Diplomat, U.S. Department of State<\/strong>
\nMajor: English<\/p>\n![\"T\"](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/T1.png\")
ypical of a college first-year student: When Justine Treadwell fell in love, she fell hard. A Hollinsummer alumna, she chose Hollins for its creative writing program, concentrating almost exclusively on creative writing and English. By sophomore year, Treadwell was president of Grapheon, Hollins\u2019 literary society, passionate about poetry, and close to the English faculty. \u201cThose relationships were so important to me,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I started college, I didn\u2019t know what I was capable of. I just blossomed at Hollins.\u201d<\/p>\n
She knew she wanted an abroad experience\u2014what better inspiration for a poet than to travel the world? Craving an intense cultural challenge, Treadwell spent the fall semester of her junior year in Kenya with the Vermont-based School for International Training. A few weeks into the program, she broke her ankle and became ill with intestinal disease. Hospitalized and unable to travel, Treadwell recuperated and then volunteered at an AIDS orphanage in Nairobi. After becoming close with a baby dying of AIDS, she questioned her English major and began dreaming of a career in international public service or public health. \u201cWhen I returned to Hollins, I thought about changing my major, but I had practically met all the English requirements,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n
Sticking with her first love, she ventured across Front Quad to take some political science courses. There she discovered the same support and mentoring she had with the English faculty (who were wholly behind her new passion). By first semester of her senior year, her Peace Corps application was submitted (with a request to return to Africa).<\/p>\n
Life post Hollins has been a fulfilling series of passport stamps. She spent six years in Africa, first as an HIV worker in Malawi with the Peace Corps and then as a health policy advisor in Tanzania, experiences that crystallized her next move: \u201cI became more interested in the connection between different policy issues\u2014health, democracy, education, the environment, food security. We had money for AIDS programs but no money for clean water. I also noticed that the U.S. diplomats based in our embassy worked these issues from a broader platform and were in the room when history was taking place.\u201d<\/p>\n
She returned stateside, enrolled in Tufts University\u2019s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and passed the U.S. foreign service exam during her first semester. Her first position in the State Department after receiving her M.A in 2009 was working in Washington, D.C., on U.S. bilateral relations with East African nations.<\/p>\n
Treadwell requested Haiti for her next assignment, arriving in 2011 after learning French and Haitian Creole (she also speaks Kiswahili and Chichewa) at the State Department\u2019s National Foreign Affairs Training Center in Arlington, Virginia. In December 2012, she received the State Department\u2019s Superior Honor Award for her work facilitating dialogue among Haitian government officials, elite factory owners, and workers who were fired for trying to unionize. \u201cThis was a historic event,\u201d says Treadwell, who now is stationed in D.C. working on U.S.-Turkey bilateral relations. \u201cThe workers were rehired, and the result gave workers across the country hope. Everything I\u2019d done up until then prepared me for that. Because of my education, I can look at the big picture and drill down to the driving factors causing an issue. Hollins taught me to push myself into new experiences, to discover who I am at my core.\u201d<\/p>\n
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![\"Amanda](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/miller-645px.jpg\")
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Amanda Miller ’86<\/h3>\n
Vice President and Publisher, John Wiley & Sons<\/strong>
\nMajors: Art History and French, Phi Beta Kappa<\/p>\n![\"F\"](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/F.png\")
or Amanda Miller, charting her perfect career had nothing to do with vocation, vocation, vocation. It was all about location, location, location. A year into her first job after graduation, working in arts management in her hometown of Toledo, Ohio, Miller took her first trip to New York City to visit a friend. \u201cI had an overwhelming feeling of coming home,\u201d she recalls. Three months later, she moved to New York with two suitcases and no job. \u201cIt\u2019s the bravest thing I\u2019ve done in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t her first time in a big city that felt like home. She spent a joyous junior year on Hollins Abroad\u00ad\u2013Paris, a perfect fit with her love for and double major in French and art history. She also managed to pack in plenty of business and economics courses at Hollins, which she figured would be important in her career aspirations in arts management.<\/p>\n
But a yen for the City That Never Sleeps changed that dream. Two days after arriving in New York, she went to a job agency and got placed immediately with Van Nostrand Reinhold, a publishing company. \u201cI had never considered publishing, but it turned out to be a perfect fit,\u201d says Miller, who serves on the Hollins Alumnae Association\u2019s Board of Directors. She was offered the job of an editorial assistant and left five years later as acquisitions editor.<\/p>\n
In 1995, she joined John Wiley & Sons as senior acquisitions editor, and today is vice president and publisher. Miller manages a large editorial team that publishes textbooks on such topics as architecture, interior design, preservation, construction, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, and project management. \u201cMy liberal arts education and art history training is perfect for publishing,\u201d she explains. \u201cA big part of my job is gathering and interpreting vast amounts of information to figure out what is relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as her love for New York hasn\u2019t waned, neither has Miller\u2019s passion for the constantly evolving field of publishing. \u201cTechnology has changed how we deliver and think about content,\u201d she says. \u201cMy mission is to get knowledge into the hands of people who can do something with it.\u201d And her French background has come in handy: \u201cMy year in France and my fluency have given me sensitivity to cultural difference and awareness, so important when working for a global company.\u201d While she never dreamed that she would work for a company supporting the construction and design industries, she has yet to meet a challenge her liberal arts tools couldn\u2019t handle. \u201cI am in learning mode every day. My Hollins education taught me how to learn, to think critically, and to communicate. These are fundamental tools to any career or major.\u201d<\/p>\n
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![\"Catherine](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/wannaker-645px.jpg\")
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Catherine Wannamaker ’96<\/h3>\n
Senior Attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center<\/strong>
\nReceived Hollins’ Distinguished Young Alumna Award in 2012<\/p>\n![\"S\"](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/S.png\")
ometimes to figure out where you\u2019re going, all you have to do is look where you\u2019ve been. Catherine Wannamaker\u2019s childhood on a farm in South Carolina inspired a love of science and the natural world, particularly the coastal waterways. Listening to her farmer father talk about environmental and agricultural issues instilled a passion for communicating about science and planted a seed about the importance of policies.<\/p>\n
At Hollins, her initial plan was to combine all these interests into a double major in creative writing and biology. Wannamaker loved words as much as science, but as her course work progressed, she got more and more interested in and involved with biology. Professor Renee Godard helped to steer her course. \u201cShe had a massive enthusiasm and passion for ecology and conservation and a nontraditional view of what to do with a science degree,\u201d Wannamaker says.<\/p>\n
With her degree in biology, Wannamaker\u2019s next logical step was graduate school, specifically an M.S. in zoology at North Carolina State University, but the experience left her questioning her path toward a Ph.D. \u201cMy thesis on low-dissolve oxygen on the Noose River in North Carolina tackled a real-world problem in environmental science, but after about a year I felt that all my scientific work was going into a black hole,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe policymakers weren\u2019t going to see it. I wanted a more practical application and wanted to shape policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Graduate degree in hand, Wannamaker won a fellowship on Capitol Hill, where she worked for two years on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. It was policy at the top level, but to have a real impact, she would need a law degree. Next stop: Stanford Law School.<\/p>\n
Today Wannamaker is a senior attorney in Southern Environmental Law Center\u2019s Atlanta office. Her work focuses on litigation and covers many subject areas, including coastal and wetlands litigation. The skills she honed through Hollins\u2019 liberal arts program have served her well on the Hill, in the lab, and in court. \u201cThe value is being exposed to so many different fields and options in the curriculum,\u201d she says. \u201cAt a big university, I would have been on a purely scientific track. I\u2019ve shifted around and found a niche that blends my science background, writing, and advocacy work. It\u2019s helped me to see that the world is a blending of different fields and expertise. The world doesn\u2019t work on a singular track.\u201d<\/p>\n
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![\"Sandra](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/frazier-645px.jpg\")
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Sandra Frazier ’94<\/h3>\n
Founder, CEO, Tandem Public Relations and Marketing<\/strong>
\nMajor: History<\/p>\nandra Frazier based her choice of major on three factors: the quality of Hollins\u2019 history courses, the strength of the department\u2019s faculty, and her father\u2019s opinion that history was an excellent foundation for any field. Twenty years later, it\u2019s proven a solid decision (and spot-on advice from Dad), even if she\u2019s never worked directly in a history-related field.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was excellent career prep,\u201d notes Frazier, who has worked in corporate and public relations since graduating. \u201cI gained strong research and writing skills, and in the seminar-style classes, I learned to deal with criticism and to collaborate. Every day in my career, I work with people to come up with a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frazier graduated in December 1994 with every intention of going to business or law school. First stop, though, was home to Louisville, Kentucky, to be with her terminally ill father. After he died, she did apply to graduate school, just not in the fields she thought she would. In 2001, Sandra graduated from Boston University\u2019s College of Communications with an M.S. in mass communications and public relations.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s worked with high-profile clients\u2014Reebok, Arthur Andersen, John Hancock, and Louisville Slugger\/Hillerich & Bradsby Co., to name a few\u2014and for companies such as State Street Corp. and Doe-Anderson. \u201cI had a number of jobs focused more on writing, editing, and managing events, but I realized that I liked being with an agency,\u201d says Frazier, who has served as a member of the Hollins Board of Trustees since 2003, in addition to a number of other philanthropic roles in Louisville.<\/p>\n
What she didn\u2019t anticipate during graduate school was starting her own business, which she did in 2005 when she founded Tandem Public Relations and Marketing. \u201cWhen I was working for an ad agency, it dawned on me that I could do this myself\u2014as if it was that easy. Two weeks into it, I realized that it was going to be a little more challenging,\u201d she says, chuckling.<\/p>\n
The Hollins history curriculum wasn\u2019t the only take-away for her role as entrepreneur: Her professors and the alumnae role models she met at Hollins proved to be case studies in how to demand the most from the people with whom she works while garnering respect and instilling motivation.<\/p>\n
Flexibility is another key outcome of a liberal arts education, Frazier believes. \u201cA liberal arts experience teaches you that every day is a different day, an important lesson when you manage people and need to be flexible,\u201d she says. \u201cYou learn what you thought you would do isn\u2019t what you end up doing, but you also learn that it\u2019s not the end of the world. Hollins taught me to have a passion for learning, and with that as a foundation, you really can\u2019t go wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarah Achenbach is director of communications for Garrison Forest School in Baltimore. She is a frequent contributor to Hollins<\/i> magazine.<\/b><\/p>\n
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Liberal arts graduates on the job<\/h3>\nLiberal arts majors close the salary gap<\/h4>\n\n- In the immediate years after graduation, graduates with baccalaureates in humanities and social sciences earn $5,000 less than those with professional and preprofessional degrees.<\/li>\n
- At peak earning ages (56-60), they earn $2,000 more (about $66,000).<\/li>\n
- One of the explanations for the higher earnings is that 40 percent of humanities and social sciences majors have graduate degrees by the peak earning ages.<\/li>\n
- Science and mathematics majors earn about $87,000 at peak earning ages.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Source:<\/b> Inside Higher Ed, <\/i>\u201cLiberal Arts Grads Win Long-Term,\u201d <\/i>January 22, 2014, <\/i>referencing the report by the Association of American Colleges and Universities\/National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, January 2014.<\/p>\nLiberal arts graduates have what employers want<\/h4>\n\n- Innovation is a priority:<\/strong>
\n95% of employers say they give hiring preference to college graduates with skills that enable them to contribute to innovation in the workplace.<\/li>\n- It takes more than a major:<\/strong>
\n93% of employers say that a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than a candidate\u2019s undergraduate major. More than 75% want higher education to place more emphasis on critical thinking, complex problem solving, written and oral communica\u00adtion, and applied knowledge.<\/li>\n- Broad learning is expected:<\/strong>
\n80% of employers agree that, regardless of their major, all college students should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences.<\/li>\n- Students need liberal and<\/i> applied learning:<\/strong>
\nEmployers strongly endorse educational practices that involve students in active, effortful work\u2014practices including collaborative problem solving, research, internships, senior projects, and community engagements.<\/li>\n- Education for this century:<\/strong>
\nWhen read a description of a 21st-century liberal education, 74% would recommend this kind of education to a young person they know as the best way to prepare for success in today\u2019s global economy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nSource: <\/b>Hart Research Associates, \u201cIt Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success\u201d (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2013).<\/p>\n
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![\"Justine](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/treadwell-645x325.jpg\")
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