June 1, 2024

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