Lost and found

But we end up exactly where we need to be. Those feelings disappear and we find our home along the mountainside. I knew this was a common path for students, but this miraculous journey of traveling lost and becoming found is something possible for professors and administrators as well.

Dr. Carol Hinds took this sort of a path. Leaving Kansas to find a position anywhere, she thought the Mount would be a place to pause for only a few years. Twenty-five years later, that pause became a full stop. This is shocking to me, and perhaps for many students, because after so many years, it’s hard to imagine the university without her. She began as Provost, the chief academic officer of the university. She then transitioned back to being a professor in the English department and teaches courses in English and the Core Curriculum that is unique to the Mount. Because of her involvement in Core, many students will have crossed Dr. Hinds’s classroom before they’ve graduated.

Because the student population changes every four years, some pieces of history get lost. What a lot of students don’t realize when they’re sitting in class with Dr. Hinds is that she was one of the first females to hold a major administrative position at the Mount. We often forget that Mount St. Mary’s was a men’s college up until 1972. When Dr. Hinds was Provost in 1995, the alums of the college were almost entirely male. While female students had been attending for more than twenty years, it still sometimes felt like a ‘male’ college. She shared with me that one of her primary goals was to get more women in positions of leadership, and this has remained true to this day.

When professors get promoted to administrative positions, they frequently don’t return to the classroom. When Dr. Hinds left her position to teach English courses again, she was warned how much she would hate it because of how much the students would have changed in the time she was gone. "But the students hadn’t changed," she remarked to me. "Students are just as great as they always have been, especially Mount students."

One thing about Carol Hinds is that she is well-loved. I had heard raving reviews from upperclassmen so when it came time to register for courses, I selected her section for one of our Core classes. Their words of endearment could not have prepared me for what I would experience. Wrapped up in her wit and bluntness is a true passion for learning, which is not lost on many of her students. Whether it is intentional or not, I always feel myself called to be better when I’m around her. I know that I can study harder, achieve better things, and dream bigger than I had before. I’m called to a higher standard of thinking and being, which is what a liberal arts education is intended to teach you. Dr. Hinds is one of the most effective professors in this area, which is something I’m not sure she is aware of. The beauty of Dr. Hinds is that she’s just being herself.

What I think students love most about Dr. Hinds is her honesty. In an era of biting our tongues and sugarcoating everything we say, the blunt truth is readily welcomed. You’d think students would run from it, but we cling to it. There is something so remarkably beautiful about someone being so true to themselves, anytime or any place you see them. I know that the Dr. Hinds I experienced in the classroom is the same one from 1995 and the same one that will be teaching this upcoming semester. There is beauty in consistency. There is beauty in honesty.

Even in the short time I spent one on one with her for this article, I was called to be more of myself, the authentic self that she presents every day. When I asked her what advice she’d have for students, it was simple: "Take advantage of everything." With so many opportunities, we are often overwhelmed with the proliferation of choice and instead choose nothing. She shared that if young people were to throw themselves into things, without fearing social approval or abandonment, we’d actually like it. Dr. Hinds encapsulates the liberal arts education that the Mount strives to cultivate for students, with well-roundedness and overall thirst for knowledge in all disciplines. "Liberal arts minded people are never bored because they become engaged in whatever it is that’s around them," she shared.

And it is because Dr. Hinds, like liberal arts minded people, is always engaged in what is around her that she is herself inside and outside of the classroom. When the pursuit of knowledge and questions about the human condition are your life’s work, your work is your life. A casual conversation in the library or dining hall feels no different than discussions of texts in the classroom. There is only one Carol Hinds.

I know Dr. Hinds is exactly where she is needed, just as I am exactly where I need to be. We may not have imagined the life that would be created from this university, but it is hard to picture a life without it now. As one of the oldest faculty members, I couldn’t help but ask about her intentions at the Mount in the future, which many students have pondered anxiously. Her answer about her departure mimics my own, as with our stories of our arrivals: "Nothing else I could do would be more fun than this."