Today’s Project 100 memory from Samantha McGuire Van Kooy.  She was born and raised in Washington Township, New Jersey.  She went to public schools and graduated from Washington Township High School in 2006, one of 769 graduates.  Her father was a crane operator for a construction company.  Her mother was a front-end manager at the ACME Markets grocery store in Washington Township.  Samantha was the first person to attend college in her family.  She graduated from Rowan University in 2010 with degrees in history secondary education, having won both the Gary Hunter Excellence in History Medallion and the Best Paper Prize.  She entered the Master’s in Higher Education Administration program at Rowan, graduating in 2012.  In August of 2012, she began a part-time position at Gloucester County College, becoming full-time in April of 2013.  Her current title is Executive Director of Student Engagement at the renamed Rowan College of South Jersey.

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My parents were not excited about my desire to go to college in Philadelphia as it was too expensive and, in their opinion, also potentially dangerous.  I had gotten a very good scholarship to go to Montclair State, and I thought that I was going to attend there. I visited Montclair on their Accepted Students Day.  On the drive back, however, I decided that I did not want to go there after all and that I would go to Rowan University.  I had, at one point, believed I would never attend Rowan because it was too close to home.  For whatever reason, I could just not see myself at Montclair.  I had not formally visited Rowan, only being on campus for a Streetlight Manifesto concert in January of 2005. I remember that I wrote a letter to my parents to convince them that they should pay for me to live on campus, which they were adamantly against.  My letter convinced them, and I lived in Evergreen during my first year.

I had good history teachers in high school, and I really liked current events.  I could see myself teaching social studies, so I applied for history and secondary education as a first-year student.  During my first year, I remember I had a hard time staying awake in my 8 a.m. classes.  I had adjunct for United States history, and I remember reading biographies of Abigail Adams and Andrew Jackson. I liked the approach of taking deep dives into the lives and legacies of individual figures in history.   

I didn’t really get involved in the Department until my sophomore year.  I think one of the key factors was that the Department had sent a letter home inviting me to join Phi Alpha Theta.  My mother recommend that I join, and I agreed. It turned out to be an important decision and it helped me connect with several other history majors, including Charles Kuski, Mary Spanarkel, and Ian Tyson.  In this same year, I took Historical Methods with John Aveni, which I really enjoyed as I got to write a paper on a topic of my choice.  I had a great time researching for my paper, “The Sixties Youth Culture and Its Downfall in the Context of Music Festivals,” as I was preparing to attend my first multi-day musical festival in Tennessee that summer, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.  Another highlight of my sophomore year was Zack, the Seeing Eye Puppy, that I helped train!

During my junior year, I became Senator for Phi Alpha Theta, which led me to be involved with the Student Government Association.  Looking back on it now, that was the moment that my interest in college administration began, something that has carried on all the way to the present.  I had Cory Blake for Islamic Civilization, which was really interesting.  She was an amazing faculty member.  She was a fantastic coordinator for the Fulbright program, which one of my high school friends won due to her mentorship.  I also had Lee Kress for History of Mexico and the Caribbean and David Applebaum for a course on modern European history. I remember reading Primo Levi’s The Reawakening in Dr. Applebaum’s class.

During my senior year, I became President of Phi Alpha Theta.  I liked being part of this group, and we had a lot of fun. I think I was Rosie the Riveter for the Haunted Student Center, where we all dressed up as historical figures. I remember going on the Gettysburg trip, which was great.  I also remember planning the end of the year banquet at Terra Nova, still one of my favorite local restaurants.

I had Melissa Klapper for Senior Seminar in History.  I really, really loved her class.  She was tough but such a good professor.  My paper for her class was titled “Brewing Up and American Legacy: Contributions of German-Americans to the Brewing Industry in the United States, 1829-1919,” and it won that year’s Best Paper Prize. I was recently going back over my Facebook memories, and I saw a post from that semester where I commented that “I had 14 overdue library books.” That made me laugh, but I had such a great time doing that paper. Dr. Klapper was very supportive of my research topic, even though she didn’t drink herself!  I learned so much doing that paper, and I had a great time doing that research. My friends and I were very into the craft beer scene at that time, and I always enjoyed sharing my beer history knowledge while we sampled new brews.

I have several fun memories of Rowan outside of the classroom.  First, I was a Resident Assistant (RA), and I had a really good time in this role.  One memory that stands out, involved a major snowstorm in December 2009.  There was so much snow that the staff could not shovel it all, so they asked all of us whose parents lived close by if they could borrow their snow shovels.  My Resident Director, Jon Bouchard, went and picked up the shovels and sent us off to clear the campus sidewalks.  They paid us with a free buffet at the Owl’s Nest.

A second humorous memory that I have is standing in line at Landmark on Christmas Eve, 2009.   Landmark offered 50% gift cards on Christmas Eve, and I stood in a very long line to get a $200 gift card for $100.  I loved using that card Spring semester of my senior year during happy hour, getting half price drinks for half price… a real bargain! 

I am really happy that I went to Rowan.  The History Department really helped hone my writing skills, which are so important to me in my current job.  I have so many good memories and so many connections from my six years at Rowan that are still important to me.  In addition to the folks in the History Department, two people who mattered a lot during my continued studies through graduate school were Joe Mulligan, who was the Associate Dean for Civic Involvement at the time, and Allie Pierce, the Assistant Director for Healthy Campus Initiatives at the time. I owe them a lot of gratitude for their professional guidance and support.  

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  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 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/