2024 Alumni Achievement Award winners announced

Randolph honored three outstanding graduates with one of the College’s highest honors, the Alumni Achievement Award, during Reunion.

Diane “Misty” Matthews Walker ’74, Katharine “Kitty” Stark Caldwell ’74, and the late Sallie Crosby Smith ’64 received the award, which is given each year to graduates who personify the value of a liberal arts education, on Saturday, May 18.

Sallie Crosby Smith ’64

Sallie Crosby Smith ’64

Smith, who died in October, was a dedicated educator, volunteer, and activist who was passionate about education, diversity, equity, community, and environmental safety.

A lifelong learner and gifted teacher, she studied sociology at the College and earned her master’s degree from the University of Delaware.

Her career in education included teaching, and later serving as elementary school director, for the Pilot School, an innovative school for children with learning challenges in Delaware; teaching English in an evening high school equivalent program; and serving as president of the Nursery Kindergarten Association of Delaware.

She also built a library and taught life skills classes at an adult minimum security prison in Wilmington.

Throughout her career, she was awarded the Adult and Community Educator of the Year Award from the state of Delaware, and the Reading Achievement Award from the International Reading Association.

After retiring in 2004, she started her own tutoring business, Unlocking Potential, in Fairhope, Alabama, and founded Read Aloud Baldwin, a program that arranged for volunteers to read to preschoolers and kindergarteners in her community.

Social justice issues were close to her heart. In Delaware, she established a library of children’s books in a women’s prison, so incarcerated mothers could read to their children during visits.

She was involved in the founding of Hope Community, a Fairhope, Alabama, nonprofit with a mission to nurture unity and human rights through relationships and interactive education, and was a member of her church’s Path to Peace ministry.

While battling cancer, Smith started the Coal Ash Action Committee, created to address a longstanding environmental threat to the watershed of Mobile Bay as well as to work toward the safe disposal of coal ash and the implementation of protective regulations.

The group successfully lobbied for the Environmental Protection Agency to end coal ash containment in the Mobile River and Tensaw River Delta. Their efforts were recognized in 2023 with the Annual Watershed Award, given by Mobile Bay Magazine to recognize environmental guardians.

Diane “Misty” Matthews Walker ’74

Walker is a longtime community leader, volunteer, and fundraiser who has spent her life championing children and mental health programs.

A recipient of the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities’ Humanitarian Award, she was one of the visionaries behind the creation of Amazement Square, a nationally recognized children’s museum in downtown Lynchburg.

She is also a founding board member of the Crisis Line of Central Virginia, the Child Sexual Assault Task Force, the Coalition for the Prevention of Substance Abuse, and Lynchburg Grows.

Walker, who studied psychology at the College, earned her master’s degree and PhD in child psychology from the University of Kentucky. After her master’s degree, she took a job implementing the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in the Appalachian region of Kentucky.

She later founded and taught a two-year course training guidance counselors in that area on how to assess student needs and implement appropriate learning strategies.

Upon moving back to Lynchburg, Walker set up the Children’s Mental Health Program at the Central Virginia Community Services Board. She supervised therapists and provided consultation with local schools, social service systems, and juvenile court facilities.

She is a Eucharistic minister for St. John’s Episcopal Church and has also served with Meals on Wheels, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Family Services, Seven Hills School, and James River Day School.

In 2000, she received the YWCA’s Women of Achievement Award. In addition, in 2002, she was named Outstanding Volunteer Fundraiser by the Lynchburg Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Katharine “Kitty” Stark Caldwell ’74

A lover of the arts, Caldwell has embraced the College’s motto, Vita abundantior, and served as a leader for numerous organizations. She has also helped guide the advisory committee for the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College over the years.

A dedicated community leader, she founded the Passport Scholars Program, which gives low-income students in Hamilton County, Tennessee, the opportunity to travel abroad or engage in summer enrichment activities. She ran the program for six years, and it then became a part of the Public Education Foundation of Chattanooga for the next 14 years.

She has also volunteered as a director for the Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga, the Boys and Girls Club of Chattanooga, and the private Girls Preparatory School.

She served on the board for the Hunter Museum of American Art—where she chaired the acquisitions committee and initiated a Chairman’s Circle group whose members provide vital support to the museum—as well as Chattanooga’s Public Education Fund and Women’s Fund.

Caldwell is a former trustee for the College and served from 2002 to 2012. In addition, she chaired the Institutional Advancement and Membership/Trusteeship Committees.

In 2022, she and her husband, Hacker, received the Ruth Holmberg Arts Leadership Award, which recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the arts in Chattanooga and who are actively engaged in its cultural life.

Her ties to Randolph remain strong. She’s a member of the Vita Abundantior Society, and in 2016, gifted the labyrinth to the College.

In 2011, Randolph dedicated Caldwell Commons in her honor in recognition of her longtime support and service. The same year, she helped fund the creation of an illustrated book documenting 100 years of the College’s Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art.