Our mission today at Hollins 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.”

Our foundational mission, a rigorous undergraduate 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 is the indescribable nature of Hollins.

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. 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.

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.

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. I think about Ti-Shawn and Zoe. Ti-Shawn grew up in Jamaica and currently lives in New York City. Zoe grew up in the Bay Area of California. 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.

Rebecca Mullins from Richmond, Va., expresses it this way: “My very favorite part of my experiences thus far has 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.”

By facilitating relationships, 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. 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, around two-thirds 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 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, UNC-Chapel Hill, Tufts Veterinary School, and EMLyon Business School in France. Employers include Hershey, Disney, and the City of Charlotte. Our returning students spent the summer doing research at Virginia Tech and the University of Missouri, as actuarial interns at New York Life, and more.

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

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.”

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

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. 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, who served as president of Hollins from 1933-1950, wrote: “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

Full text of President Hinton’s reunion address >