Originally published on Emory News Center. By Daniel Christian.
Each November, Libby Egnor takes a Friday off work to cook a full Thanksgiving meal for Emory students who are part of the Goizueta Scholars Program.
She carefully arranges more than two dozen place settings with linens and silverware at her family’s dining room table. In the kitchen, hot cider roars to a boil in an old-fashioned coffee urn with festive cloves and spices dancing on the surface — her mother’s recipe.
“There’s a million things I do to make it special,” she says.
These are the kinds of thoughtful flourishes that have defined Egnor’s 25 years at the Emory Goizueta Business School, where she is associate dean. She is also the founding director of the Goizueta Scholars Program, which provides merit-based scholarships and co-curricular opportunities to outstanding high school students interested in pursuing a business degree.
Egnor and other Emory employees celebrating milestone service anniversaries of 25 years or more were honored at the annual Staff Service Awards Luncheon on Tuesday, Nov. 18.
Her Thanksgiving meal, affectionately known as “scholarsgiving,” has become a beloved tradition for both Egnor and the Goizueta Scholars.
“I plan weeks in advance,” she says. “I love November and the anticipation leading up to the holidays, and I love to cook for people.”
For first- and second-year students living in the residence halls, it’s especially nice to have a home-cooked meal at this busy point of the semester. They enjoy the fellowship.
Libby Egnor, Associate Dean, Undergraduate BBA Program
Goizueta Scholar Grant Huddleston 26BBA, a senior finance major from Pittsburgh, recently attended his fourth and final “scholarsgiving,” which is held on a Friday before the actual holiday.
After his first visit to Egnor’s house in the fall of 2022, Huddleston began looking forward to the gathering months in advance, as soon as he arrived back to campus for the new school year. He says it serves as a much-needed mental reset and celebration of community ahead of final exams.
Egnor’s menu, he adds, has all the Thanksgiving classics. But Huddleston looked forward to one sweet potato dish in particular.
Here’s how Egnor describes the dish, one of her biggest hits: “roasted sweet potatoes on a bed of spicy yogurt mixed with lemon zest and fresh mint on top.”
“She’s an incredible chef,” Huddleston says.
The Thanksgiving dinner is emblematic of who she is. Those personal touches that make an impact are a core part of her identity.
Grant Huddleston 26BBA
“She has a gift for hosting everyone in Goizueta,” he adds. “‘Scholarsgiving’ is a representation of that for a small group of us, but she is a host for each and every student in this home of the business community.”
Investing in Others
Egnor grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan, raised by parents who were both first-generation college students. Their lessons on the value of education have stayed with her throughout her professional career, she says.
After graduating from the University of Michigan, she had a brief stint in government as a policy analyst before taking a job in faculty development at New York University. She came to Emory in 2000 as Goizueta’s study abroad assistant director, and in 2005, joined the Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) program, which would change the trajectory of her time at Emory.
Egnor and Andrea Hershatter, Goizueta senior associate dean of undergraduate education, joined together to create the Goizueta Scholars Program, which launched in 2007.
The program is a tight-knit community for business-minded students before and after their matriculation into the school. Most students meet the requirements to enroll in Goizueta in either their sophomore or junior years.
“We wanted to assure that, given Goizueta did not have first-year entry, we were still achieving top-of-mind awareness among the very best high schoolers in the world who wanted to pursue business,” Hershatter says of the program. “Libby made it her own in terms of crafting a special experience for the students.”
Egnor became assistant dean of the undergraduate program in 2010 and is pivotal to all activities — especially those relating to the Goizueta Scholars. She crafted the framework of the program, including a robust advising strategy and a fall-semester seminar that includes scholars across class years.
“It’s a model where first-years, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are all in the program together,” Egnor explains, adding that there are four to seven students per cohort. “The hallmark of the business school is older students help younger students. That is without a doubt our secret sauce.”
Hershatter says that, beyond the scholars program, Egnor is essential to Goizueta’s daily operations — from creating a system to provide exam-disability accommodations to helping students and their families in moments of personal or academic crisis.
“None of these tasks are easy,” Hershatter says, “and they all require deep empathy, institutional knowledge and creativity.”
We’re extraordinarily lucky to have somebody as adept and compassionate as Libby is at navigating all this.
Andrea Hershatter
Hershatter recalls a moment several years ago on a Goizueta-led ski trip when the group’s bus was stuck in the snow. As the driver watched helplessly, Egnor took one of the skis out from the luggage compartment and started to dig the packed snow away from the bus’s entrenched wheel.
“If you need to know anything about Libby, just look at that,” Hershatter says. “She has a salt-of-the-earth, can-do Michigan background, and comes from family that instilled in her the deeply transformative power of education above all. I think that very much shapes the attitude she brings to work every day.”
It’s an attitude that Hershatter says makes her own job easier.
“She’s a great person with whom to brainstorm ideas that she helps me reflect upon and improve,” Hershatter says. “We’ve been working together so long that she can also read my mind better than any person in the world.”
Huddleston has also felt the impact of Egnor’s personal support.
“Libby is the reason I’m at this school,” he says, noting that he first met her during the scholarship selection process. “She’s guided me academically and helped me sink into enjoying my time at Emory. She’s been around 25 years and has this repertoire of stories and lessons. The guidance she gives is individually tailored, but it’s informed and enriched by every student she’s advised before.”
Egnor says she enjoys sharing what she’s learned over the years and watching students undergo their individual journeys of self-discovery.
“It is so much work figuring out who you are as a person, and you need people on your team to help you,” she says. “And when you have people on your team and feel like you’re supported, the doors swing wide open.”
Words of Wisdom
The written word carries a profound power, Egnor says.
She honors that belief each May by gifting a hand-selected novel to each graduating Goizueta Scholar.
“I pick books that remind me of them or that I think they’ll like,” she says. “I love to do that because fiction helps you see the whole person and empathize with those who are different than you.”
It is also a reminder, Egnor says, that she is in their corner — and that someone has taken the time to think specifically about them and their interests.
“When they start their new job and come home from work,” she adds, “I want them to have a book to help get them on the path of reading for pleasure.”
As Huddleston’s final semester approaches, he says he and his fellow graduating scholars are eagerly awaiting Egnor’s personalized book selections.
“You watch the seniors before you go through that process,” he explains, “and when it’s your turn, you’re like, ‘Wow, what’s it going to be?’ I’ll find out in a couple months, but I know Libby will pick the best and most meaningful book for me.”
Earlier this year, Huddleston says he was working hard on a group project that culminated in an important presentation. The morning of their talk, he and his classmates arrived at the business school to find Egnor waiting with bags of homemade apple-cider caramels and handwritten notes for each student — one of countless thoughtful gestures over her 25 years of supporting students in ways big and small.
“As I go into my own adulthood and think about making an impact,” he says, “I will carry with me the concept of providing that personal touch. A handwritten note goes such a long way.”
Photos courtesy of Libby Egnor, except where noted.
