In this edition:

Generations: The Colvin Family

Outstanding Alumni Recipient Update: Molly Halpin Bernosky '03

Young Alumni Update: Anna Kremer '22

Scholarship Review: The Sr. Clarita Anneken Scholarship

Building Tomorrow Together: Ways to Get Involved

The Alumni Association strives to bring together graduates to celebrate experiences, strengthen connections, and support the next generation of Villa Madonna students and alumni. Through networking, mentoring and community initiatives, the Alumni Association works to keep our alumni engaged and connected to each other and the institution. Join us as we honor our past and build a strong future together. 

Need to update us on your information? Click here.



Do you know an alum that should be highlighted in this newsletter?

Please fill out this form and let us know about all the great things happening in our alumni community!

Villa Vistas is online! In keeping with our Benedictine value of stewardship, we've moved to an online format. It will allow our community – near and far – to enjoy updates, stories, and photos with just a click. We have the same spirit with a new format!

Have you visited the updated Villa Madonna Academy website recently? Please check out the new Alumni page for updated events, news and senior class photos from each year.

For generations, families have made our school a special place to learn, grow, and belong. We are gathering stories and information about multi-generational families whose children, parents, grandparents, or other relatives have all walked our halls. Help us celebrate the lasting legacy and traditions that continue to strengthen our school community.

We want to continue to highlight our Legacy Families. Please fill out this form so our community can learn more about the generational impact Villa Madonna Academy has had and continues to have.

Deborah Davis Colvin:

The years I spent at the Villa were memorable, meaningful and life changing. To this day, some of my dearest friends are Villa classmates!

When Georgia, my granddaughter, selected Villa as her high school, I was very touched and obviously proud of the legacy created. To see her blossom at the Villa into such a beautiful young lady was so gratifying.

As a grandparent, I was also very fortunate that Georgia always included me in all her Villa activities throughout her years at our school. I was very impressed with the care and interest that was shown to each student.

What a joy it was to watch my granddaughter deliver such a wonderful inclusive speech at graduation! I can guarantee you that in my senior year, I was not on the list for the graduation commencement speech!

Thank you, Villa, for such beautiful traditions and preparing our children to follow their dreams.

"I can't believe we would lie in our graves, dreaming of things that we might have been."

-Dave Matthews Band

(Molly's senior quote)

Molly Halpin Bernosky was the first recipient of the Outstanding Young Alumni award. As a member of the class of 2003, Molly spent over 12 years at Villa Madonna Academy, coming up thru the VMA Montessori. During her time in high school, she was a member of the basketball team, served on student council, served two years as a member of the yearbook staff and spent one year each as a member of Involved Within and the Debate Club. She was voted as one of the two members of that senior class with the Best Personality.

When asked about her fondest memories of Villa, she stated that "the list is endless, but it includes the class of 2003 turning into zombies and cheerleaders for Pom Pom Zombies - The Musical, walkathons that took me past my grandmother's apartment at Madonna Manor, and growing in faith through junior and senior retreats." She said the class had a very special bond with Ms. O'Connell, who was their homeroom teacher the four years the class of 2003 were in the building. "Ms. O'Connell joined a group of us for a Bible study during the Covid shutdown." Molly mentioned Mr. Shields as a "wonderful mentor, math teacher and basketball coach" and that Sr. Mary Carol taught music to Molly and her three siblings. "Some of my earliest memories of Villa are playing music note bingo in the old music room" which is now the main entrance and front office to the high school building.

Molly graduated Cum Laude from the University of Kentucky in Psychology and went on to earn her Ed.S. in School Psychology from the University of Cincinnati. Molly served as a staff member in the Oak Hills School District, where her work in Positive Behavior Intervention and Support was recognized for excellent implementation. She also started the Empower Girls' Club in 2013 for 6th-8th grade girls to empower strong leadership skills through activities that encourage confidence and define personal value. These are just a few of the reasons why Molly was awarded one of the Outstanding Alumni Awards in 2016 and she continues to make impacts across her community today.

During the 2016 ceremony, Molly was pregnant with her daughter, who just turned 10. Molly, and her husband, Steven, are currently raising their two children in Cincinnati. Molly and Steven and their children are active in their church community at Bellarmine Chapel, and they currently help coach their kid's soccer and basketball teams. Molly sits on the board of their swim club and the literacy nonprofit Queen City Book Bank.

Molly is the director of Springer Diagnostic Center, which is a nonprofit composed of psychologists, speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists. They provide psychoeducational evaluations to children suspected of having ADHD and other learning disabilities. Molly said, "The Benedictine value of hospitality always resonated with me," and as such, she serves on planning committees in her community, most recently helping execute the 4th of July bike parade and the neighborhood Family Olympics. "My time at Villa inspired me to create and support an inclusive community where all are welcome".

Anna Kremer class of 2022

I graduated from the University of Connecticut in May 2026 with a B.A. in anthropology and psychology and a minor in American Sign Language and Deaf Culture. During my time in undergrad, I served as the secretary, vice president, and president of the anthropology club, worked in the anthropology department for two years, briefly dabbled as a psychology lab assistant, and attended many basketball games (Go Huskies!). I also studied abroad for four months at the University of Auckland in Aotearoa, New Zealand.  

I'm currently working in Skagway, Alaska as a zipline guide where I ran into the Coyle family! By some miracle, they happened to book the tour that I was running. During the summers of '23 and '24, I worked at the Cincinnati Zoo as a ropes course guide. I absolutely loved that job and after graduation, I wanted to expand on my past ropes course experience. From my previous time in Aotearoa, New Zealand, I know for sure that I want to go back and work there for a season. Alaska is closer to New Zealand than Kentucky, and I've very much enjoyed living here for these past few months.

My family still lives in Independence, Kentucky, and I have two younger siblings. My brother is currently at NKU, entering his sophomore year, and my sister, Lucy, is entering her senior year at Villa. We currently have an exchange student from Spain living with us, which was organized by Lucy. 

I always had a great time with Villa sports, from Coach Katie K on the swim team and Coaches Ernst, Mann, and Wolff on the archery team. My brief career as a soccer player my senior year was for sure memorable and very fun. Coach Rice was the best (and only) soccer coach I've ever had!

Next up, New Zealand! I'm hoping to expand my experience in the adventure tourism industry and work as a tour guide of some sort for their 2026-27 season. Plus do some exploring and adventuring of my own while I'm over there (ex. bungee jumping off the tallest bungee jump in the world, scuba diving, and campervans!). 

Sr. Clarita Anneken, OSB was a beloved teacher at Villa Madonna Academy. This scholarship was established by her students and friends to fulfill a dream she had for students like herself. In a letter to one of her former students, Sr. Clarita shared, “I was able to come to the Villa in 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, only because the convent administration started a prep school that year for young girls who wished to become nuns. There were five who came; two persevered. Our special tuition was $75 a year! We did do some work cleaning classrooms and washing the boarders’ supper dishes. I am forever grateful for the education I received at VMA. That’s why I would be very happy for some deserving, but not wealthy, student to have the same privilege.”

Sr. Clarita was born in January 1919 as Dorothy Esther and entered St. Walberg Monastery on August 15, 1935. She received her habit on February 25, 1936. She was the second oldest of eight children, three of whom also became Benedictines. Sr. Clarita taught from 1941 until she retired in 2005. She received her B.A. from Villa Madonna College (now Thomas More University) and her MA from Catholic University of America. Most Villa Madonna students remember her fondly as Principal and as the Latin teacher. Sr. Clarita died on September 8, 2015.

From Jack Challis '00, who helped establish this scholarship:

"The letter quoted above was written to me. In 2012 I offered Sister Clarita a gift to the Villa in her honor — I was thinking of a faculty room, or equipment, or a building. She talked it over with Pam McQueen and wrote back proposing a scholarship instead, for the reasons above. The scholarship was her idea. I only funded it.

I had Sister for six years of Latin, starting in seventh grade. I chose it because it sounded fun. What I got was much larger than a language — she used Latin as a doorway to the whole Roman world. One lesson has stayed with me for thirty years: the Republic opens and closes with a Brutus. One drove out the last king; four centuries later another, who claimed the name and knew what it asked of him, put a knife in Caesar. What does it do to a person to inherit a name that expects something? I am still turning it over.

I am a deeply secular and technical person — a Ph.D. in physics, a career built on mathematics. Sister Clarita was extraordinarily good at making the humanities meaningful to people like me, and that skill is badly underrated. I still read Seneca. The framework I read him with is hers.

Her life was a project of work, study, and prayer. That was the balance, and it is the Rule of St. Benedict in three words. She entered St. Walburg in 1935 and stayed. A life in teaching is a life in learning, and she never stopped learning. She kept working, daily, for as long as she was able — the happiest people I know are the ones who do, and I don't think that is a coincidence.

The Rule gives its longest chapter to humility, and that is her most enduring lesson to me. It is easy to be the smartest student in the room and be very impressed with yourself, and by itself that means nothing. Only the work means anything. I first learned that at twelve, from someone who had been proving it for decades and who held us to it. I have had to relearn it many times since for it to stick, and I still struggle with it.

My hope for each recipient is that they see a Villa education as a gift from people they will mostly never meet, and that they find what Sister Clarita found: the labor itself is the thing, and a life of learning is open to anyone willing to do the work."

The award criteria for the Sr. Clarita Anneken Memorial Scholarship are:

• A financial need
• Established as a four-year scholarship, to be awarded to an incoming freshman
• Student must display personal characteristics consistent with Benedictine Values
• Student works hard in the classroom and appreciates the opportunity for a Villa education
• Must maintain a 3.0 GPA

The recipient of the Sr. Clarita Scholarship for the 2026-2027 school year is Jude Randolph, class of 2029.

Your Support Makes It Possible!

Your continued generosity makes it possible for Villa Madonna Academy to continue to provide one of the finest educations available in Northern Kentucky.

The Annual Fund helps us bridge the gap between tuition and the cost to support the Arts, Academics, Athletics, and Tuition Assistance.

Starting July 1, 2026, our giving societies have been updated. Are you wondering what the different levels are and if you qualify for one? Please see the Giving to Villa page for all the updated information. Not sure how to get started? Consider joining the 1904 Club.

Visit the Alumni page on the Villa Madonna Website today. Update your information and maybe find your senior class photo.

Are you a legacy family? We want to hear about why your family continues to send members to Villa Madonna and what it means to have generations graduate from VMA? Please fill out this form.

Please update us on you (or a good friend) - we want to hear all about what you have been up to since you graduated for our Alumni Spotlight Series. Please fill out this form.

On the third Sunday in May, we honor our outstanding alumni at our annual Alumni Brunch, which is held on campus. Do you know an alum who continues to honor the Benedictine values and should be considered for this honor? Please let us know - fill out this form.

Are you missing a yearbook? Has it been lost over the years? We have copies at school available to you. Please contact the Alumni Office for further information.

As we look to 2027, the Alumni Office is here to help assist with upcoming reunion plans. If your graduation year ends in 2 or 7, please contact the alumni office for any help or ideas. A few items that are already on the calendar that could be used for your reunion

• Gala 2027: VillaRama - contact Kathleen Hughes to inquire about the alumni table. Gala 2027 is scheduled for March 6, 2027 at the NKU Ballroom.
• Alumni Brunch: scheduled for May 16, 2027. We would love to host your class at a reserved table for brunch and special recognition.