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Alum Spotlight: Turning Point Graduate
By Katie-Beth Ryan '08
STAFF WRITER

Most of the Sweet Briar community is familiar with Karen Summers as the Office Manager in the President’s Office, where she has worked since 1993. Yet during the same time span, she has been taking as many as three classes per academic term, working diligently towards a degree in sociology – all the while balancing her academic and professional duties alongside her busy family life.

Summers isn’t your typical Sweet Briar student – she’s one of a select few who must juggle Spanish essays with a full-time job, sociology exams with the occasional sick child. Yet when she marches across the stage at Commencement exercises in May, she will join an elite group of Sweet Briar alumnae – the Turning Point graduates.

Founded in the mid-1970s, the Turning Point program was designed to enable women of nontraditional college age to earn a Sweet Briar degree. As any SBC student knows, the College’s curriculum is demanding. The ladies enrolled as Turning Point students must often fulfill their academic commitments and budget their time more carefully than the average undergraduate. The sacrifices made by the nontraditional Vixen are many. “You really don’t have a weekend because you have to try to catch up with your work,” Summers acknowledges. “And I’m tired all the time.”

Chaplain’s assistant Pat Richeson could sympathize. A 1991 graduate of the program with a degree in studio art, she worked for ten years to complete her education while carefully managing her non-academic life. For Richeson, however, the benefits of being a Turning Point scholar far outweighed the downfalls.

“I got tired, but never bored,” she recalls. “It was a chance to be surrounded by people and connect with learning.”

Both Richeson and Summers had earned credits elsewhere prior to their enrollment at SBC – Richeson at the University of Mary Washington, Summers at a community college in her native Ohio – and paused their studies when their families began to expand. Each had been out of school for a number of years when they re-commenced their studies. “I was so afraid that the students would think I was an old lady,” Richeson says, “but they were so receptive. I was surprised at how easily they made me fit in.”

For Summers, the Turning Point has been especially rewarding because of her understanding employer. “It’s such an advantage that I can leave my desk and go to a class,” she says. “If I need to leave early to go study, or if I need a personal day, the President and her office are very understanding.” And when she graduates in May, it will be a doubly celebratory time for the Summers family: her son will receive his degree from the University of Richmond the day after Karen’s graduation from Sweet Briar.