation curricula and activities. You can follow Jamilyn’s adventures on her blog.
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During the 2008 election campaign and continuing through our nation’s recent leadership transition, several Hollins women played key roles. At his final news conference, President George W. Bush took his last question from ABC White House correspondent Ann Compton '69; Ellen Malcolm '69, founder of EMILY’s List, raised substantial sums for Democratic women candidates; Suzy Allen Redpath '69 produced CBS News’ inauguration special; and Cynthia Hale '75 helped lead the Inauguration Interfaith Prayer Service at Washington’s National Cathedral.
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Natasha Trethewey, a graduate of Hollins University’s master of arts program in English and creative writing, has been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent collection of poetry, Native Guard.
Trethewey, a native of Gulfport, Mississippi, studied at Hollins in 1990 and 1991 and is now an associate professor of English at Emory University in Atlanta. Native Guard, published last year by Houghton Mifflin, blends Trethewey’s reflections on growing up as the daughter of a biracial couple in the Deep South with largely-forgotten Southern history dating back to the Civil War. The Washington Post’s Book World said in its review, “Though this is her third book, Trethewey...may have only scratched the surface of her remarkable talent.”
Trethewey’s previous honors include the inaugural Cave Canem poetry prize in 1999; a 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize; and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Her previous collections of poetry include Domestic Work (Graywolf Press, 2000) and Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002). She has also been published in the American Poetry Review, the Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and other literary journals.
Trethewey’s father, Eric Trethewey, is a poet and professor of English at Hollins.
[July 28, 2008] Georgia Woman of the Year Committee, Inc. announced that Trethewey has been confirmed as 2008 Georgia Woman of the Year. Georgia Woman of the Year Committee was established by Georgia Commission on Women in 1996, when Rosalyn Carter was named the first Georgia Woman of the Year.
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Megan Cramer ’04 was featured in an Aug. 27, 2008 Loudon Times-Mirror called “The Go-To Place for Baked Goods,” about her new business, Sangold’s Gourmet Bakery. Named after her first fox-hunting horse, the bakery’s staff includes Cramer’s parents and brother. She said owning her own bakery fulfills a dream. "It's great to know at the end of the day, when you turn the light off and lock the door, that if it was great, it's because you did it," she said. (Photo: Michael Murray)
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Sunny Stack Goode '90 was featured in a September 8, 2008, Washington Post article called "Imagination at Play" about her work as a decorative painter in Richmond, and her second book, Paint Can! Children's Rooms, which "empowers parents to take up glazing, color washing and stenciling to create a special environment for their child."
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Catherine Wannamaker '96 of the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), spoke to the Exchange Club in Savannah, GA, on "Protecting the Georgia Coast." The SELC is a nonprofit, donor-supported environmental advocacy organization using the power of the law to protect the environment and special places in the South. SELC provides its legal services without charge to other environmental organizations and partner groups. Wannamaker is one of the members of SELC’s Georgia coast team and heads its litigation efforts. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School.
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Margaret Dickerson de Heinrich '96 and her Budapest, Hungary, based spa and skincare line were featured in the September 2008 issue of W magazine. Prior to her skincare business, de Heinrich was a diplomat serving as Special Assistant to U.S. Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker and then as Chief of Staff to the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. While in Budapest, she and her husband noticed the unique benefits of the Hungarian thermal waters and now use them as the base of their product range.
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Retracing the Journey: Teaching and Learning in an American High School, by Leila Davis Christenbury ’72, was chosen to receive the David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in Teaching for 2008. This award, among the most prestigious of National Council of Teachers of English awards, is made annually to "published research in English and the teaching of English." The award committee noted that: "longtime English educator and author of an influential methods text, Making the Journey, Christenbury boldly returned to the high school classroom to practice what she has preached. Placing her experience in a historical context, she unflinchingly records her struggles - reporting as many failures as successes." Retracing the Journey also received the 2008 James N. Britton Award from the Conference on English Education of the National Council of Teachers of English.
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Erin Elliott ’95 was a member of the team awarded a Daytime Emmy for producing the Tyra Banks Show. The team won for Outstanding Talk Show/Informative at the 2008 awards.
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Katharine Johnson Arzul '99, MALS '01 walked 1,146 miles in three months to help raise money for an animal welfare charity in the United Kingdom. Arzul and her dog, Millie, walked unsupported from Land’s End to John o’ Groats from April Fool’s Day to June 18, 2007. Arzul had adopted Millie from an animal rescue center just two days before she began the walk, and the two stayed in campsites or dog-friendly bed and breakfasts along the way. Arzul said of the trip: "Walking with my dogs is the simplest and most joyous part of my day, and the chance to do that, and nothing but that, for three months of my life (regardless of any pain, exhaustion, frustration and fear that go along with such an adventure) makes me feel very privileged. I loved setting out early and savoring the slanted light and the dawn scents of the countryside. Not many people get the opportunity to make this beautiful journey."
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Adair Bryant Simon '72 is the executive producer and director of the documentary "The Three Gorges Dam: A Flood of Controversy," that explores the increasing conflict between China's economic and social development, the limits of its natural resources and energy, and the global impact of China's Three Gorges Dam. The film was shown on Atlanta’s WPBA, a PBS affiliate, on July 31, 2008. Simon is CEO of Video Progressions, a script to screen production company.
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Rev. Cynthia Hale '75, a member of the Hollins University Board of Trustees and the founding and Senior Pastor of the Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Georgia, delivered the opening invocation at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and on January 21 of this year, took part in the Inauguration Interfaith Prayer Service at Washington’s National Cathedral.
Dr. Hale is a native of Roanoke and has been in ministry for 30 years. In addition to earning a bachelor of arts degree from Hollins, she holds a master of divinity degree from Duke University and a doctorate of ministry from United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.
Dr. Hale has received many honors and awards marking her accomplishments in and contributions to the state of Georgia and beyond. She was inducted into the African American Biographies Hall of Fame and the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers in Atlanta, Georgia. She was the first woman to serve as Chaplain of the Day for the opening session of the Georgia State Senate in January 2004. In May of that year, she served as Chaplain of the Day for the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.
In June 2009, President Obama appointed Dr. Hale to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. This group of 28 citizens representing a broad range of backgrounds, interests, and professions are responsible for recommending a group of exceptional men and women to the President for selection as White House Fellows for 2009-2010. The Commission will select 11 to 19 fellows from among the 30 chosen as national finalists; more than one thousand people applied for the class.
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Linda Koch Lorimer ’74 was selected to receive the Yale Medal in the fall of 2008. She will be one of five recipients. Lorimer was nominated by Yale University President Rick Levin for her thirty years of service as an alumna and fifteen years as Vice President and Secretary of the University. Inaugurated in 1952, the Yale Medal is the highest award presented by the Association of Yale Alumni (AYA) and is conferred solely to recognize and honor outstanding individual service to the University. While it is extremely rare to award the medal to someone who is currently employed by Yale, AYA fully supported her nomination.
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Emily Wexler ’04, a student in the Hollins University/American Dance Festival master of fine arts program in dance, received the American College Dance Festival Association/Dance Magazine Award for Outstanding Student Choreographer at the National College Dance Festival, held June 4 – 6 in New York City. Wexler was honored for her original production, Navy Blue which was chosen for the festival from more than 150 works presented at the Southeastern American College Dance Regional Conference in Gainesville, Florida, in March.
“Navy Blue was selected because of its uniqueness,” says Professor of Dance and department co-chair Donna Faye Burchfield. “The work of the women in our dance department is thought of as smart, sassy, cutting-edge, and sophisticated.”
Wexler’s choreography was cited for “its sophisticated exploration of structure, stage space and use of props; its reinvention of social dance through the juxtaposition of social dance movement vocabulary from one era with social dance music from another era; and for its sense of urgency and wit.”
Navy Blue was performed by Constance Teage '08 and Lyndsey Carr and He Jin Jang, who are both enrolled in the Hollins/ADF M.F.A. program.
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The list of accolades for amateur golf champion Carol Semple Thompson ’70 keeps growing. In November 2008, she was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. She was also elected to the National Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame for 2007. In 2005, she was named 2005 PGA First Lady of Golf. Inaugurated in 1998, the award is presented to a woman who has made significant contributions to the promotion of the game of golf. Thompson, a native of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, has won seven national United States Golf Association (USGA) championships, including four U.S. Senior Women’s Championships. Only Bob Jones, JoAnne Gunderson Carner, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have won more. She is joined by Arnold Palmer, Carner, Nicklaus and Woods as the only players to win three different USGA championships.
(Photo: Semple Thompson cradles the Curtis Cup trophy, which she and the team she led won in 2006.)
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Balli Jaswal '04, has been named the youngest recipient ever of the David T.K. Wong Fellowship. The annual award, worth 26,000 pounds (approximately $53,600), enables a fiction author who wants to write in English about the Far East to spend a year in the United Kingdom developing their work at the University of East Anglia.
Jaswal is writing a novel tentatively titled When Amit Returns, which focuses on the unraveling of an Indian immigrant family when their youngest daughter goes missing.
Born in Singapore, where her novel takes place, Jaswal grew up in Japan, Russia, and the Philippines. She studied creative writing at Hollins and subsequently at George Mason University. Her short stories and poems have been published in Singapore and the United States.
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Emily Seelbinder '76 won the 2007 Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award at Queens University of Charlotte, where she is professor of English and the director of American studies.
She received $7,500 to enhance the work of teaching in a Queens academic department or program of her choosing. Seelbinder told Odyssey, the university’s alumni magazine, that she plans to invest in "a program that inspires students to do things they didn’t know they could do." As reported in Odyssey, Seelbinder hopes to "recreate the magic for Queens students that she first felt as a student at Hollins upon meeting Pulitzer Prize winning Author Eudora Welty.
"I didn’t know a thing about her work then, but she was so gracious with us, and her enthusiasm about the craft of writing was infectious. It made me want to read more, to write more, to explore the possibilities of fiction in new ways. I guess to could say that the up-close encounters with writers I had as a student sparked the passion I still feel about literature today."
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Crystal Clusiau ’07 gave a workshop on women and outdoor leadership at the February 2008 National Conference on Outdoor Leadership, sponsored by the Wilderness Education Association. "I was inspired by my education at Hollins, my personal experiences, and the disappointment I had when there wasn’t a similar topic addressed at the previous year’s conference," she said. "I discussed issues such as gender boundaries and roles, gendered language, sexist behavior, and sexual harassment with a very interactive group of outdoor leaders and students. The presentation really provoked a lot of thought for both myself and the group members, and that makes me hope that it has increased an awareness of women's issues in the outdoors."
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In the fall of 2006, Scott Loring Sanders M.F.A. ’05 was the writer-in-residence at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. The foundation picks only two writers, worldwide, each year. Sanders' first novel, The Hanging Woods, was released by Houghton Mifflin in March 2008. Sanders' second novel, Gray Baby, was released in June 2009 (Houghton Mifflin).
For more information about Sanders, visit his Web site at www.scottloringsanders.com.
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In October, Jillian Dahl Pena '03 began postgraduate studies in England at Goldsmiths, University of London, as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar. Pena will earn a practice-based Ph.D. in fine art for her video art and dance performance work. She was a dance and interdisciplinary major at Hollins. She also holds a Master of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a fellowship recipient in 2006. Her work has been commissioned in New York by Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen, among others. She is a faculty member at American Dance Festival at Duke University in North Carolina.
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Deborah T. Wilson '87, is the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League's new president and chief executive officer.
The Urban League's Wilmington affiliate was created in 2000. The league's mission is to help people of color secure economic self-reliance, parity, power and civil rights. Wilson, 42, spent the past year as Delaware State University's director of university events and ceremonies. Before that, she was the president and CEO of the Pikes Peak Urban League in Colorado Springs for five years. That experience stood out to the Wilmington Urban League's board in deciding she was the best person for the job, board Chairman Norman D. Griffiths said. The Pikes Peak agency had about the same $1.2 million annual budget that the Wilmington branch does.
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Kathleen Riley “Kitty” Kono ’74, recently retired as vice president of global cooperation at ASTM International, received the Astin-Polk International Standards Medal from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) at an October 17, 2007, reception and dinner held in Washington, D.C. ANSI honored Kono, who filled the ASTM International global cooperation position since its creation in 2001, for expanding the role of standards in international trade and regulation and establishing networks among standards development organizations worldwide, particularly in developing nations. The Astin-Polk International Standards Medal honors distinguished service in promoting trade and understanding among nations through participation in the advancement, development and administration of international standardization, measurement and certification.
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Ellen George Smith '80 has been named the 2007 Pennsylvania Family Physician of the Year. Dr. Smith earned her medical degree from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and graduated from Lancaster General Hospital Family Medicine Residency in 1987. She has been practicing medicine and teaching in the mid-state her entire career.
As recipient of the PAFP award, Dr. Smith becomes the state's nominee for national Family Physician of the Year as awarded by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
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Kiran Desai, a 1994 graduate of Hollins' master’s program in creative writing, became the youngest woman ever to win the Man Booker Prize, second only to the Nobel Prize as the world’s most esteemed and influential award in literature.
Desai has received another prestigious literary honor: the National Book Critics Circle fiction award. The Indian-born Desai was recognized for her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. She joins such distinguished past winners of the fiction prize as E.L. Doctorow, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike, and Philip Roth. Other nominees this year were McCarthy, Richard Ford, Dave Eggers, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
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Jane Gentry Vance ’63, professor of English at the University of Kentucky, has been named Kentucky Poet Laureate for the 2007-2008 term. As Poet Laureate, Vance will promote the arts and lead the state in literary endeavors, including Kentucky Writers’ Day which is celebrated on April 24th of each year, to honor the birth date of Kentucky author Robert Penn Warren, the nation’s first Poet Laureate.
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On November 3, 2006, Ferrum College dedicated the new Earl G. “Bud” Skeens Alumni Conference Center. The artwork adorning the Blue Ridge Mountain Room was also celebrated. Trustees, artists, and special guests helped to welcome the Women Artists of Distinction Collection, displayed around the perimeter of the Blue Ridge Mountain Room. The artists included Hollins alumna Elizabeth Taylor Greer ’72.
Photo: Greer, with her painting, Potential, a Study in Ovals, oil.
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Elizabeth Karmel '83 is a grilling and barbecue information resource for the country's media and food writers, chefs, and cookbook authors. She is frequently quoted and generally regarded as "America's female grilling expert." She's written a grilling cookbook and has been featured several times on Sara Moulton's Food Network show, "Sara's Secrets." She created Girls at the Grill in 2001.
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After graduating magna cum laude from Hollins, Beth Burgin '04 joined the class of 2007 at the College of William & Mary School of Law. She served on the executive board as Senior Notes Editor for the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law and was a member of the William & Mary nationals Moot Court Team. Membership on Moot Court is an honor, and tryouts for the team are competitive. In spring 2007 her note "Fire Where There is No Flame: the Constitutionality of Single-Sex Classrooms After U.S. v. Virginia" was published in the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law. She joined the law firm of Woods Rogers in Roanoke (which represents Hollins).
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Annette Polan ’67, an internationally known portrait artist, is a recipient of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Outstanding Public Service Award, one of the highest honorary awards available to the Chairman for recognition of exceptional public service. Presented at a June 13 Pentagon ceremony, the award recognizes Annette’s extraordinary support of America’s service members and their families. Annette conceived and organized Faces of the Fallen: America’s Artists Honor America’s Heroes, an award winning exhibition of original portraits of the 1,327 American service men and women who lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2004. Over 200 artists contributed to the exhibit (including Hollins Professor of Art Bill White and Hollins alumnae Taisie Berkeley ’70, Mary Page Hilliard Evans ’59, and Lida Matheson Stifel ’70), which was on display at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery until June 10, 2007 at which time the portraits were presented to the families on behalf of the artists. Hollins held a private reception and tour of the exhibit for alumnae and friends in May 2005.
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Gwen Fernandez ’06, an art history major and president of the Student Government Association, was selected for an internship with the Office of the Curator at the Supreme Court of the United States for summer 2006. She conducted tours of the Supreme Court building and gave lectures on the architecture. Her individual projects with visitor services staff included creating and piloting new public programs as well as general management of visitor services programs. “Don’t Underestimate Single-Sex Schools,” an opinion piece written by Gwen, was published in The Roanoke Times and at CollegeNews.org.
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Camille Agricola Bowman ’75 is the architectural historian for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in Newport News. “I have arrived in a state where everyone in my field is famous,” she told the Virginian Pilot. “I consider it a privilege to work here where it all started.”
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Hollins graduate and Roanoke native Stephanie Via’s “True Story” was selected for the Short Film Program at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival The tale of an elderly lady who remembers a tragic childhood moment is one of only 73 short films – dramatic, documentary, and animated - the Festival chose to screen from over 4,300 submissions.
Via, who attended William Fleming High School in Roanoke, graduated from Hollins in May 2005 with a degree in film and photography. She is no stranger to success at prestigious film festivals: “True Story” won first prize at the Aurora Picture Show’s Eighth Anniversary Weekend in Houston, Texas. The film was awarded the Barry Sisson Best Narrative at the 2006 Salmagundi Film Festival in Charlottesville, Va.
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Tiffany Marshall '97, graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in May 2006. She completed the Lewis F. Powell Post-Graduate Public Service Fellowship, the school’s highest honor for a graduate pursuing a public service career. The fellowship, named after Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., covered her salary for two years as she worked at the Mississippi Center for Justice advocating for the rights of Mississippi’s incarcerated children. Tiffany is now an associate with Watkins & Eager, PLLC in Jackson, Mississippi, and continues her work on behalf of disadvantaged children.
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Allison Connolly ’00 has won Centre College’s Kirk Award for excellence in teaching. She holds a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of French at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. In spring 2007, she completed a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she received a coveted graduate teaching award.
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Elizabeth Seydel “Buffy” Morgan ’60 was one of two recipients of the Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry, which carries a $10,000 prize. It is awarded annually to a central Virginia poet who has made significant and recent contributions to the art of poetry. Morgan, the author of three books, lives in Richmond.
She was also Hollins' 2007 Louis D. Rubin Jr. Writer-in-Residence.
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