Barnard’s ‘Mother’ Ends 35-Year Tenure

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Doris Miller asked of a teary-eyed student. Already 20 minutes late for a meeting, Miller could not resist stopping to cheer a Barnard woman. After a pep talk and a hug, Miller walked away, looking over her shoulder to make sure the student was all right.

For 35 years, Miller has shaped the experiences of Barnard and Columbia students alike, filling a maternal void in a big, bureaucratic university. On Friday, Oct. 3, she will end her tenure and move to North Carolina to help her husband run a funeral home. A goodbye party will take place that day at 4 p.m. in the James Room.

Miller previously worked at Columbia, but she found her home across Broadway. As assistant director of college activities, Miller has filled numerous roles at Barnard. Her primary task has been organizing Barnard’s side of Urban New York, but she has also run vendor fairs and coordinated Broadway show and movie ticket deals.

But it was through her unofficial role as surrogate mother and confidante to Barnard students and staff that Miller earned Barnard’s love.

“I taught everyone to hug around here,” Miller said of her legacy.

Students and alumnae come to the College Activities Office just to talk to Miller.
“They talk about what they’re doing, their jobs, just to say hi,” Hadley Johnson, BC ’11, said.

Johnson has worked at the COA since her first year. “I went to the job fair and this one stuck out,” she said. “I remember Doris was running the display, and she was so enthusiastic and eager.”

Miller has touched the lives of both students and staff.

Claudia Cherry, supervisor at the Java City in Altschul Hall, has known Doris for 25 years. “She is like a mom to me. She’ll talk to you about anything,” Cherry said.

And when Miller speaks, her words endure. She created the slogan “strong, beautiful Barnard women” when her job was to report announcements to students through messages on their room phones.

“I hope they will continue the slogan, because it’s so true,” Miller said. She called Barnard a “flower garden of women, because you have everybody here.”

While Miller speaks fondly of Barnard today, she is also nostalgic for what she considers “the good old days” of McIntosh Center, when students hung around the activities office to chat, go to club meetings, or just relax.

“I think, personally, computers and iPods and all that keep you all from communicating like you used to,” Miller said.

But she expressed optimism for Barnard’s future. “Everything comes back,” Miller said. “I’m just waiting. Life is a boomerang.”

Others are not as certain how the community will fare without Miller.

CAO will be “different,” Johnson said. “Quiet, in a bad way.”

Carly Katz, BC ’09 and Johnson’s coworker, agreed.

“I don’t know what Barnard is going to be like without her,” Katz said.

Nor does Miller know how she will fare away from Barnard.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she confided. “I’m scared.”

But more than anything, she worries about the women she is leaving. “After awhile you get very teary-eyed,” Miller said, her eyes wet. “I think about the students.”

But “it’s time to go,” Miller said. “I’ve had their mothers and their daughters, and if I stay anymore I’ll have their granddaughters,” Miller said of her students.

But for one last week, Barnard and Columbia students have a mother in 102 Brooks who loves to give out hugs.

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