The journey to BOOM!
Mount Holyoke College Manager of Technology Support Services Aime DeGrenier has seen BOOM! reshape the College’s culture in meaningful and profound ways.
My journey at Mount Holyoke College began 28 years ago, and throughout nearly three decades on this campus, I have seen a lot of change. While my professional role is rooted in our technical systems and support, my academic foundation is in social justice education — a perspective that has always shaped how I view community and access. This intersection of systems and people is likely what led President Lynn Pasquerella to ask me to serve on the 2014 Presidential Commission on Diversity and Inclusion and, later on, the search committee to hire our first-ever vice president for equity and inclusion, Kijua Sanders-McMurtry. Being part of those early planning stages allowed me to see Building On Our Momentum (BOOM!) Community Day as more than just a day on the calendar; I saw it as a meaningful shift in our campus culture.
Looking back over this decade, I’m proud to see that the work we started back then has become a regular part of how the College operates. I remember the energy of the very first BOOM! — the simple but radical idea of a collective pause where the entire community could learn together. In those early years, I stepped out from behind the IT help desk to facilitate workshops on white privilege and community building. Moving from those small, grassroots circles to witnessing a keynote by an icon like Angela Davis shows how much this initiative has grown.
My commitment to social justice has also found a home in my work with the Posse Scholars Program. Serving as the mentor for Posse 6 (class of 2019) is a highlight of my time at MHC. It was a chance to work directly with students, supporting a cohort of scholars as they navigated leadership and belonging on campus. I remain dedicated to our Posse community today, serving as a resource for program administrators, current mentors and scholars. Posse represents the same momentum that BOOM! celebrates: the power of a small group to move an institution forward through shared purpose.
BOOM! is where my professional life in technology and my academic heart for social justice education meet. It is a reminder that while uptime and efficiency matter in IT, the most important part of Mount Holyoke is how we connect with one another. Ten years in, BOOM! is a reminder that when we take the time to listen, we don’t just maintain our community — we make it better.
