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Of course, they didn’t plan it that way.

“I never wanted to come back to Minnesota,” said Davies, an assistant professor of anthropology and a member of the class of 1991. “I left the day after I graduated and didn’t come back here for 15 years.”

A desire to teach at a small liberal arts college brought Davies back.

“Hamline was a great place to be a student,” he said. “It just happened that the year I got my Ph.D., there was an opening in the anthropology department. I only got into anthropology because I’m a curious person by nature. Liberal arts is about satisfying curiosity with a broad knowledge.”

According to the university bulletin, there are seven full-time faculty members that graduated from Hamline. Many more, like Dioury and Howard, are in administration and staff.

After leaving her flight attendant job with United, Dioury, assistant director in the Center for Academic Services, became a language teacher at a high school in Maryland. There, she decided she wanted to work with college students.

“I liked all the population, but my favorites were the juniors and seniors, and helping them in the long-term thinking about going to college,” she said. “Realizing I could translate that to the college setting, I became excited about coming back and making the transition to working with first-year students.”

Dioury, a 1995 graduate in Spanish and French, advises students academicallyčand sometimes emotionally. She said her knowledge of the school gives her a big advantage.

“Understanding learning in the Hamline way has helped tremendously with this position,” she said. “It helps in understanding the curriculum and understanding why things are the way they are. Some people may not understand why there have or have not been changes made to the curriculum, so that helps to know where they’re coming from.”

Howard graduated from Hamline in 2002 with a degree in criminal justice. When she came back to work as a patrol officer, partially because of free graduate school and “killer” benefits, she instantly saw the pros of being an alumna. “I lot of times someone will come in and be unhappy about Hamline,” Howard said. “I tell them, ‘You want stories about Hamline? It’s like that at any school. Trust me.’ You know that whole thing, ‘I can feel your pain?’ Well, I really can feel your pain. I remember not having a parking permit. I remember the noise of living in Drew.”

Davies feels his advantage comes from a familiarity with the type of students at Hamline.

“The majority of Hamline students are still really from this region, and they don’t have a great deal of experience thinking about international issues,” said Davies, a native of the Twin Cities. “I was from that kind of a background, but I had to opportunity here to live abroad for six years. I’ve had those similar experiences.”

In the years since he graduated, Davies said he’s concerned that the university has remained “parochial.”

“I’m really surprised that more people don’t want to study abroad,” he said. “When I was a student, it was almost assumed that you’d go abroad. I got the feeling we were regional, but we were aggressively trying to learn about the global context of an education. Now, it’s either a smaller percentage or the same percentage.”

Howard noted some of the more positive changes at Hamline in the five years since she wore her cap and gown. As a first-year, she said she suffered from food poisoning three times from the dining hall, which kept her from going back throughout the rest of her time at Hamline.

“Then I came back (to work here) they give us these little ‘free lunch at Sorin’ cards, so I stopped in there one day,” she said. “I was like, ‘Wow. I can make my own sandwiches and there are vegan and vegetarian options that even meat-eaters would eat.’”

None of them say they have any second thoughts about rejoining the Hamline community.

“I think it was very important for me to leave first,” Dioury said. “Had I stayed on after graduation, I probably would have gone insane much quicker, and said ‘It is time for me to move on.’ But having left, I worked a bunch of jobs and traveled quite a bit, and I realized I wanted to come back. So I feel I was more ready to come back.”

“I have always thought Hamline was a good place. I’ve never regretted my time here.”