By Jonah Grinkewitz
Sara Rose Hotaling admits her educational journey has been “circuitous.”
As a student in the Legal Studies Academy at First Colonial High School, she initially wanted to pursue law and interned with former U.S. Rep. Elain Luria’s congressional campaign.
Hotaling said she is passionate about many things and thought the opportunity would be a good way to channel her passion into creating change. After seeing the inner mechanisms of politics though, she decided there were better ways to do this.
When she experienced some health issues, she switched to medicine and enrolled in pre-med classes at Tidewater Community College, because she thought, “‘Well, I’ll just figure it out myself.’”
She transferred into Old Dominion University in 2022 as a junior and started out on an interdisciplinary track to craft a degree in naturopathic medicine. Her focus was on preventative care and creating a pathway for clinical trials of non-pharmaceutical remedies.
Hotaling did not want to work in a hospital, but the further she got into the field, she realized doing so would be essential to her goals.
“You have to be willing to operate within a system that you don’t believe in to then effect change in that system, and health care and politics were two systems that I was not willing to do that in because I didn’t see a route that was feasible,” she said.
So, Hotaling switched things up again. She always loved reading and writing, so she changed her major to English and hoped to find her calling along the way.
That direction came from a linguistics class taught by ODU master lecturer Beth Backes.
“I thought, ‘This is everything I want,’ and it’s been full speed ahead since then,’” Hotaling said.
Her next stop is receiving her B.A. in English with a concentration in applied linguistics and a certification in Teaching English as a Second Language on May 4.
“ODU has allowed me to find very influential and impactful people in my life," said Sara Rose Hotaling, an English major with a concentration in applied linguistics.
Hotaling liked that linguistics combined her interests in data and research with sociology and anthropology. She was particularly inspired by a study Backes did with data on how the media captions photos of Black people versus others.
“Language touches everything,” Hotaling said. “Any topic that I or anyone is passionate about, there is a way to do research and produce valuable information that can be utilized to effect change by policy makers, educators and people in positions of power, because everyone has to use language.”
During her studies, Hotaling learned about the rapid disappearance of Indigenous languages. She wanted to draw attention to the crisis, so she organized the first-ever Indigenous Language Preservation Symposium at ODU this past March.
“I want to know more about this. I think everyone should know more about this. Obviously, the very simple solution was to plan an entire symposium on the subject,” she said with a laugh.
More than 70 people – including many from local tribes – attended the event which was sponsored by the Linguistics Department and ODU’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society of which Hotaling served as president.
“Sara Rose is intellectually curious, creative and hard working,” Backes said. “Perhaps most impressive is her ability to see a problem, propose a solution and then not only take action but inspire others to act as well – the mark of a real leader.”
Amy Lindstrom, assistant professor of linguistics, said it was an impressive accomplishment for an undergraduate student to organize such an event.
“Sara Rose is DYNAMO,” Lindstrom stated in an email. “I’ve told her repeatedly that she’s CRUSHING it both as a student and as a researcher.”
During her final semester, Hotaling won the ODU English Undergraduate Applied Language Studies Competition award for a paper she wrote on syntax analyzing how the passive voice has been used strategically to remove blame from one side and place blame on the other in news stories covering the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“She (Lindstrom) was very willing to stay after class with me and personally answer all of my very linguistic-y questions, and now I’m equipped and well-prepared to do very difficult, high-level work that I probably wouldn’t have gotten in an undergrad experience if not for her,” Hotaling said.
Another formative experience at ODU for Hotaling was interning at the English Language Center as a teaching assistant with English lecturer Ann Kumm. The ELC provides a high-quality, reasonably priced, intensive English language program for speakers of other languages.
“As much as English teachers are teachers, they’re also students, because you can travel and learn a lot of things, but in the ELC, everyday I’m learning culturally specific things all the time,” she said.
"Sara Rose took every possible opportunity that she could to work with students in our program — something that she would tell you she equally benefited from," Kumm said. "Just "doing the act of tutoring" was never enough — she wanted to learn and ensure what she was doing mattered. The world is certainly a better place because Sara Rose is in it."
After graduation, Hotaling plans to move to England and apply to graduate schools there. She said her end goal is to be a professor of linguistics but “would not be surprised” if she ends up detouring for a bit.
Reflecting on her time at ODU, she said she is most grateful for the people – friends, students and faculty members – who served as mentors.
“ODU has allowed me to find very influential and impactful people in my life and I cannot stress enough how much the students at the ELC have especially impacted me,” she said.
“We have a lot to learn from the people we work with and not just the people that we’re told to look up to. We should look across. You don’t remember anything positive when people talk down to you, but you remember when you speak with people.”