Paying it forward

From Spring/Summer 2017 Madison

Honors College Advisory Council member Anne Collins ('67, '78M) was not always the generous and involved alumna that she is today. When she first arrived at JMU, she was a self-described "little kid from the Eastern Shore of Maryland who had not done much in school."

It was not until her freshman year when history professor Dan McFarland took her aside and told her, "It's time for you to get yourself together and start achieving. You have the ability; let's start using it," that she started doing better, going to summer school and becoming a double major and double minor who graduated with 169 credit hours.

Collins became a high-school history teacher, working in Chesterfield County, Virginia, for nine years before moving back home. There, she continued her career and began recruiting high-achieving students for JMU. In her retirement, she has continued to travel along the Eastern Shore of Maryland, speaking to students about applying for college and encouraging them to set their sights high. She has become an active member of the Honors College Advisory Council, for which she helped to create the Hillcrest Scholarship. She also created the Sidney Rodrick Bland History Scholarship Endowment in recognition of the dedicated faculty member and innovative educator in the JMU Department of History for more than four decades.

"This is a place that was not just where you had fun … or met your best friends for life; it's also a place that tried to provide for you for the rest of your life with an education and with challenges that would help you," Collins says. "We're giving the best education we can give to the best students, so we can continue to recruit the best. This is just one of the ways that a supportive, student-centric environment and an inclusive campus is critical for students. We're all here together."