Elin Danien went from autodidact to Penn anthropology student at age 46. She found the college experience so fulfilling that she started a scholarship for other women.
BY SUSAN LONKEVICH
Dr. Laura Grindstaff, assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, is lecturing on how popular music “has never been just about the music.” It is also, she explains, a reflection of the ideologies of different subcultures. When she mentions disco, a student seated in the second row of her class on Communication and Popular Culture can’t help but chuckle.
“Why are you laughing?” the professor asks.
“I’ve lived through it,” says the woman, whose sensible, short brown hair bears no resemblance to the red, Ziggy-Stardust-style that she used to wear. She remembers the 1970s and its musical variations all too well.
The outspoken student in the Penn sweatshirt, jeans, and plaid sneakers is 41-year-old Barbara Hearn, mother of two, and the first on her side of the family to go to college. What brings her here, surrounded by students who weren’t even born when she was going to dance clubs two decades ago, is a scholarship fund called Bread Upon the Waters, which pays tuition for gifted women over age 30 who are enrolled part-time in Penn’s College of General Studies (CGS). Hearn expects to complete her bachelor’s degree in communication in May and hopes to eventually go to graduate school and get a job in film or television production. She’s just one of a few dozen women who have been given a second chance at educating — and recreating — themselves through the 11-year-old scholarship.
The woman behind it all is Elin Danien, CGS’82, G’89, who at age 46 enrolled in CGS herself and turned an autodidact’s interest in archaeology and ancient history into a disciplined course of study. Now 68, she is busy wrapping up her dissertation, an analysis of polychrome Mayan pottery from the Guatemalan highlands in the University Museum’s collection; she expects to earn her Ph.D. in anthropology in May.
Danien skipped college after high school to become “the great American actress.” When that didn’t happen, she switched to journalism and then to copywriting before meeting her husband, Wilton. While volunteering as a guide at the University Museum, she got the idea of taking a couple of classes at Penn. “I told my husband, I think I’ll sit in on some courses, and he said, ‘Why don’t you take them for credit?'”
With a smile as bright as the Mexican beads she wears, Danien says, “He never realized what he was letting himself in for.” She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1982 — Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude — and her master’s degree in 1989.
While putting together her will, Danien decided she would like to leave some money for a women’s scholarship. As a student she had met many women struggling to pay for their continuing education — and some whose spouses weren’t particularly supportive. Out of this concern emerged Bread Upon the Waters. “It’s based on the biblical adage that if you cast your bread upon the waters, it will come back to you [many times over],” Danien says. She brought her idea — and $1,000 in “seed money” — to CGS. It grew “much faster than I had ever dreamed, thanks to Penn’s good stewardship.”
Bread’s endowment now tops half a million dollars, according to Richard Hendrix, director of CGS and associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Hendrix says he knows of two other scholarship programs for women in continuing education, but none like Bread that respond to the needs of part-time students.
RHEA MANDELL, CW’58, with her assistant Cookie Belman, coordinates the Bread program for CGS with an enthusiasm that matches the scholars’ own. “Many times they’re combining many different roles in life, yet they’re finding the time and energy to educate themselves,” she says. “They’re a unique group of women. They sparkle.” They also get good grades. The average GPA for Bread scholars is 3.57.
Danien follows the progress of the scholars closely. “I don’t have my own blood children, but these women are my children because I feel that I have made a profound difference in their ability to live their lives as fully as possible,” she says. “And they in turn, once they graduate, and can, make contributions.”
Barbara Hearn grew up in a traditional, Italian-American family in South Philadelphia, the oldest child of a warehouseman at the Naval Shipyard and a waitress. “When I talked to my dad about going to college, he said we couldn’t afford it, which was true, and it probably wouldn’t be beneficial for me. I’d be better off going to work [and] finding a husband.” Hearn took her time choosing a spouse, but she went to work straight out of high school installing computer systems. She later attended community college in the evenings and earned her associate’s degree in computer science.
Then, through a friend, she learned about Bread Upon the Waters and received a scholarship to study at Penn. At first, she says, “I felt like I didn’t belong there, that I was kind of an imposter. We always viewed Penn as an ivory tower for the rich.” Fortunately, though, she had a “very nice instructor” for her first class, and her confidence grew. (That confidence took a momentary dip, however, when another professor asked just what she thought she was doing here.)
School days, though, are just “a little nutty,” she says. They begin with Hearn, her husband Mike, and their two kids dashing out of their West Philadelphia home together. Hearn drops Mike off at Community College of Philadelphia, where he chairs the computer studies department; takes her kids to Bache-Martin, a magnet public school in the Fairmount neighborhood; and then heads back, to Penn, to search for a parking spot minutes before her first class on “The Information Age.”
Between classes she usually dashes home to “throw a load of wash in and swallow some lunch.” She spent one recent break, however, at her children’s school typing up fliers for an open house. Such are the duties of a home and school association president.
Occasionally she’s had to bring eight-year-old Melissa and 10-year-old Michael with her to class because they had the day off from school. Hearn says she has it easy, though, compared to some friends who are single parents, working during the day and going to school at night.
There are pros and cons to being twice the age of most other students, as Hearn has learned. Some younger students actually find her seasoned comments in class discussions a little intimidating, she has been told. On the other hand, she doesn’t look upon her professors as know-it-all gods who can’t be challenged, and this results in a richer learning experience. Even so, after many years in the classroom, she is restless to claim that diploma. When she does, she says, “I think I’m going to have it attached to my chest for a while.”
With classes over for the afternoon, Hearn drives her blue minivan over to her children’s school, where she greets nearly every kid and staff member she sees by name. Then the three students head home together. Melissa carries her assignments in a Hunchback of Notre Dame backpack; her mom’s is navy blue. What does Melissa think of her mother going to school? “That’s okay,” she says matter-of-factly. Is she proud? “I’m proud of her being the home and school association president.”
“My kids just think this is a part of life,” Hearn explains. “I think it’s important for them to understand that you’re never too old, and that it’s important to get an education.”
So far, a dozen students have earned Penn degrees with Bread supporting them all the way. Several others have become full-time students or have used their credits to transfer to different schools. Competition is keen for the 25 scholarships currently funded. “We received 940 responses in the spring [after a Philadelphia Inquirer article was published],” Mandell says. “We were beside ourselves with the sheer volume of phone calls.” Bread provides great publicity for all of CGS’s programs, Hendrix says, noting, “We don’t want to be the best kept secret in the University or the Philadelphia area.”
Each of the scholars has taken a slightly different journey:
PATRICIA M. CONNELLYwas inspired by the pomp and kilted bagpipers of her older sister’s Commencement procession at Penn several years ago. “When I heard the music and watched them march, I knew I had to graduate from Penn,” she recalls. “So I took myself back to school.”
The 48-year-old Northeast Philadelphia resident had passed up college because she wasn’t “expected to be a career woman. I came from a single-parent family who lived in a housing project. People in my family just didn’t go to college. You went to work and helped get your mom out of the projects.”
She’s now pursuing a sociology degree, but is content to finish her career at SEPTA, where she has worked her way up from bus driver to training manager. “I’m not doing this for my career,” Connelly says. “I’m doing this for me, because I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would go to a college like Penn. I never thought I had the intelligence, and I never thought I could afford the Ivy League costs.”
In defiance of those doubts she will have earned enough credits for her associate’s degree in May and plans to return in the fall to pursue her bachelor’s degree. Recently, Connelly was diagnosed with a progressive kidney disease, which is still in its beginning stages. But nothing will stand in the way of continuing her education, she says, “as long as I have the energy to get up.”
BERNICE GREEN always had a penchant for poetry and a passion for literature. But, as she explains, “I fell in love with my high school sweetheart, and college didn’t enter into the picture.” Although she took courses sporadically over the years, raising two sons and holding down jobs at John Wanamaker’s and Fidelity Bank came first.
Four years ago, after her youngest son graduated from high school, she enrolled in Delaware County Community College, where her high marks qualified her for the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. One day, a letter describing the Bread scholarships arrived at her Yeadon home, and she decided to apply.
Once selected, Green’s excitement turned into panic. “I thought, ‘Wait a minute. Can you do this?'” It didn’t help that the first paper she wrote at Penn received a D-plus. “I’m happy to say that when I left the class it was a B-plus. I rose to the occasion.” Her husband Will, “has been very supportive of me,” she adds. “Without him, I can’t do it.”
As Green comes closer to earning her B.A. in English, with a concentration in African-American studies, she still hasn’t decided whether she will use the diploma to pursue a new career, but she’s enjoying each course along the way. “People figure that when you get older your joy for living and learning has somewhat waned, but I’m as fascinated with learning as I have always been. It amazes me. The body gets older, but your mind — the same hopes, dreams, and desires are still there.”
Every time she visits a friend’s home, Joy Rene Bouldin sees the artifacts of a previous life — antique furniture, clothing, CDs, all items she sold when she was laid off from her job as a self-taught software designer in New York. That move led her around the world, and eventually, to Penn, where she’s been bringing the various strands of her life together as a Bread scholar and anthropology major since 1993.
She bought a laptop computer with the proceeds of her sale, and headed to the Caribbean, West Africa, and Europe with the notion of becoming a filmmaker. In two years of traveling, she did research, worked as a translator and teacher, and sang in a reggae band. She also soaked up plenty of art, culture and caf´é life, and, in one city, Prague, faced racial attacks as a black woman, she says.
When Bouldin’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, she returned home to Philadelphia and decided to return to college to “exercise my brain” and to improve her chances in the local job market. She eventually hopes to go to graduate school and to use her travel experiences to create documentaries or curate museum exhibitions about food and culture, or the changing landscape of European politics.
Although some continuing-education students wish they had gone to college sooner, Bouldin believes, “It would behoove everyone to get out and travel or work and support themselves first. When I take art history now, I’ve seen those pieces in real life. When we’re having some debate on social issues, I may have been there. It makes school a really profound experience.”
TO KEEP BREAD rising, its board of directors counts on donations from groups and individuals and the proceeds from successful fundraisers such as wine-tastings, cabarets, and lectures. The goal is to increase the number of scholarship recipients to 30 and to amass a large enough endowment to permanently fund the program.
Support systems, whether they take the form of an understanding spouse, CGS’s academic advising, or informal get-togethers with peers, play a crucial role in relieving the pressures on many continuing-education students, including the Bread scholars.
Danien credits her husband with tolerating “all of the Sturm und Drang of my studying” — her belief that she was “never going to pass a single test.” She also meets for “moral support and chocolate” with three other Ph.D. candidates toiling over their dissertations (the spouse of one member of their group dubbed them “The Diss-graces”).
Most of Hearn’s relatives wonder why she’s going to this trouble to earn a degree, but she has in her husband a sympathetic sounding board and a careful proofreader for her papers.
Bread’s coordinators also give the scholarship recipients phone lists so they can contact and be resources for each other, and they hold a back-to-school reception each fall so everyone can connect names with faces.
In October, some 40 past and present Bread recipients and board members gathered at the Faculty Club to mingle, compare class schedules and exchange personal stories. Danien took in the new and familiar faces throughout the room, extended her arms as if she were going to hug the entire crowd, and exclaimed, “Look at all of my daughters.”
When she invited them to her “Ph.D. party” next spring, they let out a supportive cheer. This is family, after all.