VCU news

By Sian Wilkerson

When Virginia Commonwealth University student Barbara Kornhauser receives her English degree this December, it will be the culmination of a journey decades in the making.

Kornhauser began working toward her bachelor’s degree in 1972, the same year she graduated high school in her hometown of Queens in New York City. She went to community college for about a year, which “didn’t turn out to be for me,” she said. So she went to work and then started her family.

When her kids, Logan and Shawn, were teenagers, Kornhauser began to take classes again here and there. Then eventually “life would get in the way and I would stop,” she recalled. “I continued doing this until I decided I would get my associate degree. I spent two years getting my degree, and I thought that was it – I was satisfied with that.”

But after moving to Richmond with her husband, Steve, in 2021 to be closer to one of their sons, her new proximity to VCU breathed new life into her education journey.

“I just felt like I needed to finish what I had started,” Kornhauser said. The family already had VCU ties by the time she enrolled. Her older son, Logan, earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the university. But getting to know the campus and the community as a student helped Kornhauser fall in love with being a Ram herself.

“It’s different with me and my age,” the 70-year-old said. But she had heard “that the English Department is very accepting and good with all different people – no matter your age or anything else, they’re there for you. And I felt that completely.”

Gardner Campbell, Ph.D., an associate professor of English in the College of Humanities and Sciences who taught Kornhauser, called her an “unusually thoughtful and insightful learner, an excellent writer and a student from whom I have learned a great deal” – as well as “a lesson in diligence, perseverance, patience and the love of learning.”

Although she was worried about the age difference, Kornhauser never felt that any of her fellow students treated her differently. Her advice for other nontraditional students is to embrace the fear.

“If you’re afraid, then that’s the reason to do it,” she said. “Because once you’re doing it and you’re immersed in it, you won’t think about what prevented you before, and the end result is going to be so important. If you’re doing something that you love and something that means so much to you, that takes precedence over [any discomfort].”

Kornhauser chose English as her major because of her lifelong love of writing.

“When I was very young, I would write poetry constantly,” she said. “When things would get tough, that would be the place for me to go to write and to get my feelings out.”

As she got older, Kornhauser turned her focus into writing letters and memos, and proofreading work for colleagues and friends. She also spent time working as a copywriter for a cosmetics company, which she called her first and only experience with writing professionally.

Over the years, her writing got pushed to the side as she took care of her family and advanced in her career. But with graduation from VCU now on the horizon, her goal is to get back to it.

“I would love to write some children’s stories,” Kornhauser said. “I took a creative nonfiction class and loved it, so maybe something along those lines. I’m also adopted, and I feel like writing books for young children helping them through that process is something that would interest me, because that wasn’t something I had growing up.”

After the long journey to her bachelor’s, Kornhauser is wistful that it’s over.

“I love the learning,” she said. “It was something that was incomplete in my life, and I completed it and that’s an amazing feeling, just to do that. But it has also shown me just how much I love to learn and sit and listen to people. That’s something I will definitely continue to do – just not for credit.”