Recipients of 2024 Maryville College Alumni Awards announced
July 17, 2024
Three months from now, members of the Maryville College Alumni Association will join friends, family and fellow Scots to celebrate coming home to College Hill, but a chosen few will be celebrated for their endeavors to “do good on the largest possible scale.”
That credo, extolled by MC founder the Rev. Isaac Anderson in the institution’s early days more than 200 years ago, serves as a guiding principle for Scots around the world, and each year, the MC Alumni Association recognizes a handful of individuals for achievements that go above and beyond such a calling.
The Alumni Citation, awarded to any alumnus/a of MC who has demonstrated outstanding leadership or initiative service in his/her community, church or chosen profession, will be given to Jill Kinsinger Koss ’80. The Kin Takahashi Award for Young Alumni, recognizing an alumnus/a who has, within 20 years of his/her graduation from MC, lived a life characteristic of College legend Kin Takahashi (Class of 1895), will be bestowed upon two alums, Molly Ridgeway Anderson ’18 and Joshua Anderson ’18. And the Distinguished Service Award, bestowed upon an alumnus or alumna who has dedicated themselves to great service that benefits the greater good and honors Maryville College, or who has rendered unusual service in any capacity on behalf of the College, will be awarded to Margaret A. “Peggy” Maher ’78.
The Alumni Citation and Kin Takahashi awards will be presented as part of the College’s annual Founder’s Day celebration, which takes place during Homecoming Weekend activities. Homecoming will be held the weekend of Oct. 25-27, and the Founder’s Day Showcase will take place at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 25, in the Clayton Center for the Arts. The Distinguished Service Award will be presented to Maher at a private ceremony later this summer.
MC Alumni Citation
This year’s recipient of the Alumni Citation, Jill Kinsinger Koss ’80, will make the Homecoming journey to her alma mater from the Lone Star State, where she serves as the director of Family Support Services at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. After obtaining her master’s degree from Texas Women’s University in 1989, she began a career in the child life field at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in 1990.
A year later, she moved to Texas to join the staff of Cook, where she was cited as a “natural leader” who constantly put in hard work “to meet the needs of patients and families throughout the hospital.” By 1999, Koss — a Certified Child Life Specialist (CCLS) — was named clinical coordinator for the facility’s child life department, rising to the position of director of Child Life in 2003 and to her current role in 2006.
Under her leadership, the Child Life department grew from a handful of child life specialists to more than 80 staff members. Along the way, Koss advocated for and pioneered such programs as the Creative Artist in Residence Program, the Sit…Stay…PLAY Facility Dog Program, and the Camps For Kids Program, a collection of camps for children with chronic health conditions. Under her leadership now are child life specialists, activity coordinators, a resident artist, music therapists, dog handlers, music and television producers, therapeutic clowns, volunteer coordinators, teachers and child life educators.
As a champion for programs and ideas that have impacted children across the hospital system, she’s led programming and initiatives for patient- and family-centered care, psychosocial practice, emotional safety and more. Her work led to a system-wide pain management program called The Comfort Menu; she led the way in changing the hospital’s focus toward more child-friendly art exhibits; and her work helped establish a sibling center for brothers and sisters of patients of the hospital’s various outpatient clinics.
Outside of her job, she’s helped establish programming and education to support children in Honduras, Romania, Malaysia and Hong Kong. She’s volunteered at orphanages and worked to teach professionals who share her passion and vision of caring and advocating for children, and today, those educational partnerships have led to child life specialists in those countries providing psychosocial education to medical professionals and psychosocial support to patients and their families.
She’s the 2023 Distinguished Service Award recipient for the Association of Child Life Professionals, an organization she’s served in numerous capacities (most recently as its president), and while doing “good on the largest possible scale” has taken her around the world, Maryville College has long held a special place in her heart: Her late father, Dan Kinsinger, taught voice, and her late mother, Bertha Kinsinger, was active in the College’s Faculty Wives organization. The Dan and Bertha Kinsinger Endowed Scholarship was created to give financial aid to a rising senior or junior who exhibits excellence in vocal performance.
MC Alumni Awards: Kin Takahashi Award for Young Alumni
The recipients of this year’s Kin Takahashi Award for Young Alumni had made a positive impact statewide even before they graduated: Molly Ridgeway Anderson ’18 and Joshua Anderson ’18 met as students, and although they wed a month after graduation, by that point they had successfully advocated and lobbied for the passage of two Tennessee laws:
• Senate Bill 524 and House Bill 462, which advocated for the Tennessee State Board of Education to implement American Sign Language (ASL) textbooks and curriculum and allow the course to satisfy foreign language requirements in Tennessee schools. It was passed unanimously by the Tennessee General Assembly unanimously on April 24, 2017, and was signed by then-Gov. Bill Haslam on May 4, 2017; and
• Senate Bill 1514, which “requires the board of regents, each state university board, and the board of trustees of the University of Tennessee to adopt policies allowing American Sign Language courses to satisfy foreign language requirements for undergraduate degree programs by July 1, 2019.” That piece of legislation was signed into law by Haslam on March 9, 2018.
Such accomplishments were legacy enough, but the pair were just getting started: In 2021, they once again traveled to Nashville to advocate for a bill that would require Text-to-911 be available in all emergency communications districts throughout the state. Although it passed the State Senate, it stalled in the House of Representatives, but their persistence led to successful negotiations with the State 911 Board to implement a policy that all districts implement Text-to-911 without the need for a state law.
Their passion for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities is personal: Molly was born with a non-verbal disability and uses American Sign Language to communicate, and an inability to verbally communicate during an emergency led to a TED Talk about her experiences, eventually resulting in the Text-to-911 statewide policy.
A native of Florence, Alabama, Molly graduated with a degree in Child Development and Learning (with licensure) and was active in the Student Government Association, Mountain Challenge and the MC Cross Country Team. She currently serves as the director of Peer Support at Family Voices of Tennessee, which advocates for the improvement of health care and related services for children with disabilities, chronic illnesses and other special health care needs.
She was also an active participant of the Blount County Alumni Association, serving on the board from 2019-2021 before moving away from the area. Her husband, Joshua, transferred to MC to complete his junior and senior years, earning a degree in Political Science and going on to the University of Tennessee College of Law. Also active in SGA, he interned for a semester with Sen. Mike Bell and the Tennessee Senate Government Operations Committee, and during law school, he served as a student attorney in the UT Legal Clinic, and as a summer law clerk for both the Tennessee Secretary of State and the Tennessee Attorney General. He currently practices as an associate attorney at Gearhiser Peters in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he and Molly now reside with their daughter, Lucy.
Maryville College Alumni Awards: Distinguished Service Award
Given that the 2024-25 academic year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the American Sign Language-English Interpreting major at Maryville College — the first of its kind in the nation — it’s no surprise, then, that Margaret A. “Peggy” Maher ’78 will be honored during the August Convocation for the three decades she spent at Maryville College teaching American Sign Language-English Interpreting. From 1989 to 2019, she prepared more than 125 students for careers in professional interpreting and helped the College raise its visibility as one of only a few institutions to offer the interpreting major.
Her standards for classroom excellence, as well as her commitment to student success, helped the program earn a reputation for quality instruction and preparation for the field. As an MC student, she was among the first Scots to complete the major in interpreting for the Deaf, and after graduating from MC, she went on to earn a master’s in social work from the University of Tennessee and a Master’s of Science in Teaching Interpreting from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College), in addition to completing professional studies at Gallaudet University. She earned and maintained several levels of certification from the Registry of Interpreters of the Deaf (RID) and was active in the interpreting community.
While a Maryville College faculty member, she taught all interpreting courses, conducted course labs, advised students, updated the curriculum, maintained and oversaw interpreting laboratory materials and equipment, conducted departmental program reviews, supervised consultants for interpreting courses and laboratories, and presented department information at Admissions events. She also coordinated interpreting services to Deaf students at Maryville College and interpreted for them, as needed.
Like many of her faculty peers, she taught first-year seminar and experiential courses, served on numerous committees of the College, and obtained grants for professional development and programs that supported greater interaction between MC interpreting students and the Deaf community. Through her, the College was represented in the activities of the Knoxville Center of the Deaf and the Tennessee Schools for the Deaf, and upon her retirement she was described as a “steadfast keeper” of the College’s interpreting program and as “an amazing role model” for students, one of whom described her as someone “always ready and willing to share her wealth of knowledge and experiences with us. She has taught us certain lessons that are not only useful for interpreting, but we will use for the rest of our lives.”