Denise Giardina

Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, Denise Giardina experienced the uncertainties of life in a coal camp firsthand. Her grandfather and two uncles were coal miners, her father was a bookkeeper for the coal company, and her mother was a nurse. When Giardina was twelve, her father was laid off and the family moved to Charleston, West Virginia. After graduating from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1973, Giardina earned a master’s of divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1979 and taught at West Virginia State University. She is an activist for environmental and social justice, an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church, and a former third-party candidate for governor of West Virginia....

Irene McKinney

Poet Irene McKinney was born in Belington, West Virginia, and grew up on her family’s farm. Rural life and connection to place—the mountains of West Virginia specifically—proved to be a source of poetic inspiration throughout her life. She earned a BA in English literature at West Virginia Wesleyan College, an MA at West Virginia University, and a PhD at the University of Utah....

Taking the Learning from Service Learning into the Postcollege World

For 10 years, Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC) hosted a week-long on-campus emergency homeless shelter during the College’s short Winter Session. The mission of the extracurricular student-initiated, student-run project was to serve the homeless, raise awareness, dispel myths about homelessness, and reflect VWC’s mission. This research is a qualitative assessment of transferable-skill development and attitudinal change of alumni who, as students, held Shelter Manager positions. Results show that all former managers who responded to the survey think about the Shelter with some regularity, and each has continued their involvement with Shelter postcollege. Reported outcomes include changed stereotypes and broader worldviews, as well as the development of transferable skills, including interpersonal and communication skills, leadership, and teamwork. Respondents reported specific examples of ongoing impacts of Shelter in both their personal and professional lives. Research findings provide an assessment of this unique engaged learning experience specifically and contribute to the literature on postcollege outcomes of service learning more broadly.

“To the Uplift and Protection of Young Womanhood”: African-American Women at Iowa's Private Colleges and the University of Iowa, 1878–1928

In the fall semester of 1894, Ida Mae Godfrey entered Iowa Wesleyan College (IWC), a small predominantly white coeducational institution in the southeast Iowa town of Mount Pleasant Godfrey, like dozens of whites and eight blacks before her, had graduated from Mount Pleasant High School and was soon faced with a decision concerning the next steps in her life. She could, as did many young black and white women, marry, settle, and raise a family, but her personal and professional aspirations likely convinced her that a college education was the best choice. Although enrolled at IWC, Godfrey most likely lived at home while she attended school. This allowed her parents and extended family to shield her from some of the racial prejudices and possible sexual abuses she may have experienced had she gone away to college and worked as a domestic in a white home to pay for school. In temporarily exerting control over their daughter's life, Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey helped to preserve Ida's mental and physical energies so that she might advance through school and enter one of the most respectable occupations open to black women in the late nineteenth century—teaching.