DePauw Stories

This story appears in the Spring 2024 issue of DePauw Magazine.

Story by Casey Patrick, Photos by Brittney Way Cooper

“Where did you go to school?” It happens all the time. Two strangers realize they both went to DePauw and easily fall into conversation, no matter that they graduated 10, 30 or 50 years apart from one another. There is something about DePauw and the experience that makes it feel like DePauw becomes part of us and our identity. What is this elusive quality and how is it that we become part of DePauw?

Where do we create these bonds? It has to be that process when we open ourselves to others and share in community. At DePauw, these communities – from classrooms, to clubs, to Greek houses, to athletic teams – overlap and intertwine. To explore this question, we invited students and alumni who have never met but who share at least one common thread to discuss their own experiences and what it means to find a sense of belonging at DePauw.

The DePauw Mindset

Student-Athletes

J.R. Foster ’02 and Meredith Sierpina ’24

J.R. Foster played soccer, ran track and was later inducted into DePauw’s Athletics Hall of Fame. Now as president and CEO of a commercial real estate company in Cincinnati, he is constantly trying to recreate his alma mater’s “secret sauce” to attract and develop leaders like DePauw does.

“I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but when I meet DePauw folks across the country, whether they’re 80 years old or 18 years old, there is a unique commonality within them that allows you to have a strong, like-minded conversation,” he says.

He knows it’s a mixture of like-mindedness and open-mindedness. And he knows that students who thrive at DePauw work hard and have a sincere interest in learning from other people. They want to be shaped not by one thing but by many things. To Foster, it’s an elusive quality, one you can’t distill into some catchy marketing slogan.

Foster chose DePauw over Division I schools because he wanted to be more than an athlete in college, and he was. DePauw helped him build a strong network of friends from across the country, representing diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Many of those classmates are still his best friends.

Senior Meredith Sierpina also has that elusive DePauw quality Foster recognizes. She is the captain of the cross-country and track team. She is a presidential ambassador, works in admissions and is part of student government and Alpha Chi Omega. She is dedicated across the board. Early on Sunday mornings, when most of her classmates are still in bed, Sierpina and her teammates are out running. She calls her team the backbone on which she has built her college experience.

“At DePauw, you’re not just going to be a student-athlete. You’re not just going to be a student. You’re going to be involved in all other aspects because that’s what being a DePauw student is all about – that well-roundedness,” she says. “Hence the reason I may be a little bit too over-involved on campus these days.”

The characteristics that link DePauw students have been tested throughout the school’s history, most recently by the global pandemic. As a high-schooler from Rhode Island, Sierpina had visited campus and reveled in how friendly everyone was and how they seemed to love being at DePauw. But as a first-year student in 2020, she was part of a class marked by social distancing, a limited number of students on campus and a general apprehension about what the future might hold.

“It made me question being here. I was already going out of my comfort zone to be at a small school in Indiana away from my family. I wasn’t clicking well with a lot of people,” she says. And the salt in her wound: athletics had been canceled for the entire year.

But by the fall of 2021, things had begun to turn around. “Everything came together to build this new, better and brighter future these last three years,” she says. “When I was making more friends and able to go out into the DePauw community, it showed me that love once again and made me really grateful that I stayed.” Today, she’s not ready to leave but says she will take the DePauw community with her upon graduation in 2024.

How does DePauw create a sense of belonging strong enough to endure just about anything? It seems the secret sauce is the students themselves. DePauw steadfastly knows who it is as a liberal arts college, and so it attracts the kinds of students who feel like they belong here. Their energy, openness and aspirational spirits connect them.

“If you’re coming to DePauw, you will experience an immediate sense of belonging and commonality among your peers,” Foster says. He goes on to offer advice to future DePauw students. “Come in with an open mindset that you’re going to have the best experience of your life because DePauw is a game changer. It’s a life changer.”

Growth Through Curiosity

Sisters in Greek Life

Matigan Williams ’24 and Holiday McKiernan ’80

When Holiday McKiernan was considering where to go to college, she wanted more than an academic fit. “I was looking for both a place to live and where to anchor myself, and the place was DePauw,” she says.

McKiernan began classes in the fall of 1976. At that time, being Greek was almost synonymous with being a DePauw student so she naturally went through sorority rush. She had a neighbor back home whom she admired immensely. This helped her make a decision. “I wanted to belong to AXO in part because of JoAnn Gardner,” she says, and so McKiernan joined Alpha Chi Omega.

Forty years later, Matigan Williams was starting her DePauw career but in very different circumstances. It was 2020, and Greek recruitment relied on unpredictable home Wi-Fi connections and Zoom calls with potential sisters who could be hundreds of miles away. Through the process, Williams took a leap of faith and chose AXO, too.

“During Covid, we were connected even though we didn’t really know each other,” Williams says of her sorority sisters. “Then coming back to campus in the second semester, I instantly had a group of 20 girls.”

Being in a sorority or fraternity means you are inherently part of a larger community that spans many generations, but Greek life is only a sliver of what defines the DePauw experience. McKiernan says that a fierce sense of curiosity is also key.

“We know that we are unfinished – and never finished – and somehow curiosity and being open to courses and people will further shape us on our journey,” she says. “It’s a laboratory for experimentation to test out who each of us is and what we value, discovering what it is that really lights us.”

An Old Testament class at DePauw with Dr. John Eigenbrodt changed how McKiernan thought about religion and faith and set her on a new path. Studying abroad in Vienna and Budapest in the fall of 1978 changed her worldview. “I became personally aware that there were a lot of different ways to do things and to live.”

After graduation, McKiernan continued her journey in law school. She got married and raised three children. Her long career in Indianapolis included being in private practice focusing on tax-exempt law and working for Alpha Chi Omega before retiring from the Lumina Foundation, a foundation focused on higher education access and success, in 2023 as its general counsel and COO.

Williams has been experimenting as well. As a senior in high school, she knew she wanted to study political science, but she didn’t want to limit herself to just knowing peers in her program. At DePauw, she joined AXO, studied abroad in Oxford, tried out various clubs and interned with the Prindle Institute for Ethics.

“At Prindle, I was talking to biology majors and history majors. Being able to converse with them and find common ground made me feel like I belonged here on campus and had found a niche part of the DePauw experience that I could grow within as well,” Williams says.

Through these conversations and those with her professors and other peers at DePauw, she has learned the value of listening. It’s a common skill among DePauw students, one that allows you to remain open to new perspectives and other people’s passions. Listening encourages growth.

“DePauw is a step to helping us figure out who we are,” McKiernan says. Now 43 years after her time in Greencastle, she is still listening and exploring who she might become.

The Confidence to Try

Peeler Rats

Elisa Monroe ’24 and Rebecca Zucker ’14

When Rebecca Zucker was a studio art and art history student at DePauw, she practically lived at Peeler, drawing, painting and sculpting. She attended as many visiting artist talks, film screenings and poetry readings as her punch card could handle. Her roommates even hung out in the studio to study and write papers while Zucker threw clay. This affectionately nicknamed “Peeler rat” even stayed on as an Efroymnson fellow for a fifth year at DePauw.

Zucker refers to Peeler as a “purpose-driven building,” which it is. It is the hub of the university’s galleries and museums, whose purpose is to inspire and engage audiences through collections, exhibitions and public programming, stimulating the spirit of inquiry. For many art students like Zucker, Peeler was also a microcosm of DePauw, providing a place where students feel safe to try new things, to fail, and to grow.

After graduation, Zucker worked in the registrar department of a major gallery in New York City. The experience was endlessly refreshing and adrenaline driven, but it wasn’t overwhelming for her. “It was an opportunity that I let myself be open to because I had the DePauw foundation that I did,” she says.

Elise Monroe came to DePauw with her sights set on a biochemistry degree, but through exploring other interests in a true liberal arts fashion, she found herself far from the chemistry lab. Today, she is an art student spending much of her time at Peeler. This spring, she will graduate with degrees in studio art and global French studies.

“The environment at Peeler is one where you know you can do anything you set your mind to,” Monroe says. She told her adviser, Lori Miles, that she wanted to move to a new city and do some kind of internship in a creative field, but she would need help. Her adviser made her feel confident that her dream could happen and helped her apply for a grant to help fund her summer internship in Cincinnati. Monroe also spent a semester in Paris in an immersive study abroad program. “I took all of my classes in French, including two studio art classes and an art history course.”

Both women say the people at Peeler make the facility what it is. A decade apart in age, they easily share stories about Lori, Misti, Jerry, John, Meredith and others. Peeler is a tight-knit community, not only because students spend so many hours there but also because they discuss their work with others, often during critiques.

“There is something special with the discourse we get to create both casually and with the intention that we do with certain projects,” Zucker says. “I work with artists in a city where you have to build your studio from nothing. I think back all the time to how lucky we were to have this great facility,” says Zucker, who now is a registrar/archivist at New York City’s Karma gallery and works closely with artists.

At work recently, Zucker was asked to submit a quote that means something to her. She quoted Lori Miles, professor of art and art history. “I carry Peeler conversations with me,” Zucker says.

Years later, Miles’ words are still sticking with students. During Monroe’s introduction to sculpture course, Miles told the class, “Add and never subtract from your work.”

“That has impacted every single artistic project I have done,” Monroe says. “That piece of advice has changed my life and also convinced me to try anything.”

In other buildings and in other departments, DePauw professors might say this same thing in different ways. Having the bravery to take your own path comes out of the environment that DePauw fosters, where paths can look quite different and still be at home at DePauw.

Beautiful Peer Pressure

The Newcomers

Greg Schwipps ’95 and Agha Moiz Moshin ’26

DePauw’s campus is far different from the places many of our students call home, and yet they discover that they belong here. Greg Schwipps was one of those students.

“It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive away, but I might as well have been on an international flight,” he says.

Growing up in Milan, Indiana, Schwipps’ world was small. His rural community’s population was just 1,529 when he graduated from high school, the same school that won the 1954 Indiana basketball championship and inspired the movie “Hoosiers.” His mother taught first grade, and his father was a farmer and welder. People in Milan were predominately white and shared many of the same beliefs and experiences.

“That was my world. I came to DePauw not knowing DePauw but also not knowing a lot about anything but that corner of Indiana and that particular lifestyle,” he says. College opened Schwipps’ eyes to what was possible. After graduate school at Southern Illinois at Carbondale, his journey brought him back to DePauw in 1998 to teach. Today, he is the Richard W. Peck Professor of Creative Writing and Associate Chair of the English Department. He says he continues to be transformed every day by learning about his students’ lives. He notes the classes he leads frequently include students from small towns like his own and large metropolises on the other side of the globe.

Agha Moiz Mohsin also chose a college that is vastly different from where he grew up. His home in Lahore, Pakistan, is 7,370 miles from Greencastle and hums with the activity of 14 million people. When he decided to come to DePauw, he had never even been on campus. Nonetheless, Mohsin says, “Greencastle is perfect.”

Mohsin and Schwipps’ admiration for their home away from home isn’t mostly about the bucolic campus, insulated by its red brick and treasured history. It’s more about the people.

Like all DePauw students, Mohsin was paired with a student mentor when he started his first year. He and Olivia Cornejo had nothing in common, but she was kind. She helped him understand American norms, gave him rides to Wal-Mart and told him which class to take to fulfill a certain requirement. Olivia helped Mohsin find friends, and then they became friends.

When Schwipps started at DePauw, the friends he made were already hatching plans for the future while he hadn’t even learned how to be a student yet. “There’s a certain sort of beautiful peer pressure here. I thought, if I don’t come up with a plan, if I don’t aim high, I’m going to be the only person who doesn’t have something cool in the future.”

Three decades later, Mohsin had a similar experience. “The first thing I realized when I got to campus was how ambitious everyone else was around me,” he says. “I felt pushed in a good way.” He met students in the Management Fellows and Science Research Fellows programs. People around him were applying for internships and doing summer research projects, and alumni were coming back to campus to give exciting talks. DePauw’s culture inspired him to become more ambitious about his own career and to challenge himself academically.

All those benefits aside, Mohsin does miss some things about life in Lahore. “The only thing open when I’m driving back to the Delta Upsilon house from the library after midnight with my friends is Taco Bell. And trust me, I’m tired of eating Taco Bell,” he says with a laugh.

The business hours in Greencastle might never change, but the spirit of that notion can be a good thing. DePauw is changing in many exciting ways with the launch of the School of Business and Leadership, a major gift announcement (see this issue) and the planned fall launch of the Creative School.

There is a more diverse student body than when Schwipps was enrolled – but that student body remains the same in the most important ways. “The students in the classroom feel like DePauw students – driven, eager to learn and usually just pleasant to be around,” Schwipps says. “DePauw is still rooted in what it always has been and that makes it easy for me to feel like this is my place. It has always been my place.”