While at UofL, she had a baby born in 2000 who today is a sophomore at UofL. She met and married her husband, Jeremy. From 2000 to 2004, five close family members died, and the grief was overwhelming. In addition, Burrell was diagnosed with a condition defined as “like multiple sclerosis” that had her moving from class to class in a motorized wheelchair.

But at that 2004 commencement, Burrell was so excited. She steadied herself with a cane while her then-3-year-old son, Lorenzo, toddled along beside her. When her health took a sudden downturn, she had to put off the one class she still had to take to earn her degree.

Slowly, as the years passed and her family grew to four children while she worked full-time at Humana, her last class “turned into many,” she said.

Still, she was determined to finish. “I kept going back over the years.” she said. “As requirements changed, I kept going. When I owed tuition, I paid what I could until my balance was fulfilled and immediately, I re-enrolled.”

After all, when she arrived at UofL in 1999 as “an 18-year-old full of promise,” she was the recipient of a prestigious MLK Endowment of Peace award and a Woodford R. Porter Scholarship. She joined Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. in 2002. Her father, Kenny Rowan, had “put Cardinals in my crib,” she said. 

In 2019, she arranged with her College of Arts & Sciences advisor to take her final three classes. “I completed all the steps to start classes in January 2020,” she said. “During that first class, Covid-19 hit, and we had to move quickly to virtual classes. Including that class, I have taken the last three classes I needed to graduate, one per term, during Covid.”

And she did it despite working from home and having four children at home who  each had individual virtual learning needs: A freshman in high school (14-year-old Ajani Nicole), a second-grader (8-year-old Hayden Reese), a pre-schooler (5-year-old Katherine Joy) and Lorenzo, who lived both on campus and at home.

In addition to her parents, Burrell, who grew up in Owensboro, found inspiration in Ricky Jones, chair of the Pan-African Studies department, who was her first Black teacher.

“I took every single class that he taught,” she said. “Now my son has started taking his classes and it makes me proud that Dr. Jones sees me in Lorenzo — my legacy.”

Burrell’s next challenge will be a master’s degree (first she has to decide among public health, Pan-African Studies or Women and Gender Studies) and eventually a Ph.D.

“UofL helped prepare me for life,” she said. “Over the last 11 months, UofL has helped me show my children that Mommy, now 39, never gave up, no matter what.”

The award, in its 31st year, is UofL’s most prestigious faculty award, recognizing faculty members who have made significant contributions to student life. The UofL Board of Trustees made the announcement Dec. 10.

“I’m so honored and I’m so humbled by this incredible award,” Fosl said. 

Fosl founded the ABI in 2006, two years after arriving at UofL, and since then has helped UofL earn classification as a Carnegie Foundation community engagement institution. 

“The ABI mission is to ‘bridge the gap between academic research and community activism for racial and social justice’,” Fosl said in her 2020 Teaching and Learning Statement. “… ABI students, staff, and I have conducted teach-ins and civil rights history tours with multiple UofL classes across several colleges and programs, as well as in dozens of (Jefferson County Public School) and other K-12 classrooms, various local civic and governmental groups, and in or with multiple universities regionally.”

Through the ABI, Fosl has created funded opportunities for UofL students to gain meaningful new research and community engagement experience, focusing on issues ranging from homelessness to increasing the visibility of Kentucky LGBTQ history. 

Fosl is the author of several books including Braden’s biography “Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South” and “Freedom on the Border: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky” with her colleague Tracy E. K’Meyer, UofL history professor.

“Perhaps one of her most interesting, and literally far-reaching, collaborations was with her 2013 and 2016 study abroad courses in South Africa,” K’Meyer said in her letter supporting Fosl’s nomination for the award. “In these classes, Fosl taught the history of white women’s anti-racist activism in the U.S. South and in South Africa.”

The late Anne Braden was a Louisvillian known as one of the most prominent white anti-racists in U.S. history. She is one of only six white southerners whom the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. named as reliable allies in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” 

In 2019, Fosl won a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award for the “Anne Braden Institute-Kentucky LGBTQ Heritage” project, conducted from 2015-2017. That project, in association with the Fairness Campaign, held statewide “History Harvests” to collect and preserve Kentucky’s LGBTQ history, and the ABI report was published by the National Park Service as part of its effort to document minority communities.

ABI also established an annual, free Anne Braden Memorial Lecture to focus on the U.S. civil rights movement. From the 2007 inaugural talk by Julian Bond, longtime NAACP president and rights leader, to activist Angela Davis, the series has brought to UofL nationally known speakers and authors on topics ranging from mass incarceration and Black Lives Matter to racial divides and justice in present-day America.

Fosl will receive $5,000 and a plaque recognizing her achievement. She will also be recognized at the 2020 Virtual Commencement at .

True, she is a bit disappointed to not be able to wear her commencement regalia to participate this month in a downtown commencement – “I was looking forward to throwing my hat” – but she has learned to take the long view. She just applied for what she hopes will be the next stage of her studies, a neuroscience doctorate.

Earlier in life and education, she had considered becoming a teacher but abandoned that for another passion, cooking, which led to 10 years as owner of a wholesale bakery. She sold that when she had their daughter, while her military husband, Mauricio, was stationed in Afghanistan on one of his five tours.

In 2012, a month before Isvara turned 1, Torres encountered some unexpected health issues. “Out of nowhere, I felt like someone hit me on the head with a bat.” she said. The diagnosis: bleeding in the brain (idiopathic bilateral subdural hematoma) with no apparent cause. Two surgeries later, she still couldn’t talk for months and then wrestled with stuttering. “It took a good six months to recover,” Torres said. “It was rough, really rough.”

Fast-forward a bit to her next food-related job, this time working in the lunchroom of Isvara’s school, Hawthorne Elementary. There she met another parent who was conducting a research study at the school about the relationship between learning and exercise. Intrigued, Torres volunteered to help.

The other mother, Daniela Terson de Paleville, was a faculty member in UofL’s College of łÉÈËֱȄ and Human Development. The UofL graduate students working with her were doing “the coolest stuff,” as Torres put it. “I wanted ‘to be like them when I grew up’.” The encounter opened her eyes to the possibility of mapping out an unexpected educational path.

“I thought all exercise physiologists were coaches,” Torres said. The mind-body connection and the idea of self-empowerment resonated with her, especially in light of her own health issues and what she had learned through a long-standing yoga practice.

Terson de Paleville encouraged her to return to school and ultimately became her UofL mentor too, according to Torres. “She’s just been amazing,” Torres said. “When somebody sees that in you, you want to show it back to them.”

So, with that nudge and the help of veterans’ benefits, she enrolled as a graduate student, embarking on a tough first semester with initial trepidation, test anxiety and concerns about how she’d measure up.

“Once I started, I realized my brain was fine. My cognitive ability was not affected at all,” Torres said. Gratefully, she realized she would “need every brain cell available.”

She powered through intimidating technology and tools that hadn’t been a part of her early 1990s education. She carved out a regular study schedule that accommodated family life, arising at 3 a.m. daily to study before the rest of her household awoke.

Hers likely was a very different routine from those of the rest of her CEHD cohort, and she was a little concerned when she realized all of them were about half her age. But that worry evaporated.

“We all became really good friends. We were just people together going through the same thing,” Torres said. “It was great. They treated me with respect, and I treated them with respect. We had a wonderful, diverse group.”

The graduate hopes to continue researching ways people, even after injuries, can use aspects of their mind-body connections to improve and regulate their body functions and health conditions. “The autonomic nervous system is my jam,” Torres said.

“They are tools that have helped me,” she said. “It needs more good science behind it. I want to be a part of this.”

So, at graduation, what’s her advice for others who might be poised to shift their careers, further their education or just take whatever the next step might be? Torres herself needed to work it out by waiting until the time was right, when her daughter was a little older and her husband was stateside again. But the effort has been worth it.

“We don’t have any time to waste, so go for it,” Torres said.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Russell and her fellow Louisville Law classmates returned from spring break to a drastically different landscape than the one they had left. All School of Law classes are being delivered remotely. Exams have been delivered virtually. The faculty voted to move to a pass/fail grading system. Graduation has been postponed.

And for Russell, the pandemic has meant something else: as a member of the Kentucky National Guard, she has been called to state active duty.

She explains that this means a unit is “called to do whatever the Commonwealth or the governor needs you to do.”

Russell, whose role with the National Guard has been as a paralegal specialist working with JAG attorneys, was called to pack and load boxes for the Dare to Care Food Bank. Some of her fellow soldiers worked the loading docks and sorted donations.

The nature of these tasks made the call for social distancing difficult, Russell acknowledges.

“I kind of just accepted that there was going to be an increased risk for myself and others,” she says, noting that supervisors took soldiers’ temperatures and checked for symptoms of COVID-19 twice a day and placed tape on the floor to encourage safe distancing.

And she acknowledges that other essential workers — including soldiers who are helping at hospitals or transporting patients — have even more exposure.

During this mission, Russell didn’t attend her law school classes. She says her professors have been very supportive and flexible, as they have been about her role with the National Guard all during law school. 

That support has been invaluable during a mentally and emotionally draining time, Russell says.

“This time is very stressful and there’s a lot of anxiety. Soldiers are not exempt from that,” she says.

And as a 3L during this pandemic, “there is always something to be worried about and grieving,” she says, noting the sadness over missing the end of the semester with classmates and uncertainty about the bar exam. 

Russell, president of the School of Law’s American Constitution Society, had to return to the building to turn in her office key. While there in the empty building, she reflected on her law school experience. Law school wasn’t ending as she had planned, she realized, but in the midst of sadness, she was still confident her future would be bright. 

“This has been a lesson in resilience and flexibility,” she says. “I’m optimistic for the future. That optimism just looks different now.”