Q: What keeps you optimistic throughout your life?

A: The obvious answer for a chaplain to give, of course, is my faith, and that really is the case.  However, I also would include music, fine gardens, art, literature, theatre, poetry, exercise, sleep, hugs, chocolate and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (any ice cream, really).

Q: How did you find yourself where you are today?

A: By grace, by trial-and-error, by failure and by answering calls both divine and very human.

Q: If you could give advice to a large group of people, what would it be?

A: Don’t listen to me.

Q: Who would you say are the most important people in

your life?

A: Of course, my husband, Kevin, who continues to be my favorite person in the whole world, and my daughter, Elysia, who talks even more than I do, which is truly incomprehensible.

Q: How do you like to spend your evenings?

A: How do you like to spend your evenings?

Q: What is your favorite place on campus?

A: A large tree in the Dell under which many of my first-year

seminars over the years and I have had class outside, sitting

together on the grass in good scholarly conversation and debate.

Q: How do you find joy in the little things?

A: This does not come naturally to me.  I’m very achievement oriented, and I tend to dream about and live in the future.  I have spent years trying to self-monitor and become aware of when I’m not being mindful or present.  I have to regularly practice doing two to three minute centering down breathing to bring myself to focus on the present and the little things.  I read my daughter the children’s book “What Does It Mean to be Present?”  I think it’s really for me, but she loves it.

Q: What do you like the most about the work that you do at the College?

A: The opportunity to learn every single day, really multiple times a day, from so many people—

colleagues, of course, and students as well.

Q: What do you find challenging about teaching religious studies classes?

A: Trying to convince students that non-science courses are not just “opinion” classes and that there are various ways of “knowing” in each of the academic disciplines.