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April is Alumni Month at Virginia Commonwealth University, and scores of alumni will be returning to campus for events and festivities. Some of them, however, won’t have far to go, as they’re already on campus 12 months of the year. More than 2,400 VCU faculty and staff are also alumni of the university, whether they earned their undergraduate, master’s, first-professional or doctoral degrees here.

You’ll find them in nearly every school, division, office and unit — at the front of classrooms, behind desks and even walking the police beat. Below, a handful of these faculty and staff share what it’s like to work for their alma mater and how VCU has impacted their lives during their time as students as well as employees.

Ellen Byrne, D.D.S., Ph.D.

Ellen Byrne’s ties to VCU are extensive. The senior associate dean and professor of endodontics in the VCU School of Dentistry counts three degrees and a certificate from the university. VCU, she said, “has been my life.”

“I know it has made me,” Byrne said.

Byrne earned her first VCU degree – a bachelor’s from the School of Pharmacy – in 1977, alongside her twin sister, Carol Byrne Bolling. She worked as a pharmacy instructor at VCU for two years, before enrolling as a student in the School of Dentistry. She earned a D.D.S. in 1983 and later returned to VCU to work in the Department of Restorative Dentistry. She continued her training at VCU, ultimately combining her interests in both pharmacy and dentistry. She received a certificate in endodontics in 1990 from the School of Dentistry and a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the School of Pharmacy in 1991. Except for a brief stint in private practice, she has served as a professor in the Department of Endodontics ever since.

“I take great pride in all of my degrees,” Byrne said. “Doors have opened for me, and I have walked through them.”

She said working for her alma mater has been an exciting experience, especially watching the university evolve over the years. When former classmates return to campus, they are often “shocked and impressed” by VCU’s development, she said.

“I have seen so many incredible, visionary changes,” she said. “I have lived in Richmond since 1974. I have seen parking lots turn into buildings, programs develop, the hospital turn into a major research medical center, a cancer center built and conjoined twins separated, to name a few.”

Byrne said she appreciated the many professors who supported and mentored her during her days as a student, helping to “shepherd” her career. For years now, she has served a similarly essential role to students. She appreciates the continuity that line represents – and her place in it.

“I have had the opportunity to meet so many talented, bright people,” Byrne said. “I have taught a generation of health care professionals – pharmacists, dentists and dental hygienists. I have also been taught by many of the giants who built this university, and now I am part of a faculty who are preparing the next generation of professionals. They are a living message to a time and place I will never see. It just doesn’t get any better than that.”  

Jordan Starbuck

As a 7-year-old in upstate New York, Jordan Starbuck would raid her neighbors’ trash in search of aluminum cans to trade in for nickels at her local grocery store.

“I was the richest kid on the block,” she said. “At 7, I realized it was crazy that people were throwing away things that had value to them.”

A spring 2008 VCU graduate with a degree in business administration, Starbuck is now the assistant director of sustainability at VCU. Heading up the university’s single-stream recycling efforts, she often boasts that she’s the biggest “trash talker” on campus. Yet, her journey to the top of the recycling heap was not an easy one.

Starbuck transferred to VCU in 2004 with the misconception that classes here would be a breeze.

“I always looked at VCU as kind of like a community college, but then I went to some of my first classes … I got a 20 on my first exam,” she said with a laugh. “That’s when I realized that VCU’s no joke. … There were nights that I’d be studying and I’d call my parents and I’d want to quit. It was hard for me to buckle down.”

She related a story about struggling with quadratic equations and the frustration of having to learn them at all, when one of her professors told her, “Well the whole idea of quadratic equations is that once you get the first solution correct, you move on to the next. It’s about solving problems. You’re going to be having problems your whole life, so you have to learn how to deal with them and get to the next step.”

That one simple lesson, imparted to her by a professor at just the time she needed it, took hold of her and guided her through the rest of her studies at VCU.

“As I worked harder and harder, my degree meant more and more to me, because I actually had to work for it,” Starbuck said. “I felt proud to say VCU was the school I went to.”

After graduation she struggled to find work in the then-stagnant recycling industry. A connection suggested she try volunteering with Steven Heinitz, VCU’s recycling coordinator at the time. Through sheer determination, this opportunity led to a part-time position in the university’s burgeoning sustainability program, which then led to her being hired on full-time as the first-ever sustainability coordinator at VCU in September 2009.

“I think VCU’s commitment [to sustainability] is incredible,” she said. “I’d like to see us become one of the top green universities in the U.S. and I think it’s achievable. We’ve got to lower our greenhouse gas emissions, build up our bike-share program, but the other thing too is technology is going to be the big game-changer. So, really we’re here to educate the engineers and the smart people in those four-credit math classes I struggled in to build these energy-saving systems at our university that we can then put out there for people to use.

“VCU’s a great school. It’s been good to me and I feel like I’m able to give back with what I’m doing now.”

Roderick Dadzie

Roderick Dadzie keeps a gift on his desk in Hibbs Hall. It’s a small clear cube that holds a photo of the student members of the appropriations committee of VCU’s Student Government Association from a few years ago. Through his then-job with the Division of Student Affairs, Dadzie served as an adviser to the group, helping them manage SGA finances and the appropriations for more than 400 student organizations.

The cube is an important memento for Dadzie. It was that group that taught him how much he wanted to work with students and to help prepare them for life after graduation.

“These kids wanted to make changes and make things better at VCU,” Dadzie said. “When I could see how much this school meant to them and how I could help them do what they wanted to do, it excited me. It definitely deepened my relationship with the university.”

Dadzie has been working at VCU since took a position during his sophomore year as a student worker in the Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action office. Since then, he’s held multiple positions at the school, climbing through the ranks to his current post as assistant director of new student programs in the University College.

Dadzie said his status as a VCU alumnus helps him in his job managing orientation for the university’s newest students.

“It means everything,” he said. “I can have conversations with students and parents from both sides. I can talk about my own experiences as a student, and I can talk as an administrator about VCU and what it offers.”

As a student, Dadzie majored in fashion merchandising in the VCU School of the Arts. He also took several classes in the School of Business. He said teachers in both programs were major influences on him.

“They taught me that classes are not just about trying to get an A,” Dadzie said. “They’re about what you learn. If you don’t treat classes like real life, then you’re not going to take advantage of what school is for.”

Dadzie now tries to teach the same lessons to the student workers in the New Student Programs office. He works with a group of five or more during the academic year and more than 60 during the summer, when orientation sessions are held. He also advises the SGA’s technology committee – a group that he finds as inspirational and bursting with ideas and energy as that first appropriations committee years ago.

On a recent morning, Dadzie reviewed plans for an upcoming event with two student workers in his office. Dadzie is giving the students a great deal of responsibility in the event’s planning – just as he’d been granted when he was a student worker. The students were hesitant when they first received the assignment, daunted by the scale of the project, but they had begun to seem more assured.

“I can see them growing as they work on this,” Dadzie said. “I can see them getting more confident. It’s addictive watching that happen.”

Christopher Preuss

In one way or another, Christopher Preuss has been in a fraternity at VCU since 1988.

When he graduated in 1991, with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, he was a brother in VCU’s Kappa Delta Rho Fraternity. For the past 20 years, he has proudly served as an officer in the VCU Police Department – another fraternity, of sorts, at his alma mater.  

A Northern Virginia native, Preuss was drawn to Richmond for the atmosphere and the small-city feel. As a student, his goal was to be a police officer in an urban environment.

Today, Preuss is the assistant chief for one of the largest college police departments in the country. At the time he started in 1994, streets and neighborhoods around the university could be dangerous – and challenging to patrol.

“I look back 20 years ago to what VCU was then, and what is now, and it’s night and day – it’s a metamorphosis, it’s incredible.”

As a young officer just starting out, Preuss worked during a time when Richmond’s crime rates were far higher than today.

“I like the fact that from a law enforcement perspective the VCU Police Department changed the face of Broad Street and Carver,” Preuss said. “There were some bad people doing some bad things there and we’ve cut that out – I’ve seen the change.”

In recent surveys taken by VCU students, faculty and staff, more than 90 percent consistently feel safe on campus. Preuss has been involved in traditional policing – and vigorous community outreach efforts – contributing to that sense of safety.

Off-duty, Preuss keeps an eye on a key source of alumni pride – sports. Membership in Ram Nation is a family affair.

“I’ve got season tickets to basketball and I have a lot of pride for what the basketball program has done for the school,” Preuss said. “My father and I were big sports guys and he is big into VCU now.”

Looking back, working for VCU as an alumnus was a natural fit that met both personal and professional goals.

“The student experience gave me all of my lifelong friends – people I stay in constant contact with from my college and fraternity days,” Preuss said recently at the police department headquarters on West Grace Street.

“My professional law enforcement career has been here, and only here, and the VCU Police Department has afforded me the opportunity to do everything I wanted to do in law enforcement. I came in at the right time – I got to do it all.”

 

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