Margaret Aten
where are they now? hen Margaret Aten says she has remained active since retiring from Simpson in 1999, she’s not kidding. “It’s the only way to be,” she says. She does yoga at least four times a week, completes Zumba workouts twice a week and Pilates once a week, along with strength and weight training. “But my big thing now is gardening,” Aten says. “I work with several gardens. At the church, I started a big area that used to be sod or weeds, and we’ve converted it to droughttolerant and native Texas plants. I think gardening is sort of in my blood, but I’ve never enjoyed it as intensely as I’m doing it now. Aten worked at Simpson between 1980-99, mostly teaching accounting, but also serving the last five years as registrar. She and her husband, Paul Bohlig, live in Flower Mound, Texas, about halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth. What else keeps you busy? We live near our son, Justin, who graduated from Simpson in 1994, and our two grandchildren. Our other two grandchildren live in San Francisco, and we visit them several times a year. Did the campus change much during your almost two decades here? Oh, yes, immensely. When I arrived in 1980 they had just barely skirted bankruptcy and everything was pretty austere. Over the 19 years I was there, they restored buildings and made them gorgeous inside. They built McNeill Hall and added on to the Carver Science Center. Practically every building underwent major changes. I doubt there’s another period of time in Simpson’s history when the campus changed so much, for the better.
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What are some of your favorite memories? In 1992, I went with several faculty members—Frank Colella and Bob Gieber, Jane Kvetko and her husband, Stan Malless, and Glenn Buhr—and a group of students to Europe. We had a great time. We were studying the various mechanisms of the European Union. We were in Luxembourg for the Court of Justice and in Strasbourg, France, for the European Parliament. That was a big highlight. Earlier that year, I was in charge of hosting a member of the German Parliament, who had come from the former East Germany. That was about three years after the Berlin Wall came down. He was on campus a week and talked to history and German classes. That’s a fond memory that I have. What do you miss about teaching? I just enjoyed the opportunity to keep learning new things all the time, and I still try to do that. There’s not the pressure to keep up with the latest accounting bulletins and changes. That was always an intellectual challenge. Now I really don’t bother with accounting issues at all. (Laughs.) I’m still using my liberal arts background. I’m a political junkie and I follow a lot of political blogs. I hope not too much. I miss kibitzing with some of the other faculty. We had a lounge in Mary Berry Hall, and if you were really brave you went over there and swapped opinions with the Mary Berry crowd. Any message you’d like to send to your former students? I hope they’re well and happy. I know the Simpson Experience was an important time in their lives. I advised hundreds of students, and I know so many of them had such good experiences there. I think they and Simpson had a great relationship, and I hope they remember their time fondly. ■