Naomi Johnson’s long-lasting legacy

If you ask Dr. Naomi Johnson if she ever pictured herself working in academia, she will say the idea would make her college professors laugh. Prior to teaching, Johnson worked with a construction news company as a reporter, eventually working her way up to editor, which placed her directly over 120 employees. “I really had a great range of experiences from that job, it really helped me develop as a manager,” she continued.

“During that process, though, I got really tired of it,” said Johnson. Around the same time as Johnson began to lose interest in her job, America was faced with a horrible tragedy; 9/11. “Yeah, that’s one of those moments, kind of like COVID-19, that just changes your perspective about what’s important in life,” replied Johnson. She says after that, she took a step back and thought about what she wanted and what might make her happy. “I realized that working in the corporate world was not it.” 

After deciding a change needed to be made, Johnson embarked on a journey, obtaining her master’s in communication studies from the University of Kansas. Shortly after, she accepted a job teaching communication studies at Longwood University while waiting to begin her doctoral program. She taught for one year, commenting “and in that year I taught here, I fell in love with Longwood.” 

Award winning faculty, professor of Communication Studies at Longwood University, and former department chair, Johnson, “is a beautiful mentor for others,” says colleague Dr. Pam Tracy. Tracy commented that Johnson is constantly working to improve her teaching and “it isn’t about not thinking she knows what she’s doing, it’s truly about being student and learning focused.”

She mentioned she also fell in love with something, or someone else, rather. “He was a strong motivation for coming back here after finishing my PhD,” she said. Johnson finished her doctoral program within three years, she informed, “mostly because I was really eager to get back here!” 

After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with her doctorate in communication studies, Johnson decided to come back to Longwood University. “Oh, can I throw in one more thing as to why I wanted to come back?” asked Johnson during our interview. She proceeded to tell me about two colleagues she had worked with during her first year at Longwood; they were Dr. Bill Stuart and Tracy. She continued “and both of them were outstanding mentors to me and became really good friends as well. So the opportunity to work with them was also a real draw”.

Three years into teaching as an assistant professor at Longwood University, Johnson was awarded the Junior Faculty Award, an award spotlighting new educators who go above and beyond for their students and department. An award, her colleagues say, that was well deserved.

On September 9, 2012, during the start of a new semester, tragedy struck the Longwood community. Stuart, the interim department chair, had suddenly died from a heart attack (courtesy of 8News). “It was really hard emotionally,” said Johnson. Tracy also mentioned it being a very traumatic time for everyone involved. Tracy continued, “We met with the students, we sat with them, we talked with them in the class. We stuck together” she said. 

Johnson was asked to become the new department chair after Stuart’s passing. During our interview, I asked Johnson what the transition was like. “I could take what I had previously learned about being a manager and apply it,” she commented. “But to be able to do that while also dealing with my own grief, as well as my colleagues and students…” Looking back, Johnson says she was also filling a role of social support for her colleagues and students, commenting that it was a very stressful time.

“But I also think it was a time that I did some of the most important work I’ve done,” said Johnson. “We had lost the founder of our department, who was like our guiding vision,” she said. It was difficult to find a way forward, she added. In her six-and-a-half-year reign as department chair, she led the department to re-establish the program as a stand-alone department, which meant the department no longer tied itself to the theater program at Longwood. 

In addition, she led initiatives to update the curriculum, established the annual COMM Career Conference, and created the Longwood Event & Meeting Planning certification program (courtesy of LinkedIn). One of her greatest contributions to the Longwood community is her dedicated work towards co-chairing the University Diversity Council and developing the Five-Year Strategic Diversity Plan (courtesy of Blog).

After six-and-a-half-years of leading the department, Johnson handed the position over to Professor Jeff Halliday. Halliday jokingly said that “these aren’t shoes that I’m trying to fill, they’re canoes.” . He continued, “ really is truly because she’s thinking all the time about how she can make the course she’s teaching stronger.” 

Halliday concluded our interview by offering up kind words for his predecessor. “As good as a teacher she is, and she’s an award-winning teacher for a reason; she is ten times that as a colleague.” Ten years later on the same day as winning the junior faculty award, Johnson was awarded the Maude Glenn Raiford teaching award for her excellence in teaching, adding on to her Longwood legacy. 

Jake Chris, a senior, worked closely with Johnson on a project for school during the pandemic. He said that “Naomi Johnson has high expectations for her students and that is part of the reason why I am so successful in her classes.” Johnson continues to strengthen young minds with each new day, leaving a path for others to follow.

THE ROTUNDA’S REFLECTION

“I joined The Rotunda before the pandemic, and I loved the working culture,” said Editor-in-Chief of Longwood University’s student-led paper Nick Robinson. “It made me sad when we fell out of that culture during the pandemic; I didn’t see a bright future for The Rotunda if we kept doing things the way we did last year,” he commented during our interview.

The Rotunda has been a media outlet for over 100 years, reporting on local, state, and national news, entertainment, opinions and more. However, they stopped publishing during the coronavirus lockdown.  

Robinson commented that because of the pandemic he felt the culture within the organization began to shift. “Before the pandemic, I felt like we were like, really driven to, you know, push out a quality newspaper every single week,” he said. “I feel like the pandemic kind of made us a little bit lazy. And so that’s one thing I wanted to change when I became the editor-in-chief,” Robinson said. 

Getting the organization back on track as a “professional organization” is key because “we do provide a service to the campus. We exist to provide the campus with news,” he said.

One of the major contributors to the change in culture, in addition to impact of the surge in the coronavirus,was the graduation of many of the club’s seniors and the staff’s inability to recruit during a pandemic. 

“The number of students who were working on creating content for the paper shrunk instantly once everyone went online,” said club advisor Jeff Halliday. “If there’s no one making content, there’s no paper to produce.”The Rotunda is lacking staff in key roles across the board. Copy, news, opinion, and art and entertainment column editors are needed. Positions are also open in Rotunda Studios, the paper’s videography and digital editing production arm.

When asked what his plans were to try and bring back the working culture that was present before the pandemic, Robinson shared that he started reinforcing deadlines for writers and photographers, and most importantly, maintaining those deadlines. To do so, the staff are not publishing articles of poor quality. Also, they are making sure that everyone has something to work on in order to encourage productivity, and they are focusing on recruiting new members.

Regarding the need to stay productive, one of those staff members, Feature Editor Victoria Thompson stated that “Features, for me, are about events and things happening currently, and since there weren’t a lot of events due to COVID-19, there wasn’t a lot to write about.”

Coming back in person has allowed The Rotunda to somewhat return to “normal”. They are now able to produce a monthly edition that recaps the events of that past month. Thompson mentioned that she was excited to get back to writing articles about the Longwood community. “My column, I think, specifically offers that sense of community [here] at Longwood,” she commented.

Dr. Alec Hosterman, co-advisor of The Rotunda, advises the student photographers. While the team of photographers did meet during the pandemic, their meetings were “more sporadic and spaced out,” said Hosterman. This year, they are meeting once again in person. Hosterman said the biggest challenges the photographers faced were how to capture stories during a pandemic environment, especially with face mask and other restrictions. 

The Rotunda has functioned to provide an essential service to the Longwood community for over 100 years. But why should the Longwood community continue to read and/or support The Rotunda in our post-pandemic world? If you ask club advisor Halliday, he will say, “Without The Rotunda, there is no voice of the student. Period.” There is no “permanent representation of the student experience.” 

Halliday also stated that he felt that students who stay informed through the paper feel more “strongly in their connection to the university.” Halliday concluded by making the important point that The Rotunda and other news organizations hold a mirror to their communities and that “students need to experience it while they’re here in order to become more informed citizens when they leave.”

If you are interested in joining the team, there are plenty of positions to choose from, as listed above. The Rotunda is always looking for writers, photographers, videographers, editors, and more. Robinson and Thompson agreed that in order to join The Rotunda you don’t have to be good at anything, as long as you’re willing to learn, they will teach you everything you need to know. Meetings are hosted weekly in The Rotunda office, located in Upchurch across from Starbucks.

Virginia Lynchburg vs. Longwood Men’s Basketball

After losing their first game of the season against the University of Iowa, Longwood men’s basketball pulled a 180° against Virginia University of Lynchburg this past Friday, November 12. By the end of the first half Longwood was up ten points and continued to stay ahead of their opponents until the end of the second half. Senior guard C.J. Williams scored the eightieth point in the last minute of the game, cementing Longwood’s first win of the season.

This win cemented another first for fourth-year head coach, Griff Aldrich. Since becoming head coach, this game has been the program’s largest margin of victory. While it doesn’t quite surpass the 90-52 win over Cairn on December 28, 2015 (LongwoodLancers), it does come in at a close second.

Newcome transfer senior guard, Isaiah Wilkins, made a great first impression on the court. Transferring in from Virginia Tech/Wake Forest, Wilkins came in hot scoring 19 points and 10 rebounds for Longwood. While at Wake Forest, he scored 35% of his shots, according to ESPN+.

Closing in behind him is junior forward Leslis Nkereuwem, who scored eight points and ten rebounds. Other standout players were sophomore Nate Lliteras, who scored 12 points in only 13 minutes in the second half, one of which was a dunk.

In Aldrich’s postgame interview, he commented that in the first half, the pace of the game was slower than what he and his team would’ve preferred. “They just tried to slow it down and basically shorten the game and try and shorten the number of possessions which is probably not a bad strategy when you don’t have as much talent,” he commented.

He continued by expressing support for his team, saying they did a great job in handling the situation and not becoming frustrated in the first half. “Couple that with the fact that we weren’t making shots and I thought they could’ve really gotten frustrated.” Aldrich said that the guys stayed resolute despite it being hard to stay in transition.

In the second half of the game, Aldrich said that he felt the team did a better job on defense than in the first half. The team wasn’t being aggressive enough in their switches, which resulted in Wilkins losing his man multiple times.

Aldrich commented on Wilkins’ performance, saying that Isaiah has the ability to be a phenomenal player at Longwood. He did have a few suggestions as to how he could improve, citing he lost his man twice during the game. “That to me was, ‘hey man, you aren’t as focused as you need to be,’ and it isn’t that I’m mad at him, I just want him to reach his potential.” 

The Longwood men’s basketball team has its next four consecutive games at home in Willet Hall. They play off against Mid-Atlantic Christian University on Sunday, November 14 at 3 p.m..