The legacy of Anna Ivy ’11 reaches back 150 years. Anna’s great-great-great-grandmother, Anna Barrows (third from left in class photo above), graduated in 1861, the year the Civil War began.

The Wheaton ties of Anna Ivy ’11 reach back 150 years. Anna’s great-great-great-grandmother, Anna Barrows, graduated in 1861, the year the Civil War began. Her great-great-grandmother, Sarah Foster, was in the Class of 1885, the year the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York. And her grandmother, Elizabeth (“Betty”) Greene Ivy, graduated in 1947, two years after the end of World War II.

Betty Ivy recounts: “My great-grandmother, Anna Barrows, attended Wheaton when it was a seminary. There were about six or eight girls in her class, and at graduation, each girl gave a speech about the subject she had studied.”

By the time Betty attended, Wheaton had been an official college for more than 30 years, but it still offered an intimate learning environment.

Anna Barrows, Class of 1861

“I enjoyed the smallness of Wheaton,” she says. “I really learned to study, and I learned a great deal. When I was at Wheaton, there were about five hundred girls. It was wonderful for me, because the girls did everything—and we perforce didn’t have the distraction of boys, because of the war.”

The college closely sheltered its students back then. Only the juniors and seniors could attend the dances with the soldiers from Camp Miles Standish, Betty says, and when students went off campus for the evening, they had to be back by 11:30 p.m. If they spent the weekend in Boston, there was only one college-approved hotel where they could stay.

Betty majored in English with a minor in French. One of her first jobs out of college was teaching English in Brunswick, Maine. It was there she met Robert Ivy, her future husband.

“A group of us teachers went to Miss Holbrook’s Boarding House for dinner at noon—that was the main meal of the day,” Betty recalls. “Elegant ladies would come in their hats, and so did the bachelor professors from Bowdoin.” One of them was Robert Ivy, who taught French at the college. Betty also became a French teacher, working at the junior high school level.

When it came time for her granddaughter Anna to choose a college, Betty recommended Wheaton, and Anna discovered that the college met her criteria.

“I was drawn to Wheaton by its admissions policy of looking at each student individually and encouraging a personal portfolio,” Anna says. “Additionally, my grandmother shared with me her own fond memories of Wheaton, which significantly influenced my final decision. She cherished her relationships with her peers and professors—relationships that marked her own intellectual maturity during her college years.”

Anna has forged the same kind of close relationships with her own Wheaton professors. “I took introductory courses in several departments,” she recalls, “but it was not until I took ‘Arts of the Western Tradition’ that I discovered my passion and connection to the field of art history. The professors in the department go out of their way to engage each student. My advisor, Professor Evelyn Staudinger, encouraged me to apply to a study abroad program in Rome that she herself had attended as an undergraduate, an experience that deepened my love for art history and my passion for Renaissance art.”

Anna has also helped out with the management of Wheaton’s art objects under the guidance of Leah Niederstadt, curator of the college’s Permanent Collection. Anna, who hopes to work in the museum profession, says, “Professor Niederstadt has shared much time with me, teaching me about how collections are managed and handled. These are skills I hope to carry with me to a career in the art world.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Sometimes, they get even better.

“I loved Wheaton,” says Phyllis Manousos Zerbini ’75, “and I still do.” She found that the professors took a genuine interest in their students, got to know them as people and also served as mentors. “Wheaton was the best thing that happened to me.”

“As a women’s college, Wheaton instilled in me the knowledge, skills and self-confidence to grow—and to know that, as a woman, I could follow any professional path I chose, and be successful.”

Phyllis has indeed been successful, earning an M.B.A. in accounting and establishing a career at Price Waterhouse and Pratt & Whitney. She has also run the financial operations of her husband’s company and raised three children—two of whom attended Wheaton.

Christina Zerbini Francis ’04 on her wedding day with her mom Phyllis Manousos Zerbini ’75

For her children, Christina ’04 and Steven ’11, Wheaton has been a place of opportunity. Christina participated in the women’s track team, joined the Wheaton Dance Company, served on the residence hall staff and was a member of the search committee that selected Ronald A. Crutcher as president in 2004. She also slipped in a double major in economics and Hispanic studies. Her junior semester in Cordoba, Spain, was “such a great experience that I encouraged both my sister and brother to study abroad during their collegiate experiences,” she says.

Steven did study abroad, in Australia, and he found it “incredible. I was able to experience a different culture and learn a lot about myself, my future and the world. I feel that I grew up a lot by going abroad.”

A chemistry major and an economics minor, Steven plans to attend medical school and specialize in anesthesiology. His research project with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Randall Hicks, which focuses on testing new ways of extracting arsenic and other anions from water, has helped him apply his learning “to a real situation,” he says. “I love that at Wheaton the professors and the college try to prepare you for life after Wheaton. The professors try to relate everything you learn to how you can use it in your life.”

Like his sister, Steven has been active on campus, playing on the men’s soccer team, serving as a Commencement/Reunion Volunteer, working in two college offices, and volunteering for the Wheaton Fund. “I have been very involved,” he says. “I think that is part of the reason I have had such a great experience. Wheaton has so many opportunities to offer its students, but it is a matter of taking advantage of them.”

More than 35 years after her own graduation from Wheaton, Phyllis Zerbini feels that the college has adapted well to co-education. “I still see that the community provides the skills and encouragement, and instills the self-confidence, for its students to become successful,” she says.

Her daughter Christina corroborates that thought. Christina has worked at United Technologies Corporation for nearly seven years, beginning as an associate in a leadership training program, which exposed her to four different roles within accounting and finance. She now works as a senior financial analyst in UTC’s internal audit department. Her Wheaton education has served her well, she says. “The critical thinking and approach to problem solving that my professors at Wheaton helped me develop has provided me with a strong foundation that I leverage and build upon daily,” she remarks.

“It’s very special for me to have this unique Wheaton connection with my mom and brother,” she adds. “I love it! Although many things about Wheaton have changed, many things have stayed the same. I can’t wait to see my little brother become a Wheaton alum in May, and I’m looking forward to seeing who will be next in the family to become a Wheatie.”