Always Curious
"The professors that I had really encouraged students to share their ideas, to ask questions, to engage in their learning. And that sort of empowerment really helped me to find my voice and helped me to feel confident that what I had to share was meaningful." – Kimm Quinlan '93
Editor's Note: This is one of a continuing series of interviews with HCC alumni called "Alumni Voices."
Kimm (Greaves) Quinlan ’93 grew up in Northampton, Mass., and started her undergraduate education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but she found the massive institution overwhelming and left after her first year. After four years working in the circulation department for the Daily Hampshire Gazette newspaper, she decided to study early childhood education and enrolled at HCC. Once there, she thrived, completing her associate degree in just two years while working part time at an early childhood center and later at Head Start in Holyoke. She went on to finish her bachelor's degree at Westfield State University.
In 2019, after more than a decade of consulting and advising for early childhood programs, Quinlan followed a state-funded grant initiative back to HCC, joining as the coordinator of the Early Childhood Career Pathways program. She helped build a department that now has a team of 12, offers certificate programs, and oversees the Itsy Bitsy Child Watch Center. HCC is also where she met her husband, Michael ’96, a fellow early childhood education student, who now works as the Northeast Sales Manager for David Milligan Selections, a wine importer.
What did you learn at HCC that still benefits you today?
I learned that you should always be curious. You should always question what you're learning, and you should have the confidence to trust that asking those questions is appropriate and valuable to everyone around you. I was 22 when I came back to school, so I felt a little bit older than the average student at that time. HCC was a very traditionally aged college for the most part. I felt a little nervous about being the oldest person in class. The professors that I had really encouraged students to share their ideas, to ask questions, to engage in their learning. And that sort of empowerment really helped me to find my voice and helped me to feel confident that what I had to share was meaningful.
What's your most vivid HCC memory?
One of the first classes I took was child growth and development. Connie D’Elia was the professor. To try to help the students understand the perspective of a small child, she told a story about a person being put on top of a big hole with rushing water underneath it, and not being able to really balance because they were too small for the size of this enormous hole; having to hang on, and how scary that would be. Then she explained to us that that is what a child feels like when they're being potty trained. Because a toilet is a scary thing. It was her ability to take this everyday situation and turn it into an opportunity for us to be able to gain perspective about the people that we'll be working with – for us, small children. It has always stuck with me that you have to understand the people you are going to be working with in order to really be effective at your job. This thing that we all take for granted and don't even think about, children find scary or could be intimidated by. And, so, when you're going to teach them something or engage with them, you need to think about it from their side of things.
What HCC classroom moment will you never forget?
I took a sociology class where the professor walked in every morning and said, "If you are in a bad relationship, getting married will not help. If you're in a difficult situation, don't make it worse by diving in deeper." He really helped us to think about how the decisions that we make impact our future lives. I think that those connections from the big picture to your individual experience, and to your community's experience, were something I had never thought of before.
Who was your best HCC professor and why?
Gloria Lomax (HCC class of 1975, professor emerita, and former president of the HCC Alumni Association) was my best HCC professor. She was inspirational and helped me create a vision and a philosophy of how I wanted to be when I was working with children, what type of educator and teacher I wanted to be. She had high expectations. I learned a lot and really continued to think about the lessons I learned in our class when I was a new teacher and trying to get my feet under me.
How did you and Michael get together?
We were students at HCC and both working at the YMCA in Northampton. We signed up to teach an evening swim class for adults who were afraid of the water. There were probably 10 people in the class, and they were incredibly wonderful about being vulnerable. One night as class was ending, someone suggested going out to get a beer afterward. We said, "Oh yeah, we would love to." They asked about us being a couple. We said, "We're not a couple." They were like, "Okay, sure." And, so, it was this huge joke. Two or three weeks later, we started dating. That was 34 years ago.
What book changed your life?
When I was in high school, junior year, we started reading literature for the sake of the beauty of the writing. When we read Wuthering Heights, I realized that you could read things that were really, really poignant and enjoy them. I don't know that it changed my life in inspirational ways, but it definitely changed my life in realizing that intellectual endeavors could be really enjoyable and not just really hard and miserable to get through. So I think that that book definitely helped me shift my perspective, and I've enjoyed reading in a different way ever since then.
What is your least useful talent?
My least useful talent is my ability to remember bizarre dreams that I have and retell them afterward. I know a lot of people can't remember their dreams. I have incredibly vivid, incredibly bizarre dreams that I can remember.
What do you love that everyone else hates?
Transitions. I love change. We just moved out of our house of 21 years. After three months, my husband said, "So what do you regret?" I said, nothing. Even at work, there are a lot of things that change on a daily basis. I've worked in a variety of administrative and leadership roles where people have given notice, people are changing their careers – it can be incredibly stressful. And while I'm often sad to see people move on to a new thing, it's never the kind of thing where I think, "Oh my God, we'll never make it through." It doesn't freak me out. I actually appreciate it.
What's the last movie you recommended to a friend?
It's called Brooklyn. It was amazing. It's an Irish immigration story. I’ve recommended it to a number of people to watch.
What person, alive or dead, would you most like to meet?
Agatha Christie. I've read all of her books. I watch tons of documentaries on British TV about her. I would love to meet Agatha Christie. I would ask her what she did for the few days that she was missing. There was this period of time where she went missing for two or three days. And no one knows what happened to her during that time. There are docudramas about it, and short stories, but no one knows what happened to her.
PHOTO: Kimm Quinlan '93
