Spring 2024

The spring 2024 edition of Monarch magazine features stories from our own backyard and around the world.

Profiles include Capt. Janet Days '99, the first Black woman to serve as Naval Station Norfolk's commanding officer, and David McFarland '84, a LGBTQ+ advocate whose multihyphenated work reaches national and international stages.

You'll find a spread on four alumni serving in a variety of capacities on Capitol Hill, including U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans '11, as well as a profile of Earl Gary '08, whose landscape company helped transform the former site of a Confederate monument into a verdant space of 6,000 plants and trees.

Krista Harrell '01 (M.S.Ed. '03, Ph.D. '12), ODU's associate vice president for alumni relations, shares highlights of her Monarch years and discusses how she hopes to engage fellow alumni, and we focus on Fulbright fellowship work by two University professors: Victoria Time and Kent Carpenter.

There's also a poignant farewell from former Monarch magazine editor Phil Walzer, who helmed the publication for eight years and retired in late January 2024. One of his many bylines in this issue includes retracing the origins of ODU's liveliest, game-day tradition, "Ice Cream and Cake."