Kimberly Fowler will pick up her diploma during Commencement Saturday, May 20, joining her parents and older sister among the ranks of Elon alumni.
When the topic of Elon comes up in the Fowler household in Sunderland, Md., everyone can join in the conversation.
That’s because all four Fowlers will have Elon degrees after Kimberly, a business major with an emphasis in marketing, receives her diploma during the university’s 116th Commencement exercises Saturday, May 20. She will join her sister, Jessica, a 2002 alumna, and her parents, Tim ’73 and Nancy ’75, among the ranks of Elon alums.
“It’s pretty neat to have all four of us as alums,” says Kimberly Fowler.
As a boy, Tim Fowler got a head start on his journey to Elon through a program at his church in Suffolk, Va. “I first set foot on Elon’s campus in the 4th grade,” says Tim Fowler. “Then my older brother, Oscar, came to school here, so I knew about Elon early on.”
Tim and Nancy met through Nancy’s older brother, who was in Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity with Tim. After Nancy’s graduation, the couple moved to Maryland in 1976. The maintained close contact with Elon, though, serving on the National Alumni Executive Board from 2002 to 2005 and visiting campus often. Frequently, they would bring their young daughters with them.
“They were like me,” says Tim. “They saw Elon from an early age and the more popular it became in Maryland, the more they wanted to go there. We wanted them to see other schools, but they both liked Elon from the start.”
Coincidentally, Kimberly believes she was in 4th grade when she saw Elon for the first time, just like her father.
“I can remember that Moseley Center had just been completed and there was still fresh straw on the ground around it,” Kimberly said. “When my sister was in school there, I came to campus a lot. I looked at other schools, but nothing compared to Elon.”
In addition to her business major, Kimberly will earn a minor in multimedia authoring and hopes to enter the publishing field, producing brochures and Web sites. Jessica Fowler lives in Raleigh, where she works for LEARN NC, which works with students taking advanced placement courses in state high schools.