Ronaleen Roha ’70 was recently named associate secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society in Washington, D.C., after holding the interim title for two years. Originally from Erie, Pa., Roha graduated from Allegheny cum laude with a degree in political science. She has held a variety of of jobs from being a lawyer to magazine writer but always advocated for the importance of a liberal arts education. She agreed recently to take a few moments to share her story with her friends, former classmates, and current Allegheny students.
What kind of career have you had since graduating from Allegheny?
My path to my current post as associate secretary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society was anything but direct. I had always wanted to live in Washington, D.C., so the summer after I graduated from Allegheny I was lucky enough to work as an intern for the congressman from the Erie-Meadville Congressional district. I say lucky enough because it put me in D.C. and, more importantly, I met my husband, Tom, also an intern, there. He’s from Meadville, by the way. Following that summer, I landed a job on the research staff of a national magazine, then called Changing Times, now Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. My research beats were tax and investing and, after Tom graduated from law school, I decided to follow him to law school, where I specialized in estate and gift tax law. I practiced law for a few years but, like many lawyers, I left the practice to use law a different way. I switched gears to freelance a legal column for Kiplinger’s. The rest (or almost all of it so far), as they say, is history. I never looked back. I became a writer on the magazine staff and there I stayed until I retired after a couple of decades. Then, in the serendipity that is life, an opportunity came my way to join the Phi Beta Kappa Society as associate secretary. I love the energy and excitement flowing through the society from its National Arts & Sciences Initiative that is giving me a chance to spread my wings ever wider. Life is good!
How has a liberal arts education shaped your career?
This is an easy question to answer—and a tough one. Easy, because it’s so clear to me. Tough, because it is sometimes hard to explain to others. The easy part: Imagine NOT having the exposure to all the reading, analysis, synthesis, comparative thinking and other challenges one experiences in a liberal arts and sciences education? Would your life be successful and satisfying? Very likely. There are many paths to a successful and satisfying life. But, in my case, all I experienced at Allegheny was the solid foundation underlying an ability to adapt, retool, and reapply myself to new situations and challenges. Sometimes these aspects of a liberal arts and sciences education are almost subliminal, but they are real. My mom always used to say that nothing we learn is ever wasted. My liberal arts and sciences education is that on steroids!
The hard part: Putting this into words that others can understand and value. In my career, I was lucky to be hired by those valuing my kind of education. But, some employers aren’t aware that the abilities to think critically and out of the box, innovate and create, evaluate and empathize, are valuable and desirable in even the most high-tech companies. So, I encourage colleges to teach their students how to sell the fact that they have learned these skills and students not to be apologetic for having studied Hardy and Camus or art or dance. These teach important skills like analysis, reasoning, persistence and many other things employers want. Don’t apologize for being well-rounded.
Did you have any internships while you were an Allegheny student?
I didn’t participate in any internships, but I had a most spectacular opportunity during my junior year. That year, 1968-1969, I was Allegheny’s representative in the International Honors Program. For the entire academic year, 32 students from many schools (plus our faculty and their families) studied our way around the world, living about one month at a time with families in Japan, Hong Kong, India, the then Yugoslavia, Sweden and more. Our timely focus of study was “Ways of Modernization” and we met with notables in a myriad of disciplines in every place we visited. Thoroughly transformative! And fun and exciting—can you imagine the organization it took getting a crowd like ours plus all of our luggage for nine months on and off high-speed Japanese trains in less than two minutes? Those trains wait for no one—and we never lost a bag!
Are you still involved in any way with the Allegheny community?
I have been a financial supporter of the college for years and served on my 40th reunion planning committee, but time constraints limit my involvement.
During your time at Allegheny College, were you particularly influenced by a specific faculty or staff member?
A whirling kaleidoscope of faces comes to mind, but three faculty members stand out! Just whisk me now into any class taught by Frederick Seely, Lewis Pyle, or Paul Cares and I’d be grinning from ear to ear. Dr. Seely, well, what can one say? That absolutely twinkly man channeled Shakespeare. The Bard lived and breathed in his classroom, such magic! Dr. Seeley and his Elizabethan alter ego have been inseparable for me ever since my first class freshman year. Dr. Pyle could tell a tale like no other while making chemistry exciting! He almost transformed me into a chemistry major (if not for all that math…). Dr. Cares made history live. What a treat to hear him “tell” it as if he had been there. His richly woven patterns of time, place, personalities, and systems formed a foundation for viewing the world. I could add others (such as beloved freshman women’s dorm gurus, Blair Hanson and Marjorie Kirk) who had a profound impact on the way I see the world and were just plain fun to be around to boot.
Do you have advice for today’s college student?
Being asked for advice is a strange feeling—people who have been there, done that, get asked for advice! Is that me? Well, here goes. I know students today are concerned about getting jobs after college—I was, too. But, reliable crystal balls still haven’t been invented. We’re left with just seeing how things go, fueled, of course, by what drives us. I found that the future developed in ways I couldn’t predict when I was at Allegheny. The Phi Beta Kappa Society motto says the liberal arts and sciences are learning for all of life and I have certainly found that to be spot on. So, my advice is to prepare for life while in college. Learn broadly. Try new things. Challenge yourself. College may be the one time in your life when you can mix all your loves and discover new ones. Focus on your major, of course, but don’t forget the rest. The road to the future is a winding one for most of us. You never know what will come in handy!
–– Nahla Bendefaa