Personal Reflections From Emmitsburg by Triple Alumna and Professor Erin Hofmeyer EdD., DPT

I'm grateful for the chance to share a few reflections from a pilgrimage I took this summer to Emmitsburg, Maryland - the birthplace of the Sisters of Charity, and in many ways, the birthplace of this university.

As a three-time graduate of the Mount, and a graduate of Seton High School before that, I've carried Elizabeth Ann Seton's name with me most of my life. But standing in Emmitsburg this summer, something came into focus for me in a new way.

What struck me most profoundly about St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was her vision as an educator. At Emmitsburg, learning that the curriculum for St. Joseph Academy included bookkeeping, history, and language for women stopped me in my tracks. In a culture that had not yet deemed these skills worthy of women, she gave them anyway.

In photo: Pilgrims at the entrance of the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. From left to right: Steve Ober, Joe Shadle, Kathy Hurley, Dr. Erin Hofmeyer (in front), Michelle Arnold, Greg Goldschmidt, and Sister Joyce Richter, SC.

As an educator myself in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program, I found myself asking a question I haven't stopped sitting with since: What are the skills, the habits of mind, the capacities for resilience that I can cultivate in my students so they are ready for the future of their profession - even the parts of it we cannot yet foresee?

Her spirit of "hazard yet forward" feels like a call I want to answer in my own classroom. Elizabeth modeled what it means to truly see the person in front of you, and to prepare them for a future that others had not yet imagined. That is not a nineteenth-century idea. That is the idea sitting at the center of our own strategic plan today.

When we talk about becoming the Midwest's premier destination campus - about personal mentorship, transformative learning, and career preparation that empowers every student to lead a life of purpose - we are not inventing something new. We are returning to something founding. Elizabeth's charity, her collaboration with the sisters who built that academy, her commitment to students the world had overlooked, her curiosity about what they might yet become - these are not just words in a plan. They are an inheritance, and I believe the faculty and staff of the Mount are entrusted to carry it forward.

That trust is not light. Elizabeth knew hardship, loss, and uncertainty, and yet she wrote: "Do what we can and God will do the rest. What seems so impossible to nature is quite easy to grace." Do what we can. That is the work of this University - the careful stewardship, the hard questions, the investments made with courage.

And then Elizabeth teaches us to release what is beyond our control. In her words: "I resign the present and the future to Him who is the author and conductor of both." Faithful effort, and deep trust.

"Hazard yet forward" was Elizabeth's phrase, and it's become mine too - a call I try to answer every time I walk into my own classroom. I'd offer that it's a call this University community is answering as well - every time you invest in students or in our infrastructure, every time you ask what "student-centered" truly means, every time you choose boldness over caution is in service of a mission older than any of us.

We Rise To New Heights not by leaving Emmitsburg behind, but by walking further down the road Elizabeth already showed us. And so, as an alumna, an athlete, a faculty member, a donor, and soon, the mother of a Mount student, I am deeply grateful for the vision and work of this community which continues to embody what St. Elizabeth Ann Seton created many years ago.

Thank you,

Erin