Berkeley, Joseph, Kolmstetter, Holland Join Board of Trustees

Berkeley

Alfred R. Berkeley III, Mary Terrell Joseph ’66, and Elizabeth “Liz” Brownlee Kolmstetter ’85 have been elected to the Hollins University Board of Trustees.

Berkeley is a son of the late Jane King Funkhouser Reid ’40, a great-granddaughter of Hollins founder Charles Lewis Cocke. He earned an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently chairman of Princeton Capital Management and vice chairman of Gentag, Inc. A resident of Baltimore, Maryland, he has also served in leadership roles with the NASDAQ Stock Exchange.

Joseph

Joseph, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a partner in the law firm of McGlinchey Stafford. She has served in various nonprofit leadership roles and was a member of the Hollins Board of Trustees from 2000 – 2012.

Kolmstetter

Kolmstetter holds a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology from Virginia Tech and is currently the director of NASA’s Workforce Engagement Division. She has pioneered numerous innovative talent management programs across six federal agencies. She is the daughter of former Hollins president Paula Pimlott Brownlee, and lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Holland

In addition, Alumnae Board President Sarah Holland ’64 has joined the Board of Trustees as an ex-officio member. Holland spent 30 years raising funds and consulting for an array of nonprofit organizations in New York City, where she resides. She has been a lifelong Hollins volunteer, for which she received the Rath Award.

Hollins Wins ODAC Equestrian Title

The Hollins University riding team has captured its twenty-first Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) championship.

Hollins bested five other schools during competition at the university’s Kirby Riding Ring on April 5 to earn its first conference title since 2013.

Led by head coach Claudia Roland, the quartet of riders representing Hollins at this year’s ODAC championship show included Randi Byrd ’18, Madi Hurley ’17, Madeleine Lohr ’19, and Allison Sherwood ’20. Lohr earned All-ODAC honors for the second consecutive year, and Roland was named ODAC Coach of the Year for 2017.

Presidential Portrait Is Unveiled

The official portrait of retired president Nancy Oliver Gray is now on display in the historic Botetourt Reading Room.

The portrait was presented on June 2 and hangs alongside those of her predecessors in office going back to founder Charles Lewis Cocke.

Annette Polan ’67, an internationally recognized portrait artist, painted the work and took part in the ceremony. Noting that she wanted to go beyond just showing “the very fine, strong, courageous leader of Hollins,” she consulted members of the board of trustees “and what I got back was such love and admiration for Nancy as a friend, as a person.”

“It captures our president so well,” said Board of Trustees Chair Judy Lambeth ’73.

In her remarks at the June ceremony, Gray simply stated, “I love it.” She called Polan “a gifted artist” and thanked her “for all the thoughtfulness as well as the creativity. The beauty of it was getting to know you through the process.”

Dana Renovation Under Way

On May 22, the day after Hollins’ 175th commencement exercises, the university launched its highly anticipated $6.5 million renovation of Dana Science Building.

The work is being completed in two phases. Phase One involves refreshing four existing laboratories and the construction of two office suites for faculty, and will be completed before the beginning of Fall Term 2017. The renovation of the lobby area is also scheduled for completion by the start of the 2017-18 academic year.

Phase Two features the construction of five completely new labs and support spaces. This phase will be completed by the end of fall term and these areas will be fully operational by Spring Term 2018.

Faculty promotions announced

Promotions in English for two faculty members

Pauline Kaldas and Julie Pfeiffer received a promotion to full professor. Each professor was asked to provide a personal viewpoint on teaching students at Hollins.

Pauline Kaldas

I often tell my students that I teach the courses I wish I could have taken when I was in college. My classes focus on multicultural and international literature, including International Women’s Voices, Writing Out of the Multicultural Experience, and Immigrant Literature, as well as creative writing in all genres, especially creative nonfiction. I approach my courses as a creative writer and scholar, blending the two in the way I teach and the assignments I offer my students.

My courses open a door for students to enter into other worlds that can reflect on and expand their own lives from a more culturally inclusive and global perspective. We discuss issues related to cultural conflicts, the concept of home, and national identity. As an immigrant and Arab American, I approach literature from both an intimate and scholarly perspective in an attempt to extend the literary words beyond the page. Our students at Hollins are wonderfully diverse, and I love sharing my passion for literature and writing with them.

Pauline Kaldas is the author of Looking Both Ways, a collection of essays; The Time Between Places, a short story collection; Letters from Cairo, a travel memoir; and Egyptian Compass, a collection of poetry. Her research interests include immigrant literature, multicultural literature, and Arab literature. She received her Ph.D. from SUNY-Binghamton.

Julie Pfeiffer

Literature is the focus of all of my courses, from introductory writing intensive courses to graduate seminars, from John Milton’s Paradise Lost to Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I read and teach literature because I am passionate about books, ideas, and the ways imagined worlds help us live more consciously in this world. When I first came to Hollins, I wrote in an assignment, “Words lie at the center of this course,” and I would still agree with that statement. I ask students to look carefully at word choice, at the ways words are used to form sentences, at the ways words resonate with other words in a single text and across texts. But these days, I would add the claim that students lie at the center of my courses – the student as reader, as writer, as engaged and growing human being. For this is what literature does. It helps us see ourselves differently, it makes sense of the inexplicable actions of others, and it pushes us toward a profound empathy. I appreciate the small classes and motivated students at Hollins that make it possible for me to facilitate these conversations.

Julie Pfeiffer has published articles on early novels for girls, Charlotte Brontë, Paradise Lost, and Doris Dörrie. She is the editor of Children’s Literature. Her current work investigates the cross-cultural development of nineteenth-century girls’ fiction and relies on gender theory and disability studies. She received her B.A. from Carleton College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut.

We Stand Corrected

In the article “The Worth of a Woman,” Caroline Arnold Davis ’60 was erroneously listed as serving on the Board of Trustees in the Spring ’17 edition.

Anne Altizer ’85, in the article “Reinventing in the Middle of Navigating Life,” was incorrectly listed with class year ’74.