Dr. Nancy Powers & Pam Venable, grad student

Dr. Nancy Powers often says “family comes first.”

For Pam Venable, that message hit home. A member of the first cohort in the new one-year master’s program in elementary education, Venable faced some personal problems in the first months of the program. “My husband became very ill and I had to worry about him in the hospital. When I let Dr. Powers know, she said, ‘You take care of your family. We’ll worry about getting you caught up on the program after your husband recovers.’ That meant a lot, because I don’t think many professors would be that flexible.”

“There is a good support system here,” said Powers. “I think that’s something that Longwood is really known for.”

Their relationship began as Venable, a 1998 Longwood graduate and fifth-grade teacher at Prince Edward County Middle School, weighed applying to the master’s program. She emailed Powers, who encouraged her to apply. “She wrote, ‘I really look forward to meeting you.’ That kind of personal reply really hits home with potential students,” said Venable.

“She’s obviously very intelligent and an extremely hard worker,” said Powers. “She has some great ideas about what to do in the classroom, and it’s a great joy to be able to work with her on putting them into practice. Students like her are inspirational to professors.”

For Venable, the relationship that she had developed with Powers underscores Longwood’s reputation as a place where professors care about students. As an undergraduate, she developed the same type of relationship with Dr. Betty Jo Simmons and Dr. Maria Timmerman. For Pam Venable, Longwood is its own family.