This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Samantha (Sam) Wagner.  She was born and raised in Salem County, New Jersey. Her father has worked in varying roles in business over his career and her mother has always worked in education. Samantha has two brothers: a younger brother who works in auto merchandising and an older brother who served in the Air Force and now works as a police officer. Sam went to public schools for her K-12 education and graduated from Woodstown High School in 2010. Sam enrolled at Rowan in Fall 2010 and graduated in May 2014 with degrees in History and Subject Matter Education. Sam came back to Rowan in Fall 2014 and graduated in May 2016 with a master’s degree in Counseling in Educational Settings. During her undergraduate years, she worked as a bank teller at her local community bank. In graduate school, she worked as the inaugural Graduate Coordinator for Women’s and Inclusion Programs in the Office of Social Justice, Inclusion, and Conflict Resolution. In 2017, she started her first professional job in higher education at Rowan College of South Jersey (RCSJ) as an academic advisor for health science majors. In 2020, she shifted roles and started working as Administrator for Selective Admissions programs at RCSJ. In 2022, she was promoted to Director, Selective Admissions at RCSJ, and stayed in that role until November 2023. Sam currently works as an academic advisor at the University of Delaware, working with first- and second-year students in the College of Arts and Sciences.

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I absolutely love going to school. One of my core memories from my childhood is carrying around old textbooks and pretending to read them and playing school with all of my Barbies and American Girl dolls. It was inevitable that I’d pursue a career in education, and when I met my fifth grade Language Arts teacher it sealed the deal. She was everything I wanted to be in my career: warm-hearted, funny, and an absolute master of creating connections with her students and their families.  I was torn between becoming an English teacher and a social studies teacher. My dad and my younger brother are history buffs, so it was always a common topic of discussion in my house growing up, but I also loved the reading and writing I did for my English classes.

I had excellent teachers for both subjects, though my history teachers were slightly more persuasive in helping me decide between the two. I credit most of that decision to my 10^th grade US History teacher, Pete Mazzagatti, or “Mazz” as we called him. Mazz was the first of my teachers that I can remember distinctly focusing on exploring the “why” of history and integrating the concept of historical significance into the curriculum. It was no longer enough to be able to regurgitate dates, facts, and names of battles – I was now challenged to analyze why they were so important to human history. That year, I also took an elective course (also taught by Mazz) called “Conflict and Change in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.” This course focused exclusively on social movements, and it was some of my first introductions to concepts of feminism and social justice. I finished the Mazz trifecta offered at Woodstown by taking his Introduction to Sociology course my senior year and was, again, challenged to take these concepts I’d studied over the past few years and apply a sociological lens to them. By my senior year of high school, I decided to go to college for a teacher education program so I could be the female version of Mr. Mazz. I was determined to graduate with my degree in history education, come back to my high school, and teach AP and Honors World History courses until I retired, beloved by all of my students and the larger community. I still really enjoyed my English courses and elective subjects I took in high school, but history won out and I decided to apply to college as a social studies education major.

I am very much of a homebody and I love living in South Jersey, so it came as no surprise to anyone when I applied to colleges within about an hour radius from my home. I applied to five colleges: University of Delaware, Rider University, West Chester University, Drexel University, and Rowan University.  I was lucky enough to be accepted to every college I applied to – whether that is a testament to my academic excellence or my aversion to risk, I’m not sure. Rowan was my last choice.  I desperately wanted not to go to Rowan because it seemed that everyone else who wanted to be a teacher went there. Rider was my top choice as one of my high school mentors raved about their education program and they had a very attractive website and curriculum offerings. They offered me a handsome scholarship, but it still was financially unrealistic. I also toured the campus at the start of my senior year and came away from it underwhelmed – it felt like it was too empty and way too small for my liking. The University of Delaware was my second choice. Three of my cousins went there back in the 90s so it was familiar enough to my family and it was the perfect, quintessential college town. However, it was also too expensive, even with some scholarships that they offered me, and they didn’t have a specific social studies education program.  I toured West Chester, but it left literally no impression at all on me. I only applied to Drexel because they hounded me with a free application and then they did not offer me admission to the specific program I applied for. Plus, I learned from my tour there that I could not live in a city (even a smaller one, like Philadelphia) at that point in my life.   

That left me with Rowan. I don’t think I toured Rowan until I came to Accepted Students Day and even then, I tried very hard to not be impressed by it. At that point, I was still trying to convince myself that Rider would recognize how wonderful of a student I could be and magically adjust my scholarship to win me over (spoiler alert: they did not do that). I enjoyed the event, and the campus tour, more than I thought I would. Rowan was much less intimidating than Drexel or UDel in terms of campus size, and there was actual life to it that I didn’t see at Rider. Rowan was easily commutable, and they adjusted my merit scholarship at accepted students day, making the finances way better than any of the other options. Rowan made the most sense on paper, but I absolutely did not want to just be another teacher who graduated from Rowan. Eventually I relented, and we submitted my deposit and confirmed my enrollment in May 2010.  I remember crying at my kitchen table, wishing I could make any other decision that would satisfy my desire to be different and still making financial sense for my family, while I made a fake-excited Facebook status saying, “it’s official – rowan profs ‘14<3.”

I watched all of my friends go off to their summer orientation programs and start making new connections at their exciting colleges in places both near and far. I was a competitive dancer at the time, so I had to wait until the end of July (after my final national competition) for my summer orientation at Rowan. I remember summer orientation and learning about the CLIO program from Dr. Carrigan. CLIO definitely piqued my interest – an exclusive learning community for history majors? Invite-only? It’s like someone heard my prayers for something to make me excited about Rowan rather than simply resigned to it. Sign me up!  

Dr. Carrigan’s excitement about this program was evident from the moment he introduced himself to us. My mom came to orientation with me for the parent program, and we met for lunch after our morning sessions were over. She asked me if I knew of Dr. Carrigan and I mentioned I met him literally the hour before. She told me Dr. Carrigan had talked to her about me and how he was so happy I decided to come to Rowan and study history. I immediately felt more connected to the department since I was already being sought out by the department chair.  

CLIO proved to be a saving grace for me as I started college. I decided to commute to school to be more financially prudent for my family, and I was devastated at the thought of missing out on the traditional dorm experience. I found that I had more trouble acclimating to campus and general college life than I thought I would. CLIO gave me connections to other first-year students right from the start; if I didn’t have a best friend yet, I at least had a group of familiar faces to rely on. As a CLIO student, I got to take all of my survey classes with the same people, so we developed a bond as a cohort. This type of experience, as I know now as an advisor, can be a determining factor for student retention. I soon made close friends with other CLIO students, Leah Kiser and Amanda Katzoff. We went on to take multiple classes together outside of CLIO and relying on each other to help get us through the rest of our degrees. It was such a full circle moment to sit with them at commencement, and I credit CLIO for bringing us together.

CLIO also saved me from making a complete fool of myself on my first day of freshman year.  I severely underestimated how bad the parking situation would be in Lot A (way before the Rorher building was built) and drove to campus, arriving at around 9:10AM for a 9:25AM class. You can probably imagine my desperation and panic as I circled the lot for what felt like a lifetime before I found a spot. I wound up finding a spot around 9:35AM and would be about 15 minutes late to my very first college class. As I rushed to class, regretting every decision I made that morning, I remember wandering around Science Hall before seeing one of my new CLIO friends’ faces in the window. I quietly opened the door, said a silent “thank you” to my friend, and rushed to find a seat in the back of the class. I’d heard horror stories all throughout high school of how my teachers were willing to tolerate some teenage behavior like coming to class late, but my college professors would never stand for it, and it could ruin our grades. I was convinced I made such a bad impression on my first day that I’d never be able to recover.

How lucky I was, then, that this first class of mine was Western Civilization to 1660 with none other than Dr. James Heinzen. I was intimidated by his gravitas and general scholarly appearance – were all history professors this tall? Did they always wear suit jackets to class? As class dismissed, I tried to duck out unseen and pretend this never happened. Dr. Heinzen stopped me and said very plainly, “You were late today.” I was worried that I was in serious trouble. I responded by apologizing profusely, telling him that I was a commuter and had trouble finding parking, that I would not make the same mistake again. I was prepared for the worst but was pleasantly surprised when he commiserated about the parking issues for commuter students with me instead, noting I was the only commuter in our CLIO class. He gave me suggestions for what lots are usually easier to find parking in, gave suggestions for how early to get to campus for class, and where I could find good coffee and food to help pass the time before lecture started. I truly was not prepared for a professor to care about any of their students, much less care about me.

Most of my friends and colleagues know that Dr. Heinzen is my favorite professor in the History Department, largely because of small moments like these. I took three of his courses during my time at Rowan: Western Civ I in my freshmen year CLIO cohort, Russia to 1914 as a sophomore, and Twentieth Century Europe as a senior. He can be a tough professor and I know he does not suffer fools. His dry humor and sarcasm also reiterated that renowned professors are, indeed, real people outside of the classroom. There are so many notable moments I can pull from my three semesters as his student, from watching Andy Reid’s punt, pass, and kick challenge (Dr. Heinzen compared then-Eagles coach Reid as “the Charlemagne of our era”) to his infamous History IQ appearance, to his weekly struggle in Twentieth Century Europe to find a dry erase marker in Wilson Hall that actually had ink in it.

He wanted us to work to our potential and didn’t want to see anything less. I learned how to successfully take a blue book exam (make sure to fill at least 1 full book and do not leave before class ends), how to write a solid paper, and (most importantly) how to connect with a college professor. Dr. Heinzen always wanted us to be involved in the department, especially in Phi Alpha Theta and the Student History Association. However, he always encouraged us to just show up for the small stuff too, like the annual History Department Holiday Party. These were low-stakes ways to connect with the department and the faculty, something a new student could engage in without the pressures of committing to a club. The invitations to these events made me feel valued as not just a student, but a member of the larger History community at Rowan. 

By the end of Russia since 1914, I felt Dr. Heinzen knew me pretty well as a student of history: I’m not great with memorizing dates and I’m pretty awful at geography, but I can take an overarching concept or general time period and talk about it until I’m blue in the face. He always told us, in every class, to not miss a quiz because his make-up quizzes were exceptionally harder than the original. I had to miss a quiz once that semester since I drove home sick after my 8AM Psychology class. I came by his office, at his direction, to make up my quiz in the next week. I remember shyly coming to his door and he waved me in. He stared at me for a moment and said, “Hm, what should I give you?” At that moment, the realization sunk in that his make-up quizzes were notoriously hard not because of the content, but because he tailored them to the specific strengths and challenges of the individual student taking the quiz. While I struggled with two out of the three questions because they related to very intricate details about the novel we read for class, I was able to redeem myself with the open-ended third question. It’s a brilliant strategy, really, and it’s also a testament to how well Dr. Heinzen actually knew his students.

Back in Western Civ, I figured my experience with Dr. Heinzen that semester was a fluke, but I soon realized that all of the department faculty valued their students and their success just as highly as he did. I had Dr. Emily Blanck as my professor for the CLIO section of US History to 1865. This course also functioned as our Rowan Seminar and Dr. Blanck took that role very seriously. She made time during every class meeting to check in with us and how we were adjusting to college life and the history program. We took a field trip to Philly as a CLIO group that semester and it cemented our bond as a cohort, thanks to her stewardship. Like Dr. Heinzen, she made us feel welcome and supported. None of the other classes that I took that first semester were this way, which made me very comfortable with my decision to be a history major. It was a remarkable place that I appreciated to some degree from the beginning but even more as time has passed.

I joined a sorority at the beginning of my sophomore year. I can give every “correct” answer in the book for why I wanted to join (leadership opportunities, community service, the overall goals of the organization, etc.) but the reality was I needed another avenue besides CLIO to help me make friends on campus. I quickly connected with a few history majors in my organization, including Megan O’Connor (Kearney). Megan was a year ahead of me and had also been in the CLIO program, so we bonded over our shared love of the department and our CLIO experiences. Megan is such an influential person in my personal and professional life and, much to my delight, she anointed herself as my mentor not long after we met. She was highly involved on campus and constantly pushed me to explore some of my other interests. In my first semester of junior year, she asked me if I had ever considered pursuing any other career besides being a teacher. The question was well- timed because I started to really notice how much I genuinely loved my classes as a history major and how much I generally just tolerated the classes in my education major. I had always thought, and been told, that the things I questioned about being a teacher wouldn’t matter as much when I finally got to lead my own classroom. I started thinking about other options, including possibly staying in higher education. For a period, I seriously considered studying history at the graduate level and perhaps becoming a professor. One important experience pushing me in this direction was the semester that I spent as Dr. Kelly Duke Bryant’s research assistant. I had Dr. Bryant for World History since 1500 during my freshman year and I mentioned I took French in high school and as my foreign language requirement at Rowan.  She was working on her book on education in Senegal and asked if I’d be interested in helping to translate some of the documents.  I remember going with her to the New York Public Library with her other research assistant. It was my first time doing archival research and using primary documents fresh from their collection. I was fascinated by the research process and how she even found these documents to use for her book. I loved how we found these sources, translated them, and then seeing how she used them to bolster her book manuscript.  

I was lucky enough to take classes from most of the tenured faculty in the History Department during my time at Rowan. I still think Rowan has some of the most unique upper-level history courses of many area colleges, and it’s a statement about how the department and the university values faculty research interests. Some of the great classes I took were Sub-Saharan Africa since 1800 with Dr. Bryant, Age of Enlightenment with Dr. Wiltenburg, and Islamic Civilization with Dr. Blake. I also took America since 1945 with Professor Laurie Lahey, who was the Psi Iota teaching fellow at the time. I needed to take one US history elective for my degree and since it wasn’t my main area of interest, I wasn’t super thrilled about it. Professor Lahey’s class turned out to be one of my favorites, simply from her approach to the course content. She had such a great sense of humor, but I especially enjoyed how she used novels to support the course material. At this point in my time at Rowan, I knew I’d be more engaged in a topic I wasn’t terribly excited about if I had a novel (or two) to go with it. We read two excellent novels that semester, “The Things They Carried” and “Revolutionary Road.” Many of my papers I wrote up until this point focused on the experience of women during whatever time period we studied, so my paper about Revolutionary Road was no exception. However, this novel played an important role in my intellectual life as it was the first time that I saw how all these things that I liked – sociology, women’s history, the analysis of novels – all come together.

Arguably the most defining class I took as a history major was Senior Seminar with Jeopardy champion, Dr. Melissa Klapper.  I heard rumors from other classmates and alumni that she was a very tough professor, meticulous in her review of papers. I regret not taking more classes with Dr. Klapper during undergrad, especially when I learned about her research interests and that she was writing a book about ballet class in the United States. With that in mind, I specifically chose her for Seminar. I really wanted to do well and challenge myself to write not just a good seminar paper, but a great one, especially now that I was questioning my career after graduation. I thought if I did well in seminar, it might give some validity to my belief I could do something else besides be a teacher.

I padded my schedule that semester with general education courses I had put off for three years so I could focus almost all of my attention on Seminar. This was the first semester in two years that I did not have any field experience classes for my education major, so I got to enjoy being a “regular” college student before going into student teaching. This semester was a turning point for me as I tried to culminate all of my interests so far into one paper. I knew I wanted to write about women, and my experience in Russia since 1914 with Dr. Heinzen sparked an interest in studying mail-order brides. With Dr. Klapper’s guidance, I chose Japanese photo brides as my topic. She connected me with her colleague’s dissertation about a similar subject to help me with a starting point for my research. I went to Philadelphia to do archival research on my own, and I loved it – way more than I ever enjoyed anything I did in the classroom as an education major.  I loved crafting my paper, weaving the story together with the argument and supporting it all with the research that I had done. I wrote my first draft of my paper in a 24-hour period, knowing that it was far from great, but I had a good enough foundation to find ways to make it better. Dr. Klapper was so critical to helping me revise, shape, and improve the paper. I wanted her to help me burn it down so it could emerge from the ashes as a phoenix, and she came through for me in ways I didn’t expect.  

My final paper, titled “Silent Samurai, Heavy With Hope: Japanese Picture Brides, 1907-1924” won the department’s Best Paper Prize in 2014, and I was chosen to present my paper at a Women’s and Gender Studies Undergraduate Student Consortium in Spring 2014. These accolades were truly just icing on the cake for me, as my experience working with Dr. Klapper in Senior Seminar was one of the best experiences I had as an undergrad at Rowan. All the faculty cared deeply about us as students, but the attention she gave to our writing was at another level.  She treated us like researchers more than students, so much so that I truly believed I could pursue professional academic research if I chose.

Not surprisingly, I had a very miserable time student teaching, and started to panic thinking about what I wanted my life to be like after graduation. I had a few ideas, all of which involved applying to graduate school. I met with Dr. Scott Morschauser around March or April of senior year to talk about my interest in pursuing the master’s degree program in History at Rowan. This was my first time meeting Dr. Morschauser, and I knew he was a figurative giant in the department so I took his words and advice very seriously. He was incredibly kind to me and talked to me about the realities of studying history at the graduate level. The program wasn’t the right fit for me at that time, but I started to take stock of my experiences at Rowan and how I could use them to determine my next path after graduation. A common theme I’ve explored here through these stories is the care, attention, and mentoring the History Department faculty gave to students. The most enjoyable part of my education degree for me was the one-on-one connections I made with students. I wasn’t a huge fan of lesson planning, and I detested managing the disciplinary aspects of working as a public school teacher. I wanted to find a way to support students in the same way I was supported, mentored, and advised by the History Department at Rowan. 

I talked to Megan Kearney quite a lot during this time, as she entered the field of higher education after she graduated from Rowan the year before. We talked about her experiences and mine and she helped me narrow down what I might like to do. I had very positive and inspiring experiences with Sheri Rodriguez, my academic advisor in the College of Education, and thought academic advising could be something I’d really enjoy. I panic impulse-applied to Rowan’s MA Counseling Educational Settings program in March of my senior year, knowing that the History MA program would be a backup option for me if I didn’t like the program. The Counseling in Education Settings program was unique in that I could use it as preparation for either a career in academic advising or as a school counselor in a K-12 school. Trying to keep my options open, I chose to pursue the K-12 pathway and supplemented my time in grad school with higher education experiences.  

In my first year of grad school, I took a one-credit workshop about mentoring underrepresented groups of students, taught by Gardy Guiteau. Gardy was the inaugural director of the Office of Social Justice, Inclusion, and Conflict Resolution at Rowan and I was incredibly eager to work with him after that singular Saturday workshop. I spent a semester as a practicum student working in this brand-new office to develop what we wanted to be foundational women’s and inclusion programming at Rowan. Working in this capacity ignited something in me that I knew I had to follow, as cliché as that sounds. I served as the inaugural Graduate Coordinator for Women’s and Inclusion Programs in my last year of graduate school while simultaneously completing a 600+ hour internship in a high school counseling office. I developed or co-developed signature programming for the office, including the Women in the Arts Festival, Patchwork: A Feminist Collective, and hosting a Politics of Black Hair Symposium.

My graduate coordinator position solidified that I wanted to work in higher education, and my experiences in academic counseling at my internship helped me realize that academic advising was the job for me. I credit Gardy for changing my life on one random Saturday in September 2014, and he shaped my philosophy on how I wanted to support students in their academic journeys. He gave students space and resources (both literally and figuratively) to find their voice. When they find it, he's got the megaphone to help them shout it out into the world. I see my role as an academic advisor in a very similar way. I would be very easy for me to just tell a student what to do but what good would that do in the long run? I present options, connect them with resources, and affirm that higher education is a transformative experience. I firmly believe you can learn something from every class you take: good, bad, ugly, and beautiful.

I am a very different person now than when I entered Rowan as both an undergrad and as a grad student. I had been a very big fish in a small pond in high school - Rowan was a much bigger place with amazing faculty and resources, but I always felt seen and supported in the History Department. Rowan gave me the space, resources, and opportunities to figure myself out. The History Department was the perfect place for me to challenge myself intellectually and to help me take the blinders off when I thought about my future. The small classes and the way that the faculty cared about us made it feel very different than I had expected, especially as the University started its massive expansion in 2011. I’m eternally grateful that I took a chance on my last choice school…sometimes slow and steady really does win the race. 

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/