Candince McMillian ’98. Photo by BahamMultiMedia.

At 34, Candince McMillian ’98 has accomplished more than she could have ever imagined. Now she’s using her talents and passion to make a difference in her New Orleans neighborhood of Central City. A community center she’s building is set to open in January 2013.

Growing up poor and raised by her mother and grandmother, McMillian remembers in an article in The Times-Picayune that education “was discussed as a thing to get.” McMillian’s mother, a secretary for 30 years, worked tirelessly to ensure her daughter would have that opportunity. In 1998, McMillian graduated from Sweet Briar College and went on to receive a master’s degree in philosophy from Tulane University.

Today, she is a licensed contractor and real estate agent and has flipped several houses — initially to improve her financial situation, then to create livable, federally funded Section 8 housing.

“I saw places where landlords were collecting Section 8 rent, and their tenants were in houses where the plumbing didn’t work,” she says in the article.

When she first moved back to New Orleans at 20 years old and bought a house in Central City, McMillian saw crime and drugs as the main problems.

“Now, I understand they’re the consequences,” she says in the story. “I think joblessness and lack of opportunity are the main problems.”

McMillian is changing lives one house at a time. Photo by BahamMultiMedia.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, McMillian decided to become a full-time contractor and help rebuild the city. While neighbors had shunned her at first because she didn’t seem to fit in, they now began letting her into their lives. They started asking for her help with job applications, to use her computer, or to work for her. Soon, McMillian was organizing field trips for local children. Fifty-five kids showed up the first time, when she invited 3-to 17-year-olds to Skate Country.

“They had something to do, and they got to be kids for that one day,” she recalls in the article.

Her newest project, a community center named “Exodus Place,” will ensure that children in Central City get to be kids every day. The building she bought for $55,000 will house three affordable apartments upstairs and a 2,000-square-foot community resource center downstairs with free dance lessons, gymnastics and karate for children. It will also have after-school tutoring and job-training programs, as well as computers, printers and washing machines.

And, the article adds, “It will have successful role models to serve as mentors.”

For more information on the project, contact McMillian at ctmcmillian@hotmail.com or (504) 232-8089.

— Janika Carey

President Jo Ellen Parker hosted a tea at Sweet Briar House on Monday, Feb. 27, to honor Sweet Briar’s 2012 Ethics Bowl team. They were runners-up in the annual debate contest among Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges member institutions.

President Jo Ellen Parker (center) recognized members of Sweet Briar’s Ethics Bowl team and their coach, assistant professor of philosophy Kevin Honeycutt, by hosting a tea in their honor. Sweet Briar placed second in the annual debate among VFIC members.

After impressively sweeping the group round 4-0, assistant professor of philosophy Kevin Honeycutt’s young team fell to Hampden-Sydney, the team Sweet Briar defeated in the final round of the 2011 Ethics Bowl. None of last year’s team members competed in the 2012 event, held Feb. 12-13 at Shenandoah University. That gave Honeycutt a whole new roster to work with, but even greater promise for next year should they decide to return.

Participating for Sweet Briar were sophomore Allissa Abdelwahed and first-years Amber Groves, Charlotte Hopkins and Chelsea Kane.

Kane said excitement was high going into the final round.

“There was definitely a tension in the air when we shook [their] hands,” she said. “You could tell that they were ready for round two. It was certainly [a] déjà vu for Hampden-Sydney, but Sweet Briar had no returning members so to us it was all brand new.”

She credited the men’s excellent oratory for giving them the edge. “I’m not implying that their argument was better than ours, but I think the judges responded more to their poetic style than our straightforward approach,” Kane said.

“The fact that we got second place really displays how well Amber, Allissa, Charlotte and I worked together. It was an amazing time, and I had so much fun representing Sweet Briar.”

Honeycutt said he was proud of how the team conducted itself throughout the tournament. “Each of these young women is poised, articulate and intellectually courageous,” he said. “They are quality representatives of the type of student that we aim to produce.”

The theme of this year’s Ethics Bowl was “Ethics and Integrity in Campus Relationships.” The 15 VFIC member schools meet each year before a panel of judges for a lively debate and consideration of applied ethics in real-world scenarios. For more information, visit the VFIC website.

Contact: Jennifer McManamay

President Jo Ellen Parker and Kat Alexander ’09

The medal is presented every year to a senior or seniors who have demonstrated intellectual achievement in addition to distinction in a combination of community service, contribution to the arts, global awareness, fitness and athletic achievement, and leadership, civility and integrity.

“In short,” Parker said during the presentation, “the Presidential Medal is awarded to a student who represents all the educational values that make Sweet Briar Sweet Briar.”

Alexander is a government major and French minor. She is working toward the Honors Degree, conducting undergraduate thesis research with Padmini Coopamah, assistant professor of international affairs, and Kevin Honeycutt, assistant professor of philosophy.

As a junior she attended American University studying in the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program which took her to Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. She has interned at the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, collaborating with retired foreign service personnel on a number of special projects, and at the Supreme Court of the United States, working in the Clerk’s Office.

She is the 2010-11 Emilie Watts McVea Scholar and in 2008-09 was named the Rickards Scholar for her demonstrated potential for leadership, academic excellence and community involvement. She is a member of numerous clubs including QV, Earphones, Paint and Patches, the Environmental Club and the Model UN team. In addition, she has participated in the theater program throughout her Sweet Briar career as a cast member in five shows and on the crew of three.

Alexander is a four-year varsity athlete in soccer and team captain who has been named an Old Dominion Athletic Conference all-academic for the past three years. She also coached pee-wee soccer in her hometown of Marshall, N.C.

Parker noted that nominations are made by faculty, staff members and administrators and voted on by the senior staff. “It is never an easy choice, needless to say,” she said.

Professor of chemistry Jill Granger was among those who wrote in support of Alexander’s nomination, citing her “true love of learning” and a “creativity that gives her a unique and quirky perspective on seemingly disparate topics.”

Parker also quoted assistant professor of international affairs Spencer Bakich, who described his student as a “force of nature” and a “rare blend of academic, personal and athletic attributes that suggest that there is simply nothing that she cannot accomplish.”

Indeed, the Presidential Medal is among the things Alexander aimed to accomplish at Sweet Briar.

“[It] is certainly something to which I have aspired,” she said. “It has been evident to me since my first year that Presidential Medalists demonstrate masterful synthesis of all that Sweet Briar offers. The women to receive it before me were incredible people I knew, if not personally, by reputation. They were women that I wanted to emulate.”

Alexander, who is waiting to hear if she will receive a Fulbright to teach English in Turkey after she graduates, says her motivation comes from a love of learning, bolstered by peers and professors who challenge her.

“I must say, however, that I would have never have been able to take advantage of so much were it not for the support of Sweet Briar’s incredible faculty. They have opened doors, pushed me to reach my potential, and welcomed me in departments outside of my major — a hallmark of the Sweet Briar experience.”

— Jennifer McManamay

“[I] saw the Mary Baldwin team, who we had made friends with, utterly excited, giving us the thumbs up and miming, ‘Go Sweet! Win it for the sister colleges!’ ” Britell, a senior religion and philosophy major, said. “That’s when it sank in: We are representing our College, our sister all-female colleges, and ourselves in the final round.”

Britell and teammates Kat Alexander ’11, Jennifer Will ’13 and Catherine Marcks ’14 went on to win the round on Monday, Feb. 14, concluding the two-day event at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk. Their faculty advisor is Kevin Honeycutt, an assistant professor of philosophy.

It was Honeycutt’s second year coaching the team and after last year’s oh-for-four performance, he took a different tack on preparation. Rather than spending  lot of time on formal debate techniques, he focused on chemistry. “I tried to assemble a team of students who were collaborative, articulate, intellectually creative and analytical,” he said.

“All of them have studied philosophy with me in one form or another, and so all of them have had a great deal of practice in the skills and techniques I insist upon: intellectual courage, thoughtfulness, and the ability to read closely and carefully.”

During the competition, the teams are presented scenarios on an ethics theme — this year it was ethics and privacy. They’re given time to assess the situation, formulate a position and then argue it against an opposing team before a panel of judges.

“Every day in class they have to go through this process … the Ethics Bowl is just on a shortened timeframe,” Honeycutt said.

Will, a philosophy major, drew heavily on that training. “Although we didn’t have any formal practice with debate, I felt that taking four semesters of philosophy prepared me quite well,” she said. “Philosophy requires close reading and analysis, and every word has its own purpose. I applied what I knew from my classes to the prompts that they gave us, and developed an argument that took all details into consideration.”

Will said they used a “divide-and-conquer” approach, with each having a role in the thought process and later the debate, a team dynamic that Britell independently declared “superb.”

Britell said Honeycutt stressed that winning the debate was secondary to finding solutions as a team — and that’s what they did.

“Kat was the powerful and passionate orator who could immediately draw the judges and audience [into] seeing the problem on a personal level for all,” Britell said.

“Catherine knew how to formulate questions and answers in ways that were elegant, composed, yet pointed out the holes in our opponents arguments thus forcing them to either alter their stance or back track, and Jennifer was utterly amazing at discovering the written and unwritten important details based on the prompt, figuring out how to show the complexity of the situations and showing how our solutions answered those complexities.”

That Honeycutt’s chemistry was working showed from the first round — catching the team by surprise, since Sweet Briar has never won the Ethics Bowl in its 12-year history.

“I think I realized we had a fighting chance after our first round, when the University of Richmond coach said, ‘Three more rounds like that and you’ll be in the final,’ ” said Alexander, a government major. “I was floored — had we really done that well? When we barely lost to Washington and Lee, I knew we could hang with anyone.”

The plaudits, however, go entirely to the team members, says Honeycutt. “They are a credit to Sweet Briar College and exactly represent the type of thoughtful, brave and articulate women that we aim to develop,” he said.

The Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges is composed of 15 member institutions. For more information on the Ethics Bowl, please visit the VFIC website.