The pandemic led many alumni to reevaluate their careers and make dramatic changes. Here’s what they learned.
Spring 2022
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In this Issue
Students’ experience with human-centered design brings changes to campus — and to their own lives.
How student-athletes’ sense of community and team culture was challenged and changed.
Sisters Nancy Welch Barnby ’61 and Jill Welch ’64 said they never felt under pressure to attend Grinnell College. It was just an expectation that they never questioned.
Heather Benning ’96 never thought she would be part of conversations that decided the course of the NCAA basketball tournament and other collegiate sports championships.
The journey from her hometown of Yucaipa, California, to Grinnell was notable. She was the first in her family to attend college, it was the first time she had traveled by plane, and Iowa was the farthest she’d ever been from home.
As any Grinnellian knows, the best parts of a Grinnell experience are those impromptu community moments that occur outside of any scheduled activity.
Beginning again both holds promise and calls for resolve. Entering a third year of a global pandemic, opening a new chapter, rethinking long-lived practices, re-engaging in what had been paused during the height of the pandemic.
Gifts from Penny Bender Sebring ’64 (LL.D ’15) and Charles Ashby Lewis (LL.D ’15) extend their support of the Education Professions Career Community, and from Mike and Linda Bird Powers, both class of 1967, continues funding for the Health Professions Career Community.
Beronda L. Montgomery, an internationally recognized plant biology researcher and expert on mentoring in science, will join Grinnell in July 2022 as the vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College.