For the first, and likely last, time in Hollins history, a new president was inaugurated almost two years after they began their work. Even so, the official inauguration of President Mary Dana Hinton on April 22, 2022, was more than worth the wait. Surrounded by events intended to celebrate the magic of the entire Hollins community, it was an emotionally stirring celebration, honoring Hinton’s personal and professional past, and shining a light on the promising path ahead. Below are excerpts from Hinton’s inaugural address.

Ibegan fueling my imagination when I was young. The imaginings borne in poverty are big and bold. Indeed, as Wendell Berry said, “You have to be able to imagine lives that aren’t yours…” This is what you do when faced with equal parts poverty and ambition. Imagination is kindled in unsuspecting moments, quiet places, and deep rituals.

You see, my imagination was born in the dust mites of Saturday morning rug cleanings that Natasha Trethewey [M.A. ’91] spoke of. My imagination was born in my mother’s big, strong hands and brilliant mind. Hands which she often seemed embarrassed about, but hands that nurtured her children and many lives beyond. A brilliance unwanted and unrecognized by a world cast against her. Hands and a mind that far exceeded what the world imagined for her.

My imagination was also born in my father, who imagined me, someone he called pumpkin, attending a university. Though he was born only a few decades after enslavement ended, he imagined his daughters going to college and doing many incredible things. He prayed for that for us.

My imagination was born in the gracious home of the Cooper family. A family whose copper pots reflected my mother’s face but whose big hearts and radical kindness shifted the trajectory of my life by providing the resources and support to allow my imagination to breathe.

My imagination was born in a kitchen with Laurie Heatherington, my undergraduate advisor, who is with me today. Laurie encouraged me to just be me in a world that seemed to want me to be someone else. It was born in a rocking chair with Sr. Jean Messaros and the Sisters of Mercy. It was born in the conversatio of the Dominican Sisters. It was nurtured and stoked and encouraged and deeply loved by the Benedictine Sisters in Saint Joseph, MN. It swam in the fount of Sacred Heart Chapel.

You see, robust imagination is not just the territory of children; it is not the stuff of make-believe. Imagination is the innermost, profound work of thinking about life through an unexplored lens. Of looking at one’s circumstances and being able to conceive something different. Often something more.

Imagination is conscious work. Intimate work. Draining work. Vulnerable work. Work that can lead to beautiful things like today; my mother would have loved this day. Work that can lead to grievous disappointment when left unsupported and unrealized. All too often, imaginings are left unexplored, not due to any failure of the beholder, but due to a society set up to question, deny, and defer the imagination.

And yet. And yet, I stand before you today, not because I am smarter than others or better than others. I stand before you today because I had the great good fortune of being able to receive an education that unleashed my imagination. My will for that education was a result of imagining something different. I imagined freedom; I imagined opportunity; I imagined unconditional love. And it was a liberal arts education that unlocked those imaginings for me. To me, the examination and manifestation of imaginings is what education is all about. So let us imagine a community of learning.

Before you email me, let me tell you that I know that this is not how the liberal arts are generally defined. That some want to return to the trivium and quadrivium and say that that is the authentic liberal arts. That the liberal arts are for those who breathe the most rarefied of air. That to examine the big questions of life should be left to those for whom it is their legacy. I have heard too many people say “today’s students” —students of color, low-income students, first-generation students, questioning students, and, once upon a time, women—are better suited for professional training or vocational training.

I would argue that limiting learning and circumscribing how we think about education and who has access to it is a failure of imagination. That to shroud oneself in exclusion in the name of the liberal arts is to fundamentally misunderstand and misappropriate that very thing we claim to love.

The liberal arts are for those whose minds imagine freedom, who imagine something different, who imagine something more. A liberal arts education is a call to imagine for the sake of creating and transforming. Creating and transforming self, creating and transforming community, and creating and transforming the world around us.

You see, it is the wandering imagination that discerns cures for disease. It is the wondering imagination that asks how we can reimagine learning and truly democratize excellent education. It is the unwavering imagination that chooses to break down barriers and develop structures of access and success. It is the willful imagination that refuses to be yoked to the past and courageously sojourns forward toward a future it determines for itself. A future wherein all can, and will, have access to education.

So, when I ask this community—the Hollins community—to imagine with me, I am asking that we do the work of liberal arts education creatively, with multiple perspectives at play, always centering the human experience of all those we encounter. I am asking that you believe that the essence of the liberal arts—the freeing of minds—also demands the freeing and nurturing of imagination. Not only our students’ imaginations, but the imagination of each of us, unconstrained by title or by task.

In fact, this notion of imagination is, in many ways, baked into the very fabric of Hollins. Our motto, Levavi Oculos, is a reflection on the power of imagination. Levavi Oculos, which means “lift up thine eyes,” implies that there is something more to guide you. That the action of simply looking for that more will yield results. That it will free our imagination.

Mary Dana Hinton’s full speech transcript (PDF)

Remarks from Marjorie Hass, President of The Council of Independent Colleges (PDF)

More photos from President Hinton’s inauguration

“Mill Mountain Theatre was trying to figure out some kind of fun event to get community members and donors involved in new, nontraditional ways,” said Ristau. “They were going to do something like a talent show, and I was asked to come up with something different.” At the same time, Ristau was forming the playwriting master’s program at Hollins, an intensive three-year degree emphasizing new-play development. “I wanted to steer [this new event] in the direction of everything that Mill Mountain wanted involving lifting up and celebrating new plays.”

So Ristau took a little inspiration from some other theatre projects and came up with the concept of Overnight Sensations, a festival of original “timed” plays, all written, rehearsed, and staged within a single day. “I was under the gun to come up with an inventive idea,” said Ristau. “So I took that feeling of being under the gun and incorporated that into our event.”

Every summer since, six playwrights are randomly paired with six directors. The writers and directors then draw from a hat different prompts and pre-selected casts, and the playwrights have to come up with ten-minute plays overnight, which the theatre troupes, composed of actors and non-actors alike, present the following evening. These Overnight Sensations have become a must for the Blue Ridge summer theatre crowd. “It’s a great immersion into the madcap mania that is any theatrical festival,” said Ristau. “We just do it in a micro-brewed way.”

“It’s a terrific thing to have a collaboration between an academic theatre and a professional theatre so we can both contribute to the ongoing development of new work and each other’s success.”

Perhaps best of all, Overnight Sensations is completely free, “friend-raising not fund-raising,” as Ristau puts it. The festival of mini-plays also serves as community outreach by casting Hollins students, faculty, and guest artists as well as lots of local talent and public figures such as former Roanoke Mayor Nelson Harris, local TV personalities Keith Humphry and Natalie Faunce Soucie, and even Mark Armstrong, artistic director of New York City’s The 24 Hour Plays, one of the original timed theatre projects.

The creative collaboration didn’t stop there, however. In 2013, Ristau worked with Producing Artistic Director Ginger Poole to launch the Hollins-Mill Mountain Winter Festival of New Works, which, true to its name, produces new, compelling works every January at MMT. (The last two years were held online because of the pandemic.) Many of the plays are selected from the Playwright’s Lab, and a dozen or so guest professionals are invited to watch the staged readings and offer feedback to the student writers, directors, and performers. “One of the great things about the partnership is that it allows our students to get some experience in a professional theatre space,” said Ristau.

The Winter Festival of New Works actually evolved out of the sudden success of one work from the Playwright’s Lab: Samantha Macher’s Brechtian comedy The Arctic Circle (and a recipe for Swedish pancakes). “Jason Goldberg, founder of Original Works Publishing, was one of the guest artists,” recalled Ristau. “He was so impressed by the play that he pledged to publish it as soon as it got at least six performances in a real theatre with a review in a legitimate paper.” So Ristau approached his old friends at MMT and produced the play on the Waldron Stage. Famed Off-Broadway director Robert Moss, who was Hollins faculty at the time, volunteered to direct. Moss was equally bowled over. Renowned for having debuted numerous now-famous plays at his Playwrights Horizons Theatre in NYC, including Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s smash hit musical Sunday in the Park and George and Alfred Uhry’s classic comedy-drama Driving Miss Daisy, Moss brought The Arctic Circle to the Playwright’s Horizon Theatre School in a space they call The White Box.

“We think of The Arctic Circle as the first Winter Festival, even though we didn’t call it that then,” said Ristau. “Based on that initial success and partnership between MMT and the Playwright’s Lab, we decided why don’t we just make this an ongoing thing, and we started doing a few shows at Mill Mountain every winter.”

Since then, the Winter Festival of New Works has fostered other plays that have won awards and commendations and gone on to have successful runs in New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. In all, the Hollins-MMT collaboration has staged more than 120 individual works in the last 17 years. And even though Ristau is currently immersed in this summer’s Overnight Sensations, he’s already looking ahead to the next Winter Festival, which for the first time in two years will take place in person and also at Hollins Theatre.

“It’s just a deeply meaningful and naturally evolving partnership,” said Ristau about the relationship between MMT and Hollins. “And it’s a terrific thing to have a collaboration between an academic theatre and a professional theatre so we can both contribute to the ongoing development of new work and each other’s success.”

By Jeff Dingler M.F.A. ’22, a recent graduate of the M.F.A. in creative writing program.

Hollins had the distinct pleasure of celebrating not one, but two commencements in 2022. Although one, for the Class of 2020, was two years delayed due to COVID-19, both proved unforgettable and all the more moving for those able to celebrate the event’s return to Front Quad after a two-year absence. The following are selected excerpts and highlights from words delivered during those two days.

Alexandra Trower ’86 2022 Commencement Speech Highlights

Thirty-six years ago, I was sitting in what very well could have been the exact same seat that one of you is sitting in right now. And I don’t mean that metaphorically—but quite literally. We keep a tight budget at Hollins, so a 36-year-old chair is not out of the question!

So, I arrived in NYC, and… all I needed now was my dream job. Easy! I knew it might not be, for other people. But I was so sure that my winning personality, my great education, my can-do attitude, and willingness to put in long hours would make things happen for me right away. Well, “right away” became months. And my confidence edged closer to panic. I could not find a job in my chosen field. It was almost as if my field didn’t know that I had chosen it.

[My first job as a communications assistant at a long-distance telephone company] was my first step on a nonlinear path of a career in communications that would last 35 years, take me all over the world, but more importantly would lead me to do work that would have an impact on the lives of the people we served, on the lives of the people I got to work with—and would help shape me into the person I would become.

Have your dream, your plan—where you want to live; which field you want to be in; which company, organization, or institution you want to be part of; which job you want—but start with the most important thing. Now if I stopped there, I would be committing commencement speaker malpractice, because I have to add one crucial fact—your most important thing will change over time. You still need to figure out what that one most important thing is for you right now, but be prepared for forks in the road as you move forward.

Asking for help doesn’t mean that you are weak or that you don’t know what you are doing. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Asking for help is a sign of strength and courage. And one of the best parts of Hollins is that Hollins graduates are always there to help each other. Pick up the phone, reach out on LinkedIn, send an email or a text—but ask! There is nothing that makes me happier than to hear from a Hollins student or graduate. And the secret is that being asked for help does something amazing for the other person. For me—and maybe it is because I can be bossy—it lifts me up, makes me feel needed, and gives me such joy to help others avoid some of the many mistakes I have made and mud puddles that I have sloshed through. We can tend to think of asking as embarrassing for us and a burden on the other person. But when we reach beyond that barrier—that impossible goal of always being perfect and strong—we step into a shared space and realize that we are human together.

When you find yourself heading in the direction of your dreams, even if you’re not on the actual doorstep just yet—raise your hand for everything. Working on those projects with other departments, stepping in when a teammate was out, and volunteering for things no one else wanted to do helped me learn more about the organization, build my skills, and experience new areas. And it built trust. You will find that accountability matters at all levels of an organization, personally and professionally. I could trust myself to follow through. My teammates could trust me to show up. And that’s cocreating a culture that thrives.

Stories can often sound linear. This wasn’t linear. The only line was the one I’d drawn from Roanoke to New York. Otherwise, mine was a crooked path. It’s only linear in retrospect when I see that each of my experiences was a prerequisite for what came next. And that’s the beauty, and the burden. In life, we don’t get to decide what comes next. But we can decide how we are going to show up in whatever comes next. And that brings me to the most important lesson I’ve learned, that is to ask: What do you need from me?

And graduates, this is how change happens. Every single time you expand your thinking to include even one more person, rather than just reacting and retreating—you can change the culture, and the future, for the better. You have increased the chances for more communication, more honesty, more success, and better outcomes for everyone involved.

But this is where I’m going to follow in the tradition of 36 years ago and share a quote. It is one that means a lot to me, and it’s one that brought me back after every stumble, and it brought me back to Hollins. The quote is from the Talmud and reads: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

When we say, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it,” we are really asking the world, “What do you need from me?” When we make intentional choices true to our calling, when we raise our hand, and raise each other up, when we take a moment and ask ourselves and the world, “What do you need from me right now?” we take a step closer to becoming the person we want to be, in the world we say we want to live in. But it takes all of us. And that is a relief, because that is what Hollins is. It’s all of us. So, class of 2022, cherish that feeling of wanting to bolt—you are ready.

Alexandra Trower ’86 full commencement speech

President Mary Dana Hinton 2022 Introductory Remarks

But most of all, students, when your memories feel far away; when your nights are dreamless; and when you cannot find the ones you love and who love you; know that in your hearts you carry all these things and that you are enough. Everything you need is within you. Every warm memory you’ve had; every dream you’ve ever held; every person who loves you is an inextricable part of who you are today. Within you is all the strength you need to do great things. Within you is all the joy and purpose you need to shine brightly in the world. That is who you are.

The fact that Hollins University is now a part of you means that wherever you go, whoever you encounter: we are there with you. We believe in you, and we honor you as you are. You are enough.

Class of 2022, on behalf of the trustees, faculty, staff, and administration of Hollins University, it has been an honor and a privilege to serve you. We cannot wait to see the magnificent things you will do in the world.

Full remarks by President Mary Dana Hinton

Allison “Ally” Majano ’22 Speech Highlights

And now, here we stand, with our cords, serving as a reminder of the successes we’ve had since arriving here, and we carry them with fulfillment along with a little bit of leftover stress. We carry evidence of our successes with us with pride, and I hope after four years of this institution, we walk away with confidence not just in our victories but in our failures as well. The things we never put on plaques or hang up on the walls or wear around our necks. The job applications and Tinder matches that ghosted us, the tests we bombed, the meetings we missed. We’re also here to celebrate that, because in the past four years we’ve grown, it has led us to where we are standing now, built us up and helped us spread our curiosity to trying new things. That beautiful milestone is what we’re celebrating today. I’m proud of all you seniors, and the outcome our four years at Hollins has given us.

Summer Jaime ’22 Speech Highlights

If we as a class have taken anything away from the past four years, I hope it’s that life is full of the unknown, but that’s okay and we’re gonna be okay. No matter how many five-year plans we make or how many times we may map out the future, at the end of the day, we simply don’t know what tomorrow holds. And no matter how hard we try to control or manifest things, we simply can’t. I know Ariana Grande said, “God is a Woman,” but some days it really seems like patriarchy is out to get us.

Life is full of constant change, but that change is what makes it so rewarding. Sure, a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic hit, but we’re here. Sure, social change rocked our campus and our entire nation, but we’re here. Sure, our pipes burst every few weeks, but we’re here.

Being here today with all of you has shown me that we are more than capable. Capable of doing anything we set our minds to. For a lot of us, that was being here today. Despite all of the struggles we may have faced, we are here. And we have Hollins to thank for allowing us to grow and become the people we are today. Sure, most of us planned to graduate, but I don’t think we expected it to come this fast. But now that it’s here, I’m feeling okay.

Full speeches by Allison Majano ’22 and Summer Jaime ’22

Tiffany Marshall Graves ’97 2020 Commencement Speech Highlights

Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover from difficult life events. It is not a trampoline, where you’re down one moment and up the next. It’s more like climbing a mountain without a map. Sounds fun, huh? Climbing a mountain takes time, strength, and help from people around you, and you will likely experience setbacks along the way. But eventually you reach the top and you look back with pride at how far you have come.

Being resilient does not mean that you don’t experience stress, emotional upheaval, and suffering. Rather, demonstrating resilience includes working through emotional pain and suffering….

We all know resilient people. I am looking at a crowd full of them now. I started my remarks by saying that this class is special—and part of that is because all of you are resilient. I cannot imagine the stress of attending college virtually. And, while we have all gotten used to Zoom life, I do not believe anyone will say it is an ideal way to learn or do most anything, for that matter.

Talk about stress, setbacks, and difficult emotions! You had to have had all of them leading up to your original graduation. I bet some of you even contemplated whether you should defer your academic year (or years) until you could return to in-person learning. I feel sure I would have at least considered doing that if it were me. But the fact that you are here today tells me that even if you did consider deferring or even leaving Hollins altogether, you did not. You persevered, you overcame, and you summoned your inner strength using the tools and people around you to keep pressing forward.

I commend you for your resilience. I admire you for it. And I encourage you to continue to tap into it as often as you need to—and you will need to. While I certainly hope there will never be another global pandemic during our lifetimes, life will continue to bring challenges—and many of them will seem insurmountable in the moment. But you have all proven you are overcomers. You have demonstrated tremendous strength and stick-to-it-iveness. So, in those challenging moments, never forget just how resilient you are.

Self-reflection is the process of bringing your attention to what’s happening in your life in a mindful and open-minded way. It’s all about creating self-awareness. So many of us focus on getting ahead that we don’t necessarily take time to reflect on what’s going on within us.

We hear a lot about being present—and I want you to know how crucial that is. We have so many distractions around us—and often in the palms of our hands. When was the last time you really listened to a conversation and did not get distracted by an incoming email, text, or other notification, or things that were going on around you at the time?

Being present and aware are essential for examining how you’re doing, what’s making you happy, what’s making you sad or angry, and for helping you decide how to address the cause of each of those emotions.

Self-reflection helps us make sense of things—uncover breakthroughs—challenge our thinking—recognize change and track our progress—increase our self-awareness and self-acceptance— and live with more and greater intention.

We are always doing. And when we aren’t doing, we feel like we should be. We greatly undervalue rest. There are just too many things to get done, too many demands, too many responsibilities, and way too much urgency. Nobody can afford to waste time resting in today’s results-oriented world.

The problem is, this hectic pace is causing severe damage to our quality of life. We are destroying every sense of our being—our bodies, our minds, our souls. Our lives have become too full and too out of balance. Somewhere along the way, we lost the essential practice of concentrated rest.

Studies have shown that in addition to improving our health, rest can make us less stressed, it can deepen our relationships, it can present opportunities for—wait for it—reflection, it can make us more balanced, increase our productivity, and it can allow us to build up a reserve for when unexpected emergencies happen and rest is not an option.

You have honored me in more ways than you could ever imagine by inviting me to speak to you today. Continue to be your resilient selves—but please make time to reflect and rest.

This world needs you—to quote a familiar pandemic refrain—now more than ever—so please take care of yourselves. You always have a friend in me. Better yet—you always have a Hollins sister in me—so please don’t ever be strangers.

Full speech by Tiffany Graves ’97

View more photos from 2022 Commencement

View more photos from 2020 Commencement

We have some exciting news about class news! Hollins magazine is consolidating class letters, in memoriam, celebrations, and the bookshelf into two special editions; one in the fall and one in the spring.

This change will address one of the requests we receive most frequently: Can we print the news closer to when it is shared? We should be able to shave a month off our previous timeline, and we are thrilled!

We’ll also have space for more photos, so make sure you’re sending those along!

The first class-news-centric issue will be published in November 2022. Here are the deadlines for that magazine:

• News from your classmates will be due to class reporters by September 12.
• Your letters will be due to Hollins by September 26.
• The magazine should show up in mailboxes around November 21.

HERE’S A SIMPLIFIED VERSION:

DUE TO YOU: 9/12
DUE TO US: 9/26
IN YOUR HANDS: 11/21

Chris Richter joined the communication studies department at Hollins in 1995 and over the past 27 years, “Richter” (as he is affectionately called by his students) has taught, advised, challenged, and yes, fed hundreds of students.

He is known for his fierce defense of, and belief in, the discipline of communication studies. To his students, Richter embodies what a professor should be: inspiring, passionate, talented, and thoughtful. As one of his students noted, “My favorite class with Richter was our senior thesis course where we each got a chance to meet with him one-on-one to work through our challenges. He was so supportive and genuinely invested in each of our topics. I will always be thankful for what Richter has taught me.”

Richter offered a variety of engaging classes during his career that ranged from video studio processes to public communication and discourse. He creatively mixed rigor and entertainment with ease: he loved to paint a picture with a story or quick anecdote, and his multimedia PowerPoint presentations were envied for the way he could insert the perfect song, pop culture visual, and critical insight, whether he was discussing media law, communication technology, or even how to watch television. His PowerPoints were particularly meaningful to students throughout the pandemic, which required classes to be taught remotely. “During Covid-19, Professor Richter started and ended his PowerPoints with pictures of his cats, and included the line, ‘This Class Brought to You by Seven the Cat,’” a student recalled. “It was a little thing, but it helped me find something to look forward to in a really stressful time.” His attention to the needs of others was also appreciated by another student, who said, “My meetings with Professor Richter always ended with him saying, ‘Great to see you,’ which warmed my heart every time.”

Richter’s “amazing tzatziki recipe and his homegrown tomatoes” further endeared him to students, and one of them described him as “a professor with style—in his iconic earring!” A tribute would not be complete without mentioning the January Short Term trips to Greece through the years that continue to be the template for how to successfully take 15 to 20 college students abroad and ensure they not only learn a lot but have a lot of fun as well (and survive!).

The Greece trips were organized and led by Richter and his wife, Professor of Classical Studies Tina Salowey. Richter and Salowey met on her first day on campus in July 1996 when he helped her move into the apartment below him on Faculty Avenue. “That night,” she recalled, “my cat, Leo, mewled around the apartment all night and I was finally driven to let him out at about 4:30 in the morning. A huge storm moved in and I couldn’t find Leo, who was terrified of thunder and lightning. Distraught, I searched along Faculty Avenue for my cat and Chris helped me look. We walked and talked, and when I returned to my apartment, Leo was inside, safe and dry (I had left the window open for him), but Chris and I got to know one another. We have been together for 26 years!”

Among his peers both past and present, Richter is greatly valued. Professor of Economics Emeritus Juergen Fleck recalled, “He first stood out to me in our Division II (Social Sciences) meetings, where his thoughtful contributions reflected his genuine concern for his students, colleagues, and the Hollins community. I especially admired Chris’ willingness to speak up on important issues in a constructive and nonconfrontational way. This was not lost on other faculty members, who elected him repeatedly to serve on important committees. He has an extraordinary record of service to Hollins,” which included serving as department or division chair numerous times throughout his tenure.

Fleck added, “As a teacher and mentor, Chris wanted his students to become active citizens and lifelong learners. So, in his classes, he challenged them with collaborative work and experiential learning. The travel blog posts required of students during the popular Short Term trips to Greece are just one example. He also went out of his way to make students feel at home at Hollins. He and Tina, both great cooks, invited students to their house at the end of each semester to enjoy some home cooking, see the lovely mountains, and meet their cats.”

Richter is widely respected for his research that has spanned a variety of areas of communication studies. These include alternative media, early 1900s travel diaries, visual culture, and his current passion to grow his expertise on Byzantine to Modern Greek history, especially commemorative monuments of the 18th through 20th centuries. His insights on institutional matters that were close to his heart, such as the announcement in 2012 to relocate the student apartments to Faculty Avenue, were reasoned and thorough—even if you didn’t always agree with him. As one faculty member said, “He is feisty, kind, funny, and passionate about issues that are important to him. It may take him days to craft a response to an issue, conflict, or question, but you can be sure that his response is a thoughtful, in-depth exploration of all sides.”

Richter is embarking on a new chapter in life, but there is no doubt that he, as another faculty member stated, will “continue to find communication in all that he sees around him.” In the meantime, his retirement is leaving some very big shoes to fill. “Chris is a man of many talents,” Fleck said, while a student reflected, “We will miss his strong leadership and dedication to the discipline, the department, and the university. And his tzatziki. What will we do without you, Richter?”

Lori Joseph, professor of communication studies

How can words and photos capture what moved dozens and dozens of people sitting in the duPont Chapel pews to shed tears during the inauguration celebration for President Hinton? Can you read the speech excerpts, can you see a photo of soprano Helena Brown ’12 singing, and truly feel, through your ears and down to your bones, the gravity of those spoken words or the power of her voice?

In light of that, let me be the first to acknowledge that very little in this summer issue of Hollins magazine beats being there. Because how could it? Our goal, therefore, must be to provide the next best thing. Perhaps, generations from now, we’ll learn that print – even today, a quarter of the way through this 21st century – helped us experience an event far more compellingly than YouTube or TikTok ever could.

A significant portion of this issue is about the glorious experience of being in community together for special moments, something that has been far too limited in the last two plus years. In addition to the inauguration, we celebrated two commencements, and we witnessed perhaps the largest collection of different class years of alumnae/i in Hollins history at Reunion Weekend.

In addition, we showcase some of our brilliant alumnae. “Women In Law” offers an interview with three distinguished law professors, Jane Aiken ’77, Keeshea Turner Roberts ’96, and Courtney Chenette ’09, as they discuss the contemporary news and challenges of the current legal environment in America. You can also meet Michelle Watt ’93, director at Vascular Perfusion Solutions, which has become a life-changing internship experience for an increasing number of Hollins students.

Finally, you can celebrate the achievements and highlights from our campus. Our “In the Loop” section offers you a great assortment of news and concludes with a fond farewell to six retiring faculty members. We also spotlight the great community collaboration happening between Hollins and Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke for events like the recent Overnight Sensations.