Reflections Magazine Issue #69 - Spring 2009 | Page 25

Feature Article

Tod Marshall ’90
Outstanding Alumni
Award Winner
Tod Marshall doesn’t know where he would be
if not for Siena Heights. Actually, he has a pretty
good guess.
“I probably would have ended up in jail,” said
Marshall, who was an underachieving, soccerplaying, trouble-seeking, drug-using high school
student in Wichita, Kansas. “In high school, I
was more or less a delinquent. It’s a miracle that
I graduated from high school, and it’s a miracle
I stayed alive in the few years after high school.”
Not even taking a few classes at nearby Wichita
State University could change lingering bad
habits. After a year or so, Marshall knew he
was at a crossroads.
“Some intuition inside of me told me it would
be a good thing to get out of town,” he said.
Siena Heights provided the escape route, via
men’s soccer coach Doug Mello and an athletic
scholarship. Tossing his belongings in a couple
of trash bags, Marshall journeyed to the Adrian
campus ready to start a new chapter in his life.
Helping to turn that page was the Siena faculty,
especially the late history and philosophy professor Sister Pat Hogan.
“I was a good student, not a great student,”
Marshall said of his early days at Siena. “I had a
couple of semesters of independent study with
Sister Pat, to read one-on-one. One day before
our meeting I was supposed to have done a reading, and I hadn’t done it. … I was in the library for
something else and I came upon Sister Pat. She
was bent over her notes and pouring over what
we were going to talk about that day. Guilt is a
good thing in some ways, because I felt so guilty
that I never again dropped the ball in getting
ready when I saw this teacher was putting so
much time for me. Just for me. … That shaped
my attitude.”

Marshall soon went from good to great as a
student, eventually graduating from Siena with
degrees in English and philosophy. He has been
in higher education ever since.
After earning his Master of Fine Arts degree and
a PhD, Marshall is now an award-winning poet
and teacher. In 2007, Marshall received the Exemplary Faculty Award from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., where he teaches English.

“I just kept building on that energy I first got
(at Siena Heights),” Marshall said of his literary
and academic accomplishments. “That energy
came out of how the Siena community embraced me and made me feel good about who I
was. … There was something here that made me
recognize … that there’s an excellence inside of
me that others are seeing. It was wonderful.
It was transformative.” u

“I just kept building on that energy I first got . . .
That energy came out of how the Siena community
embraced me and made me feel good.”

Reflections Spring ’09

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