Dear Friends,

This year marks a remarkable milestone: 70 years of study abroad at Hollins University. As we reflect on this legacy, I am reminded of an unforgettable experience I had earlier this year — joining our J-Term course Crete: Yesterday, Today, and the Future, led by Professors Tina Salowey and Chris Richter.

Over two weeks, students explored the biodiversity, culture, and layered history of Crete — an island that has served for centuries as a crossroads of civilizations. Professors Salowey and Richter have led this journey since 1997, shaping generations of Hollins students through immersive global learning.

Standing with our students at the Athenian Acropolis and later on Philopappos Hill, where Professor Salowey read poetry in the shadow of the Parthenon, I found myself reflecting on what truly endures: art, storytelling, theatre, dance, and the connections we build across time and place. Among U.S. study abroad destinations, only 2% of students choose Greece, making Hollins’ program both rare and remarkable. It was truly a privilege to witness the lifelong impact of our faculty’s work and the growth I saw in our students in this special place.

Study abroad has long been a defining element of a Hollins education. While the first U.S. study abroad programs began in the 1920s, Hollins quickly emerged as a leader in global learning after World War II. Over the years, I’ve heard alumnae/i share incredible stories — from riding bikes through Paris in the ’60s and ’70s to navigating new cultures and discovering lifelong passions. Again and again, I hear the same refrain: “It changed my life.”

Nationally, fewer than 10% of college graduates study abroad. At Hollins, 57% of the class of 2025 participated in study abroad.

Hollins’ numbers reflect that impact. Nationally, fewer than 10% of college graduates study abroad. At Hollins, 57% of the class of 2025 participated in study abroad. This isn’t incidental; it’s intentional. We believe global learning cultivates essential skills, like adaptability, cultural awareness, independence, and leadership, which our graduates carry with them into every corner of the world.

These experiences expand our students’ knowledge and understanding while also preparing them to engage, work, and lead globally. Learning to thrive abroad is invaluable, as learning how to successfully lead in multiple contexts matters now more than ever.

As someone who couldn’t afford to study abroad in college, I’m especially grateful to those who help ensure that our students today face fewer financial barriers to engaging in the world. Your support through the Hollins Fund and special gifts makes all the difference.

Looking ahead, our Transforming Learning, Transforming Lives: The Levavi Oculos Strategic Plan affirms our commitment to expanding both global and domestic study away opportunities. We want every Hollins student to be challenged, inspired, and changed by these experiences.

As we celebrate this 70-year milestone, I invite you to share your own study abroad memories to help inspire the next generation of global thinkers and leaders. The world is vast, rich with possibility. Let’s keep discovering it together.

Levavi Oculos,

Mary Dana Hinton
President

As part of the 70th Study Abroad Celebration, we’re collecting reflections for a special oral history project. Email Ashleigh Breske at breskeam@ĚÇĐÄ´ŤĂ˝.edu to schedule a short interview before Dec. 15, 2025.

Good afternoon! What a joy it is to be with each of you today. I hope that you have had a truly marvelous reunion thus far. These few days together are a grand way to capture the essence of your Hollins experience: joy, learning, compassion, and a deep commitment to the mission of Hollins University.

And our mission today is as steadfast as it was yesterday and so it will remain forever: Hollins University is dedicated to academic excellence, creativity, belonging, and preparing students for lives of purpose. Hollins provides an outstanding and academically rigorous undergraduate liberal arts education for women and entrepreneurial and innovative graduate programs for all in a gender-inclusive environment. We lift our eyes, Levavi Oculos, to create a just future as we build on our past.

This mission is timeless. In fact, I went back to check what I believe to be the original purpose of the institution,  it reads: “The plan and policy of this school recognizes the principle that in the present state of society in our country young women require the same thorough and rigid training as that afforded to young men.”.

Please be assured that our foundational mission: a rigorous education for women, is unyielding, unchanging, and undeterred. In fact, our new strategic plan Transforming Learning, Transforming Lives: The Levavi Oculos Strategic Plan is squarely focused on ensuring that we can, forevermore provide the type of education that nurtured each of you. Creating a fellowship of women who rely upon one another is central to the strategic plan, especially as we think about access, academic excellence and wellness.

But as resonant, relevant, and rich as our mission and strategic plan are, I know that what brings you back home cannot be captured in a mission statement or tagline. Rather it is the indescribable nature of Hollins that summons you. It is the nature of Hollins that beckons to over 200 young people who will join us in the fall. It is the nature of Hollins that makes our hearts flutter when we step on front quad.

Esteemed alumna Annie Dillard wrote:

Institutions have characters just as people do. After all the cells in a person are replaced, and after every single person in an institution changes, those distinctive characters persist. My high school headmistress was Marion Hamilton. She went to Hollins; now she lives near me. The Hollins I knew from 1963 to 1975 is the same Hollins that Marion Hamilton talks about and loves, that she knew best in the thirties. In the accounts Hollins students wrote in the nineteenth century, we read about the same place: its wonderful blend of intellectual seriousness (with its search for the good and the beautiful), and hilarious good times (in the company of rather much singing). Many people have described returning to Hollins, after a long interval, full of fear – fear that changes would have wrecked the place. These people report, glowing, that it’s all still on campus. New ideas come in and out, new information and theories, and Hollins stirs with excitement, as it always has. New buildings arise, new leaders emerge, new talent pours into the freshman class, and it’s still Hollins: where girls become women, where students have time to learn in depth and professors have time to give them, where the grass is green and the mountains are blue, where friendships thrive, minds catch fire, careers begin, and hearts open to a world of possibility.

Friendships thrive, minds catch fire, careers begin, and hearts open. That’s what Hollins was for you, what Hollins is today, and what we are determined to create well into the future. That is the character you sense in the air, in the beating hearts of our students and in the vision we have to move forward. Friendships thrive, minds catch fire, careers begin, and hearts open.

As you look around you, you see the way friendships thrive at Hollins. You know that the people who have journeyed with you in good times and bad, who have been there for life’s most important moments, were met in this place. She may well be sitting next to you. Today, I think about Ti-Shawn and Zoe. These two young women arrived at Hollins from very different places. Ti-Shawn grew up in Jamaica and currently lives in NYC. Zoe grew up in the Bay Area of CA. But at Hollins, they have become sisters. They cheer for each other. They work together. They foster dogs for the day and bring them to the office. They make each other study and go to the doctor together. I know that they will see one another through relationships and marriages, births, and death. I know that their bond – like yours – is because of this place.

What Hollins does so well today is welcome in students from around the globe and from all demographics and gives them the opportunity to build bridges and friendships and hope. Today Hollins serves, with distinction: First generation: 44% of undergraduates; Students of color: 34% of student body; Pell eligible: 39% of the student body. 50% of our students study abroad and 60% engage in undergraduate research. Because we embrace access, Hollins looks and sounds and has all the strengths of the world. Hollins students are the answer to the world’s troubles.

For example, Rebecca Mullins from Richmond, VA has shared the power of friends: “My very favorite part of my experiences thus far have been the relationships I have made. Hollins attracts phenomenal, kind, artistic, and beautiful human beings. My close friend group last year was from all around the world: Rwanda, Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, Seattle, Belgium, Argentina, and, of course, Appalachia! So many different people from different places have come to this tiny campus, and we became a family.” In our strategic plan we call this wellness. Wellness means the ability to be at peace in one’s mind, peace in one’s body and peace in one’s spirit. At peace with where you are. At peace with those around you.

By facilitating peace and friendships, we create a space for hope, trust, and vulnerability. And when we allow vulnerability, we allow students to stretch their minds. What enables minds to catch fire and careers to begin is Hollins deep belief in each and every student we serve. In this chapel right now we have illustrious leaders from every industry: journalism, business, higher education, non-profits, community leaders, medicine, philanthropy, the law, and more. Your minds caught fire at Hollins. Your careers began at Hollins. We continue to ignite the intellects of young women each and every day.

In our graduating class of 2023, 92.4% were employed or enrolled in graduate school* within six months of graduation. Of this group, about 2/3rds went straight to work at places like the NIH, CDC, Edward Jones, or the Smithsonian. More than one in five 2023 Hollins graduates went on to some of the best graduate schools and programs in the world including NYU, Georgetown, UVA and the London School of Economics. Six percent of our 2023 Hollins graduates began volunteer work or entered the military within six months of graduation, giving their lives to service.

Minds also caught fire and careers have begun in the class of 2024, wherein we have students heading to graduate school at Sarah Lawrence, Duke, UVA, Chapel Hill, Tufts Veterinary School, and EMLyon Business School in France.  Employers include Hershey companies, Disney, and the City of Charlotte. Our returning students are spending the summer doing research at Tech and the U of MO, as actuarial interns at NY Life, and more.

You see, when you light a mind, you release an unstoppable force in the universe and these students have only just begun to transform the world around them. Our strategic plan focuses on this in our academic excellence gear. We are a preeminent institution and that continues unabated. Allow me to describe two students who reflect this in the words of their faculty:

Eleanor Robb – an Art History major, Eleanor is a tremendous student who’s done it all: she’s been inducted to Phi Beta Kappa and Omicron Delta Kappa; she’s written a wonderful senior thesis in art history focused on the myth of Narcissus; she’s also presented at a series of academic conferences; she’s been a campus tour guide and a Latin tutor; she’s studied abroad in Greece; she’s done spectacular work across the liberal arts (Genevieve Hendricks sings her praises in art history; Tina Salowey extols her abilities as a Classics student; Elise Schweitzer extols her abilities as an artist; and, Professor Florio sings her praises as a student of history). Eleanor spent last summer working in the field school in Jamestown, VA, and she did such a great job that she’s received and accepted an offer to return to work there after she graduates.

Zoey Tyson Taylor – Zoey is another phenomenal student and person. To begin with, Zoey took a non-traditional path to Hollins, having completed community college classes and classes at Radford before enrolling here. Zoey has also had to overcome obstacles along the way to earning her degree. She graduated in May with a double major in Business and History. Zoe completed a wonderful senior thesis in history on the role of Black women in the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. She was inducted to Phi Alpha Theta, the national honor society for students of history. Zoey studied abroad in France, where wrote a terrific blog. More impressively still, she was accepted to William and Mary’s MBA program.

Our students deserve and thrive with an excellent liberal arts education, which leads to my last point.

At Hollins, hearts open. To me the most compelling part of the liberal arts is the call to love. William Cronon wrote: “Liberal education aspires to nurture the growth of human talent in the service of human freedom, which is to say that in the end it celebrates love.” He argues that that love is what those of us educated in the liberal arts reflect in a shared set of intellectual qualities:

They listen and they hear.

They read and they understand.

They can talk with anyone.

They can write clearly and persuasively and movingly.

They can solve a wide variety of puzzles and problems.

They respect rigor not so much for its own sake but as a way of seeking truth.

They practice humility, tolerance, and self-criticism.

They understand how to get things done in the world.

They nurture and empower the people around them.

Cronon continues, “Being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways.” He concludes: “Whether we speak of our schools or our universities or ourselves, I hope we will hold fast to this as our constant practice, in the full depth and richness of its many meanings: Only connect.”

As each of you exemplify, to be a liberal arts graduate is to open your heart and connect. Open your heart and connect to the people around you who will enrich your life. Open your heart and connect to the natural environment in the shadow of Tinker Mountain. Open your heart and connect to learning, knowledge, and wisdom that calls you to be more and do more. Open your heart and connect to yourself and your grandest aspirations. Open your heart and connect to love and be loved.

You see, the one thing I ask of every student is that they, we, choose to open our hearts and connect; to extend compassion, grace, gratitude, and care to each person we encounter. That when we are faced with a variety of ways to reach out to, respond to, and engage with one other, that we choose to do so with love.

At Hollins our hearts and minds are tethered. Love empowers the learning that happens across our campus. Love is the fuel that powers our community as a whole, because, in the end that’s what matters most. That we choose to see one another’s humanity; that we choose to see the purpose of our work and the liberal arts as connecting with joy. Then we are left with no choice in the end but to work – daily – to become the beloved community.

Bessie Carter Randolph, Class of 1912 and President from 1933-1950 wrote:

The foundations of life and learning must be deeply laid in the liberal arts – in knowledge, wisdom and understanding – in that rich, inalienable heritage, that precious residuum of human experience which must furnish the guide to the far-off ends of human destiny. Higher institutions must, if they are to survive, adhere with unflinching faith to the long-run task of preparing thinkers, never selling truth to serve the hour.

Because Hollins is a liberal arts institution, we never sell the truth to serve the hour. Rather, we create and hold space for new souls to join us, for friendships to thrive, for minds to catch fire, for careers to begin, and for hearts to open.

Levavi Oculos

I am delighted to share with you our Transforming Learning, Transforming Lives: The Levavi Oculos Strategic Plan in this issue of the Hollins magazine. What you will encounter in these pages reflects more than 18 months of work and engagement.

To create such a bold and transformational plan requires the work of many. I want to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to the on-campus community, led by our strategic planning teams, for their many hours of engagement. Students, faculty, and staff shared many hours visioning, planning, and collaborating.

I am truly grateful to the many alumnae/i who shared their hopes, fears, wisdom, and insights as we crisscrossed the country for presidential roundtables and various conversations.

A special debt of gratitude is owed to the Hollins Board of Trustees who, as my thoughts partners and coleaders, learned together and issued a bold charge to me and the Hollins community to draft this plan. I am equally grateful for their commitment to supporting the plan and the deep trust they have offered our community.

And I want to thank those donors who have already invested in the plan and are committed to ensuring we can live up to our promises. Thank you for supporting our community and our future.

As you read the feature story about this plan, you will see that it is a collective tapestry. The plan reflects the hopes and aspirations of many and is not a self-portrait of any one person. It is all of us at our best.

Thank you for trusting me with the leadership of Hollins and for supporting the Transforming Learning, Transforming Lives: The Levavi Oculos Strategic Plan.

Levavi Oculos,

President Mary Dana Hinton

Hollins University is dedicated to academic excellence, creativity, belonging, and preparing students for lives of purpose. Hollins provides an outstanding and academically rigorous undergraduate liberal arts education for women and entrepreneurial and innovative graduate programs for all in a gender-inclusive environment. We lift our eyes, Levavi Oculos, to create a just future as we build on our past.

In the most important ways, our updated mission statement is merely a condensed version of our prior, much longer, mission statement. As we met with several hundred stakeholders over the course of  just under a dozen mission feedback sessions held from 2021 to 2023, I heard clearly the charge to preserve the best of who we are, emphasize the power of Levavi Oculos, and, importantly, craft a mission statement that is concise enough that we can all carry it in our hearts and minds. I am so grateful to have heard your hopes, aspirations, and concerns for our beloved Hollins.

The aim of this new mission is to spotlight and honor the essence of what Hollins as an institution has always valued and prioritized; to acknowledge the scope of what we currently represent; and to remind the world that we are always striving to look upward and forward with what we do in the world.

This summer, as we prepared for the roll-out of our new mission statement, I was repeatedly struck by how it, and Hollins overall, is more relevant and resonant than ever at this cultural moment.

For example, this summer, “Barbenheimer”—that mashup of the two summer blockbusters, Barbie and Oppenheimer—quickly became a cultural touchstone that seemed to be exploring territory connected to Hollins’ own mission. Issues of gender roles, stereotypes, struggles for equality and self-acceptance, of men in positions of power, and scientific legend.

I am keenly aware that our mission has everything to do with so many of the topics and themes these two movies explore. The complex issues around gender in society. The role of science and technology in shaping our future. And the historic (and, arguably, continuing) paucity of opportunities for women to engage in and influence those spaces. Community and our duty to one another and ourselves are central to our empowering liberal arts education.

As I watched these films, my hope was that Hollins will continue to build a world where women will play a more substantial, central, role in the plot. Not only as a doll who symbolizes what is possible (Barbie), but as an expert on the cutting edge of discovery and exploration who has lived out what is possible (Oppenheimer).

What you will read in this issue touches on all these themes. Our “Women in STEM” feature celebrates just a sampling of Hollins alumnae/i who have made a major impact in the world of science. Our features on the legacy of lacrosse at Hollins, on the memories of the Williamson Road apartments, and this summer’s Reunion Weekend remind us that the bonds formed here really do last a lifetime and are themselves part of the power a Hollins education provides. And we conclude the issue by celebrating a song inspired by our motto, Levavi Oculos, written by a 2023 graduate, the newest cohort entering the long green and gold line of alumnae/i. A song about looking up, looking forward, and believing in yourself.

May you all lead lives of purpose with your eyes lifted!

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.

“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.”

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. 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.

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 “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.

“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.”

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, 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 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.

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 issue of the magazine is, in many ways, about coming home. After two years of collectively responding to the pandemic on campus, and continuing to thrive through that challenge, this spring we had the opportunity to share and celebrate our success with our broader Hollins community, including many of you. And celebrate we did!

We hope these magazine pages will remind you of your Hollins home. As the community gathered for my inauguration, two commencements, and a multiyear reunion, it was clearly a homecoming: moments when we embraced, reflected, imagined, and looked forward together. Even as we reminisced, laughed, and cried, we also envisioned a bright future for our beloved Hollins and began to draft big plans!

While this spring was filled with homecoming for our alumnae/i, in many ways, coming to Hollins is like coming back home for me, too. I grew up less than 200 miles from here in North Carolina, so I know the histories, stories, and context of our Hollins quite well. I think I know the hearts of the students who choose Hollins and why. While I will never take that for granted, it is great to be in a place where you truly feel like you belong; where you share a history and language and beliefs. A place you can call home. I realized on April 22, 2022, that I was free to exhale and embrace Hollins as my forever home. I have never had that before, and it is amazing to feel so accepted, so cared for, so engaged, that you can actually feel a sense of permanence. Thank you, friends near and far, for helping me to find home.

Home is so much more than a place; it’s a state of mind. May you carry your Hollins home with you always.

Levavi Oculos,

Mary Dana Hinton, President

I hope that the beautiful spring season has brought to you a spirit of rejuvenation, hope, and vibrancy. Certainly, were I to describe Hollins as I write this letter, those would be among the words I would choose.

As you may recall from my letter in the last alumnae/i magazine, I shared with the community, “My goal for our campus community this year is a variation of ‘only connect.’ I want us to look out for one another, to support one another, to lift one another. Our liberal arts education commands that we truly connect.”

Of course, my goal and my joy is facilitating that connection on campus. To witness eyes light up when an important theory is learned, a common experience shared, or a critical value uncovered, to see lives connect—faculty, staff, and students—is a powerful thing. Today we get to share that joy with you as you read this magazine and see the connection between mission, learning, professional endeavors, and civic engagement.

You see, our resonant and relevant mission has spawned such goodness as the Hollins Opportunity for Promise through Education (HOPE) Scholarship, which will allow selected students from the Roanoke Valley to attend Hollins tuition free for four years. Our ability to learn together is prominent in the story about our Imagination Campaign, our community effort to develop significant, mission-aligned, and revenue-generating programs to sustain Hollins well into the future. Likewise, we see the challenging and powerful work of Patrice Lawrence ’11 as a vibrant example of how Hollins alumnae/i engage with the world around them. Perhaps our greatest connective tissue of all may be found in the announcement of a $75 million gift from an anonymous alumna. This gift connects our mission with our people; the importance of women’s education with the need to give back—the ultimate form of civic engagement; and connects the past, present, and future.

As I have shared with Hollins alumnae/i groups with which I have had the pleasure of meeting, this gift signals to me that I, and all of us on campus, must work even harder to connect and to thrive. We cannot view this gift as a stopping point. Rather, it has crafted a runway for us to actively and aggressively plan for and live into the future—a future we will share together. It calls on each of us to ask what we can do to bring that future—our mission—into fruition. So, to me, the gift is a call to action; a call to lead; a call to connection.

May you see your best self in these pages.

Levavi Oculos,

President