Anyone that meets Veronica Kloss can see that she is on a mission to fully embody the value of a liberal arts education at the University of Montevallo. Between her two majors, five minors and diverse campus involvement, the senior is dedicated to taking advantage of all that UM has to offer.
“I do a lot,” Kloss laughed. “I have a hard time saying no.”
Choosing Montevallo for its financial aid offerings, Kloss is grateful to be a recipient of the Montevallo Ambassador Program Scholarship (M.A.P.S.), the University’s most prestigious scholarship program.
“I didn’t want to go into debt for my college education — that was a big concern for me,” she said. “It’s just one less thing you have to worry about when you’re already worrying about so many things.”
Although Kloss started college not fully knowing what path she wanted to take, the Birmingham native has found her footing double majoring in communication studies and social science. She earned the Senior Elite award for social science in 2023.
“I wanted something very broad, like communication studies, that would give me flexibility,” she said. “It was kind of the same thing with the social science degree. I really enjoy history, political science and sociology. This allows me to explore all those interests and not pigeonhole myself.”
Kloss’s academic pursuits also include five minors, the first of which is arts administration. She did theater in high school but knew she didn’t want to major in it; however, she had experience as a house manager and was interested in doing it on a collegiate level. Dr. Bart Pitchford, assistant professor of theatre at UM, encouraged her to minor in arts administration to open those doors.
Next came minors in public relations and social media administration, which go hand in hand with her communications studies major and allow her to explore those areas more specifically. Peace and justice studies and nonprofit studies round out her educational roster.
“What I do is very much interacting with people and working with people from all different walks of life and backgrounds,” she said. “I thought the peace and justice studies minor would be good to help me explore those avenues more. The last minor I added was nonprofit studies because most theaters are not-for-profit, and I realized I didn’t have that strong of a grasp on what the not-for-profit model of business looked like.”
With the burden of paying for college lifted from her shoulders, Kloss finds it important to serve the campus and give back however she can. She is president of UM’s chapter of Lambda Pi Eta, the National Communication Association’s official honor society, and is a member of Phi Alpha Theta, Alpha Lambda Delta, the University Conduct Council, the Academic Integrity Council, the Human and Animal Subjects Research Committee, the Montevallo Honors Organization and the Theater Student Organization. She is a regular house manager for UM’s theater department and has two campus jobs — working in the Enrollment and Student Affairs Office and peer tutoring for TRIO.
Post-graduation, Kloss ultimately wants to work on the administrative side of theater and has gained experience there through multiple internship opportunities. She has served as assistant company manager at New York Stage and Film, box office intern at the Contemporary American Theater Festival and nonprofit marketing intern with the Montevallo Legacy Project. This summer, she worked as a front of house apprentice at the Glimmerglass Festival, a professional nonprofit opera company based in Cooperstown, New York.
“After getting that first job at New York Stage and Film, it got so much easier to get the other jobs afterwards,” she said. “Not only because my résumé has grown, but because you become so much more comfortable with the application and interview process. Every day is a new experience and every day you learn something new.”
Getting these hands-on learning opportunities in addition to her studies have only reassured Kloss that she belongs at Montevallo. One time that made her realize this was the process of getting approval for her history capstone and Honors thesis project, a paper titled “Scooby-Doo and Women Too: An Analysis of Female Representation since 1969.”
“I went to Dr. Jim Day’s office fully expecting him to shoot me down,” she said. “But I’m telling him this idea and he goes, ‘yeah, that’s perfect!’”
Kloss’s research paper went on to win a top paper award at the Phi Alpha Theta Alabama Conference and was also presented at Undergraduate Research Day and the COPLAC Southeastern Regional Undergraduate Research Conference.
“I can be weird and write my capstone paper on Scooby-Doo and it’s fine,” she said. “It was a fun paper and I’m super proud of it. I think that was the moment where I was like, ‘this is the place where I belong.’”
