From the Alumni Office:

Jennifer Hamlin Church, Associate VP for Advancement & Director of Alumni Relations

No Typical Alumni!

My first encounter with Siena Heights occurred 25 years ago when I answered a phone call for my husband, Tracy. The caller was a professor, my husband’s advisor, but he hadn’t seen Tracy for a while. I knew that Tracy had had other things on his mind: a wedding, a demanding job, kidney dialysis, a kidney transplant, and then a leg amputation. But this professor didn’t know any of that. He just knew Tracy was close to completing his B.A., and he didn’t want him to quit: “Tell him we hope he’ll come back,” he said. “We want him to finish that degree.”

I was dumbfounded. Who bothered to keep track of individual students and notice when they stopped out? What college took the time to call a part-time guy on the 27-year plan…and encourage him to keep going? Who did that?

Siena Heights did. Professor Bill Blackerby did.

Tracy’s graduation a few years later was another eye-opener. I had attended a traditional liberal arts college and worked at two others; there, a “typical” graduate was about 22 years old. But sitting in the Fieldhouse in 1993, I knew … knew in a new way … that no senior had worked harder to reach this day than my 45-year-old husband. And no family was any prouder of their graduate than we were. What an epiphany!

At that moment, I became a fan of non-traditional education.

From the Editor:

Dominican “Daisies” In Bloom at SHU

“The memory of Mother Augustine Neuhierl lived on in the prophetic words spoken to the professed nuns gathered around her bedside during her last hours on this earth. She told them of the ‘daisy field,’ her vision of a peninsula in the West dotted white with Dominican foundations; and she reminded them that, though they were contemplatives, their active work would take them into the schools awaiting them.”
— From “Amid the Alien Corn,” Sister Mary Philip Ryan, OP.

I love history. I’ve learned from my personal and professional experience there are few things that put the present in perspective and help map the future better than studying the past.

So, not long after I arrived at Siena Heights, I had a chance to read “Amid the Alien Corn,” a 1967 work chronicling the history of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, which, of course, includes the founding of St. Joseph College, now Siena Heights University.

I found the above passage of Mother Augustine fascinating. The title of the chapter was aptly named “The Prophecy.” Her vision of this “daisy field” that she shared with her fellow Sisters, some of whom would eventually travel from New York to Adrian, Mich., has stayed with me during my time here. Even though I did not know very much about Siena Heights at the time, I couldn’t help but wonder if Mother Augustine was referring to—at least in part—present-day developments.

Alumni Stars Mark the Start of Homecoming

Last fall’s Homecoming weekend began when the stars came out for the Alumni Awards ceremony Friday afternoon. Meet the 2014 award winners:

Recent Graduate Award

Kyle Leighton ‘13

Nominated by Zachary Orlosky ’10

A professional communications graduate of Siena’s Jackson Center, Kyle credits his Siena Heights education for igniting his success at EverLast Lighting, Inc, an energy-efficient lighting manufacturer in Jackson. As director of public relations for the firm, he has been published in numerous trade magazines and designed and launched a Michigan Energy Awareness Initiative that was adopted throughout the state; and was named an emerging leader in the electrical industry. He was recognized for “carrying the mission and spirit of SHU into a promising career in public relations and professional communication” and for being a role mode as “an advocate of energy efficiency.”