The
Weekly
The University of Mary Washington Student Newspaper Serving the community since 1922
Ringer
VOLUME 95 | ISSUE 20
MARCH 24, 2022
Honors students and Campus celebrity Anna Billingsley Writing Center work to retire after 18 years at UMW with ELL students JOSEPHINE JOHNSON News Editor
GRACE ScHuMACHER Senior Writer
The Writing Center is on the fourth floor of the Hurley Convergence Center. Kenya Carter / The Weekly Ringer
Four students in the UMW Honors Program, in collaboration with the Writing Center, are working on a service learning project to provide resources for English language learner students at UMW. Academic Support Centers Manager Heather Guhl has noticed an increase in English language learner students seeking support on campus. “In the Writing Center, since the start of the pandemic, we noticed an uptick in the number of ELL students seeking assistance, not only with papers, but with personal English grammar workbooks, conversation and reading comprehension,” said Guhl. She oversees multiple campusbased programs and centers providing direct student-facing academic support, such as the Writing and Speaking Centers. In response to this increase in English-learning students seeking assistance from the Writing Center, Guhl came to Director of the Honors Program Kelli Slunt with an idea for honors students’ service learning project that would help English language learners. According to an article on the UMW website, “more than 50 students from across the globe—twice as many as this time last year—are studying at UMW this semester.” Between the four students working on the project, some are working with English language learner students to mentor them and provide opportunities to practice and enhance their written and oral English communication. Others are working on finding resources to create a website for English language learner students. Thomas Pulsifer, a senior communication and digital studies major, is one of the four honors students collaborating on the project. Pulsifer is optimistic and hopes their efforts will put in place the foundation for a successful program at UMW where any English language learning student can turn to for help. “Dr. Slunt reached out to me to see if I was interested in helping with this up-and-coming program to assist ELL students, and I couldn’t say no,” said Pulsifer. “Online, I have several ELL friends that I frequently play games with, and I often find myself helping them understand English whenever they’re struggling. Helping someone, even in such a small way, is a really great feeling.” Junior theatre major Nathaniel Huff is another honors scholar collaborating on the project by mentoring English-
INSIDE THE
RINGER
News | 2
SEE ELL PAGE 2
Freshmen and seniors to complete the NSSE.
Anna Billingsley, associate vice president for University Relations, is retiring at the end of the spring semester after 18 years at the university. Billingsley is known for her emails and has become a campus celebrity over the years. “I don’t know why they think I’m something because all I do is send out messages that other people tell me to send out,” she said. “I try to inject a little bit of personality, but that’s all I do.” On Feb. 16 when she announced her retirement through email, social media sites were flooded with UMW students sharing their upset at her leaving. Junior English major Kayla Basham posted to UMW’s meme page on Facebook that she was “devastated.” “My initial reaction was that it was a joke because I feel like she always provides a sense of lightheartedness to whatever events are happening on campus,” said Basham. “I felt bad because she’s been the face of a lot of the school’s mistakes and she shouldn’t have been, but I think it was way easier to process all of the negative events happening at our school when they were announced to us through Anna and her emails.” Billingsley even has a student-run fan account on Instagram. “I started this account when AB sent the April Fool’s email last year, around that time she was catching a lot of hate from frustrated students about the content of her emails,” said the account owner of @annabillingsleyfanpage who asked to maintain their anonymity. “I was one of those frustrated students, so I emailed her and expressed my feelings, feelings that she validated and shared as a member of the university herself. We chatted over email for a bit and I ended up feeling really bad for her because UMW uses her as the messenger for a lot of hard communications, causing her to catch a lot of the backlash rather than the source of the communication itself. I made this page to create positivity around her emails and put students’ mindsets in a more positive space when approaching AB’s emails.” Billingsley’s emails typically garner replies. When sent to both faculty and students, the messages reach around 5,000 people. “Of course when I send out a message I always
Anna Billingsley posing with a student. @annabillingsleyfanpage / Instagram
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Anna Billingsley relays email messages to students and faculty at UMW. University of Mary Washington
get responses … because it’s easy to just hit reply,” said Billingsley. “I’ll hear complaints and I’ll hear praise. I never send out a campus message about any topic without, minimum 2-3, maximum 20 people responding.” Most responses are forwarded back to the original writer of the message.
“My first love, my passion, is writing. I was a newspaper reporter for most of my career and I have a master’s degree in journalism. I just want to write things that I want to write, I don’t want to send other people’s messages.” -Anna Billingsley “It’s a lot of pressure and a lot of stress, but I love it!” she said. “I told somebody the other day I might pull a Tom Brady and say I’m retiring but then no, I’m not really retiring. There’s really not an average day, but I think that’s why I like this job so much.” Billingsley took over the job of sending emails from Marty Morrison, former director of media and public relations. Morrison also had a celebrity reputation at UMW. Billingsley earned her bachelor’s degree from William & Mary and went on to get her master’s in journalism at American University. After her retirement, she plans to use her extra time to work on her own writing. “My first love, my passion, is writing,” she said. “I was a newspaper reporter for most of my career and I have a master’s degree in journalism. I just want to write things that I want to write; I don’t want to send other people’s messages. I haven’t had time to do any of my personal writing since I’ve been in this position.” Billingsley has a side business writing obituaries, called The Last Word. “I love writing obituaries because I feel like an obituary is really the last opportunity to let somebody
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SEE BILLINGSLEY PAGE 2
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