Meet Our New Academic Advisor
The Women’s Studies Department warmly welcomes Margaret Hammond as their new Academic Adviser:
Growing up on a farm in central Pennsylvania, the youngest of five daughters, Margaret pursued her academic goals of studying history and anthropology at the University of New Hampshire. It was here she enrolled in her first women’s studies course. Soon after, Margaret transferred to Penn State where she earned her BS in women’s studies, completing her capstone research project on the sexual self-perception of women with spinal cord injuries.
After graduating from Penn State, Margaret moved to Washington, DC to work with a higher education professional association, and later relocated to Atlanta, GA where she worked for a non-profit health organization. Never forgetting her goal of working in higher education, Margaret returned to Pennsylvania where she and her partner enrolled at and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) with their MA’s in student affairs in higher education. While at IUP, Margaret was awarded a graduate assistantship position working with the peer education health promption office, Health AWARENESS, and a grant-funded intimiate partner and sexual violence prevntion program, The Haven Project. Her master’s thesis research explored faculty perception of the role and responsibility student affairs professionals have in student learning.
Inspired to pursue work in academic advising by her undergraduate women’s studies adviser, Margaret was drawn to work with college students, where her undergraduate and graduate education helped her develop the professional framework of considering the whole student in the context of the university environment, considering each individual student at their varied and changing stages of development, and an awareness of their needs and forming identities.
When not advising students in the College of the Liberal Arts, you will find Margaret serving as an academic skills mentor for student-athletes with Penn State’s Morgan Academic Support Center for Student Athletes, enjoying the local spoils of the State College area, adding titles to her must read book list, and spending time with and being surrounded by her family.