Like Mother, Like Daughter: A Master - and Bachelor - Plan

The Lanzarones and Smallwoods aren’t alone in their ability to boast of their families’ degrees from a duo of Mary Washington campuses. Instead, they’re part of a growing group. As UMW expands course offerings at its College of Graduate and Professional Studies, more and more area residents are seeking degrees there.

For the three daughters of Mary Randolph “Ranny” Nichols Corbin ’71, Mary Washington was perhaps too familiar. After all, it was the local four-year college, located next door to the girls’ high school. So Ranny was hardly surprised as her children, one by one, opted to head to out-of-town schools.

“We would have loved for any and all of our daughters to go to Mary Washington,” Ranny said. “But we understood their desire to move away from home.”

That might help explain why Saturday, May 13, 2006, was especially memorable for the Corbin family. In an emotional moment during UMW Commencement at Ball Circle, Ranny smiled warmly as she personally awarded a Mary Washington diploma to one of her daughters. Carter Corbin had earned a master of education degree at CGPS. Ranny, then executive assistant to former UMW President William M. Anderson Jr., recalled, “We all felt tremendously proud.”

Now, Carter teaches art and coaches field hockey at a high school near Fredericksburg, while Ranny works as UMW’s Executive Director of University Relations and Communications. They’ve begun attending local alumni events together.

“It’s something extra that we share,” Carter said.

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Anne Daniel Fowler ’57, a loyal Mary Washington supporter, still remembers feeling “thrilled to death” when she learned the news: Her only daughter, Nancy, had decided to enroll at Mary Washington.

“My mother had attended the same school, and she spoke so highly of it,” said Nancy Fowler, who earned her bachelor’s degree in 1988. “That was the deciding factor.”

Mother and daughter have shared memories – of eating in Seacobeck, of residential life – from different eras. Anne passed to Nancy a beloved memento: a silver Mary Washington ring, complete with spinning wheel, that Anne bought as a student in the 1950s.

“It is fun to think about how different our times were there,” Anne said.

A dozen years after Nancy earned her bachelor’s degree, she began weighing where to earn a graduate business degree to advance her career. At the time, she was working in a rewarding position as executive director of a local nonprofit organization. Once Mary Washington introduced an MBA program at its Stafford campus, she had her answer.

“I didn’t bat an eye. I knew Mary Washington. Even though this was a new campus with new professors, I knew the institution that provided the foundation. Getting the MBA through the school that I loved and trusted was the best of all worlds.”

Nancy received her master’s degree in Dodd Auditorium in a 2004 commencement ceremony that reminded her mother of her own graduation in Dodd 47 years earlier.

“It was kind of a déjà vu,” Anne Fowler said. “It was a big family occasion with great rejoicing.”

– Christine Neuberger