Two leaders with deep ties to Virginia as well as the nation’s 250th anniversary next year, one a celebrated historian who has curated notable exhibits that explore our shared past, the other an acclaimed college president, will address the Longwood Class of 2025 at Commencement ceremonies on May 16-17.
Christy S. Coleman, executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, will serve as this year’s undergraduate commencement speaker. She is an award-winning historian and historical organization executive who has been a leading voice in interpreting both Virginia history and the history of the United States at important national sites. She has also been named by Time magazine as one of the “31 People Changing the South.” Worth magazine named her one of “29 Women Changing the World” in 2019. She has also served as a historical consultant on numerous feature films and has appeared in historical documentaries, including 2019’s Oscar-nominated “Harriet.”
After graduating from Hampton University, Coleman began a career at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, where she became the first female director of African American Interpretations and Presentations. She was subsequently named the president and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, before returning to Virginia in 2008 to lead the American Civil War Center. During her tenure, the American Civil War Center merged with the Museum of the Confederacy to create the American Civil War Museum.
She was named executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, an education agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia that oversees the Jamestown Settlement and American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, in 2019.
Coleman will address graduates at the undergraduate Commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 17, at 9:30 a.m. on Wheeler Mall.
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Dr. Larry Stimpert was named the 25th president of Longwood’s college-town neighbor Hampden-Sydney College in 2016, and in 2026 will oversee the 250th anniversary of its founding. He will serve as the graduate commencement speaker on May 16.
During his tenure, Hampden-Sydney has transformed its campus, building a new state-of-the-art science center in the heart of campus, adding residence halls for students, constructing a new student center, and elegantly renovating Venable Hall, among the earliest college buildings in America. He has done this while expanding the curriculum and developing new initiatives to support the college’s mission “to form good men and good citizens.”
While serving as Hampden-Sydney’s president, Dr. Stimpert has chaired the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia (CICV), the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges (VFIC), and the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC). He is currently a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU).
In 2026, Hampden-Sydney will mark the 250th anniversary of the start of classes at one of the oldest colleges in the United States—the last founded in British Colonial America—and half of America’s first two-college town. Longwood was founded in 1839.
Stimpert will address graduates at the graduate Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 16, at 4:30 p.m. in the Joan Perry Brock Center.
“Both Christy Coleman and Larry Stimpert are important voices whose organizations not only shape their respective communities, but have had wider reach to shape our understanding of the nation,” said President W. Taylor Reveley IV. “I am grateful they will join us so that we may honor them with great Longwood spirit and hear their words of wisdom on a special Commencement weekend.”
Commencement ceremonies will be livestreamed at longwood.edu for those who cannot attend in person.
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