12 Questions With Hood’s 12th President

I was born and raised in the mountains of western North Carolina, in a small town called Mars Hill, about 18 miles north of Asheville. It joins the mountains of upper east Tennessee, and a big part of the Appalachian Trail runs through our county, with some of the most beautiful vistas ever.

I was raised on North Main Street, and that’s where my parents still live. I own the house right next door to them, which is formerly my grandmother’s house. It’s a beautiful place, and I love getting back every time I can.

I came at it backwards—not uncommon for me. I’ve always loved science, so I pursued a biology major as an undergraduate. I got my teaching certification as a backup plan in case a research path didn’t pan out. I wasn’t quite sure where it was going to take me, but I knew I needed to earn a living. Once I started teaching, I absolutely loved it and came back to it after I finished my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins. I recognized that what I was missing in my life, what really filled my heart, what I loved and enjoyed, was teaching.

That’s what led me on a path toward academia and higher education. I’ve loved it ever since. It really is a calling. It’s a special experience that you have with your students, particularly on a small campus like Hood, where you get to know them, to understand what motivates them and what brought them to your class. It’s a privilege to be a small part of that journey with them as a teacher.  

Well, I haven’t lived at all yet! But some of my passions are, first and foremost, my family. Chris and the kids and our new granddaughter, Maddie, and my mom and dad and Chris’ family are passions for me. I love dogs, and I’ve always had them my whole life. I got that from my mom. She would bring home stray dogs, and I would always be commiserating with her to bring in stray pets. The more they need to be rescued, the better.

I also have a passion for quilting. I get that from my grandmothers. My mom’s mom would make my clothes as a young girl, and I loved sitting beside her at the sewing machine just watching the rhythm of the needle going up and down and cutting out the paper patterns with her. My dad’s mom worked for the former Banner House plant, where they made pocketbooks. She would save all the scraps and quilt them together. Some of my most beloved quilts are ones that she made using those scraps. I love to quilt because that’s my connection to them. I still get a calming sense of watching that needle move up and down. It centers me. 

I enjoy gardening. I’m from the south. We have to grow tomatoes. It’s what we do. I have a pretty good green thumb. I have the ability to cut trimmings and clippings and get them to root. For example, Chris’ family is from Louisiana. His mother’s homestead has these beautiful gardenia plants. I would take clippings and root them. At this point, I’ve rooted about a dozen that are flourishing at our house, Chris’ mom’s house and his sister’s house.

That’s a tribute to my research. I arrived at it in a very intriguing way. At Mars Hill University, we had to complete a senior thesis. I picked a topic that I had gotten bored with, and I came across a picture of a Quarter Horse mare that had given birth to a genetically pure zebra foal. I knew enough about biology and horses to know that wasn’t normal, but it led me down a path of understanding what zoos throughout the country were doing with assisted reproductive technology in taking genetically pure zebra eggs and zebra stallion sperm and fertilizing them in vitro, collecting the embryos and then using domestic horses as gestational surrogates.

That changed my life because I had no idea that was even possible. The impact of that on threatened and endangered species is something that really excited me, so that led me on a journey to understand more about reproduction and development, particularly assisted reproductive technology. I just fell in love with how sperm are made and what it takes to carve a genome of 46 chromosomes in half and then grow this outboard motor of a tail to be mobile enough to swim to wherever the egg gets deposited. They’re amazing cells, so I was interested in studying and learning more about them. It’s still a passion for me, and it has become a bit of a novelty. The biologist needs a favorite cell, and that one’s mine. 

This is an incredible institution. We’ve got a lot to be excited about. Now, as the “interim” comes off my title, I remain excited about the forward trajectory of the College, our momentum and the passion of this community. It has always excited me and still does to this day.

There’s a lot of work to do. We’re keenly focused on changes in the higher education landscape and concerns about enrollment, finance, our programing and how we need to be responsive to a changing federal and statewide ecosystem that impacts all of us in the independent higher education sector.

In the coming year, I feel strongly that’s going to continue to be my focus. Throughout my tenure as president, my hope is to communicate openly and transparently with this community in a way that makes it clear to everyone what the critical issues are that I see on my dashboard. I’m going to put them on the community’s dashboard too.

I can’t do this work alone. This is our Hood College, and we’ve got to move forward together. As president, I’ll be at my best when I can mobilize all of us around some of those key initiatives, issues and priorities as a community because that’s when we’re our strongest.

While I’m not at the lab doing experiments every day, I think that experience has sharpened my ability to make data-informed decisions and not be afraid to hypothesis test or beta test. I’m a big fan of data, and it may be qualitative and quantitative data, but we need to make our best decisions informed by what we know. That may shift over time, but to the best extent, we can let data inform the decisions that we make. To me, that leans on the scientific background I have.

My favorite Hood tradition, hands down, is the Hood Hello. I lead the Hood Hello—every time I see a student, a guest, a neighbor walking their dog. The Hood Hello, above all else, is my favorite Hood tradition.

How I learned, studied and prepared academically in high school was very different from how I needed to succeed academically in college. Forging that gap was an initial challenge for me. I see in my role as provost that it’s also an initial challenge for some of our most accomplished first-year students.

The advice I would offer them is to give yourself grace. This is where you’re learning new things, and you’re giving yourself the opportunity to explore new things. There will be times when you flourish and succeed and fly, and there will be times when you struggle. And that’s okay because that’s part of learning. Give yourself the grace to work through those challenges and failures and negative experiences in a way that, on the other side, you can see them for the educational experience that they are and the way that those are equally part of a formative journey.

What I wanted to do when I started as interim president was find a platform where the world could see all the positive things that are happening at Hood College. The presidential platform and the megaphone you have as president is one that should never be taken for granted. So my Instagram page, @debbieathood, is a place where those little moments that happen every day on this campus can be celebrated and magnified to authentically show all the great things about this community—about who we are, the mission that we’re so proud of and the students in the community that we serve.

Ten-year-old Debbie would have been in fifth grade with one of my favorite teachers in my whole academic trajectory, Miss Ruby. She was fierce, and she was passionate about teaching. I feel grateful and blessed to have had that influence in my life. Miss Ruby was a force to be reckoned with, and she taught us to be patriotic, to be passionate, to be empathetic—all of that wrapped in the skin of a 10-year-old girl who’s going through the insecurities and social challenges that you do when you’re emerging into middle school.

What I would tell the 10-year-old Debbie is to hang on to those positive things, and the rest will work itself out. All the insecurities that you had really don’t matter in the big scheme of things. That’s what I would tell her. Focus on the good things. Focus on the positives. Focus on the things that really matter.

Read the full presidential announcement here.