Your browser (Internet Explorer 7 or lower) is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.
X
The Online Magazine for Alumni and Friends of Siena Heights University
Kathy Crosby ’93, ’06/MA Has Spent her 30-year career helping others
By Sara Catlett
Kathy Crosby ’93, ’06/MA
Goodwill of Greater
Grand Rapids CEO
Editor’s Note: This is an edited feature that ran in the November 2011 issue of Women’s Lifestyle Magazine. This is used with permission.
You can never be too kind or too generous.” These are the words of Goodwill of Greater Grand Rapids CEO Kathy Crosby’s screen saver, which set the pace for her work each day. Her 30-year career with Goodwill has been motivated by these principals from the start.
Crosby ’93, ’06/MA started her career with Goodwill in 1980 as an office clerk in Detroit. A self-proclaimed late bloomer, she started college in her 30s, earning her Bach- elor of Arts degree in Business Administration from Siena Heights University’s Metro Detroit Program. From there she went on to earn her master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from SHU. In the late 1990s, she transferred to the Goodwill office in Bethesda, Md., where she won a scholarship to the University of Maryland Smith School of Business, earning her executive MBA in 2006. Read more . . .
Jennifer Hamlin Church Associate VP for Advancement & Director of Alumni Relations
What a spring of new beginnings and milestone anniversaries:
• On a brisk April afternoon, SHU fans cheered the Saints to a 10-4 season-opening victory over Adrian College on Siena’s sparkling new baseball field near the Fieldhouse.
• Three days later, Siena Heights—whose past track teams captured so many honors but always competed “away”—hosted our first-ever home track meet in O’Laughlin Stadium.
• Behind the stadium bleachers, the Mary and Sash Spencer Athletic Complex takes shape with each passing day.
• Next to Dominican Hall, construction is underway on the McLaughlin University Center, due to open in 2013.
As I write, we prepare for a landmark Commencement, bringing all sites and degree programs together for the first time. We’ll welcome many graduates for their first visit to campus—and encourage all grads to come back soon. We’ll also celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Kente ceremony, started by a handful of African-American students and today involving 60+ graduates.
Across the University, soon-to-be alumni are celebrating degrees completed and opportunities ahead. Just a few examples:
• Theater students Meghan Van Arsdalen and Paul Karle are two of 18 actors nationwide heading to NYC for graduate study at the New School.
• The 18 future nurses graduating in Siena’s first-ever pre-licensure nursing class volunteered at six area hospitals this spring, earning accolades for top-notch critical thinking and reasoning.
• Metro Detroit graduate LaVon McLeod is already in St. Louis starting his “dream job” with General Motors. “Might this promotion have anything to do with Siena Heights?” I asked him. “It has everything to do with Siena Heights!”
As these new grads go out into the world, alumni bring memories back to campus.
“I had a pet fox in my dorm room,” Mary Embach Mapes ’64 told me when I found her gazing at the old class photos in Sacred Heart Hall. “A baby fox, a kit—I called him Dammit. When he made noise at night, I pushed him under my bed and lay there saying ‘Shush, Dammit.’ If a Sister came to investigate, she quickly forgot the noise and focused on me!”
I was delighted with Mary’s stories of the fox she kept in Archangelus, the horse she kept at the fairgrounds, and the late nights she spent making art on the fifth floor of Sacred Heart Hall. “See you at your 50th reunion in a couple years,” I told her as she headed out.
I heard another good story from Terry Bucciarelli ’82 and his wife Diana, who made a special effort to visit Terry’s old dorm room while on campus for the spring production: In his student days, Terry once opened his door to an alum, a previous resident of the same room, who “gave me $20 just because I let him see his old room. That made a big impression on me,” Terry said. “Now I do the same thing whenever I get to campus.
“See you at your 30th reunion this fall,” I said, as we left the Performing Arts Center.
Whether you are approaching a landmark reunion, or you’d like to see the new beginnings at Siena, or you’ve simply got your own stories to tell, come back soon. The welcome mat is always out at Siena Heights.
Jennifer A. Hamlin Church
Associate VP for Advancement & Director of Alumni Relations
(517) 264-7143
jhchurch@sienaheights.edu
Beth McCullough ’86 is on the Front Lines of Homeless Education with Roadmap to Graduation Program
Beth McCullough
Siena Heights ’86
Before 2001, there weren’t many students reported homeless in Lenawee County.
However, Beth Friedline McCullough knew there were, plenty of them, in fact, when she started as the homeless liaison for Adrian Public Schools more than 11 years ago.
“Some people politely said, ‘We didn’t have homeless people until you came.’” McCullough said. “I said, ‘That’s not true. It’s just because nobody counted.’”
Last year, more than 600 students were reported homeless in Lenawee County. The 1986 Siena Heights University graduate has made it her mission to make sure these students are counted—and count. Since she helped start the unique Roadmap to Graduation program more than seven years ago, 87 percent of those homeless students go on to attend college—and 100 percent graduate. In fact, two of her 13 students last year were valedictorians of their graduating class. Read more . . .
