By: Lindsay Martin | Staff Writer
There are few faculty members on Salve’s campus better known than Professor Hoffmann, retired Administration of Justice professor and coordinator of Pet Therapy Stress Busters. Originally from Paterson, New Jersey, Professor Hoffmann is entering her 34th year here at Salve. She enthusiastically responded to my email asking if she would like to be Mosaic’s Faculty Spotlight for the month of November, and last Tuesday afternoon we met over Zoom, while her new puppy Astro settled down for a nap.
While earning her B.A. from New York University and her J.D. from Rutgers School of Law, Professor Hoffmann resided in the East Village and Upper West Side of Manhattan for eleven years, during which she got married and had two children.
“I decided that New York really wasn’t the place where I wanted to raise my family,” she says, “and so we ended up moving to Rhode Island.” She did so even though she “had never stepped foot in Rhode Island before. It was a great decision!”
After having her third child, as a stay-at-home mom for some time, she yearned to return to work. She contacted Sister Anne Nelson, the Chair of the Department of Political Science at Salve at the time, and she was hired on the spot. She then was asked to teach a few classes in the graduate ADJ department, and in 1990, she became a full-time faculty member.
Her passion? The students.
“I love to mentor students and work with them to attain their goals,” she says. “Watching students blossom and thrive is my joy!”
Over her years at Salve, Professor Hoffmann “became more and more student-centered.” Her dog at the time, Sasha, was a trained and evaluated therapy dog, and she would sneak him into her office on Friday afternoons for an unofficial program she liked to call Advising with Sasha. Watching the students interact with Sasha made her realize that “the time was right to talk to administration and implement a real pet therapy program at Salve.”
In the spring of 2013, Professor Hoffmann held her first Pet Therapy Stress Buster in her office during final exams; she brought doughnuts and about 20 students attended.
“The rest is history,” she says.
The following fall, after partnering with newly hired Assistant Director of Residence Life Jenn Rosa, Professor Hoffmann and Sasha would visit students in different residence halls every week.
“I’ve seen a lot of dirty laundry and garbage, you would not believe,” she jokes, but this experience made her realize “how pet therapy could become such an integral part of the college community.”
She started bringing Sasha to work with her every day, “engaging a lot with homesick freshmen.” She also started planning regular Pet Therapy Stress Busters two to three times per semester, in which she invited all students to come and interact with 7-10 trained and evaluated therapy dogs. Typically, she says, “students form a circle around the handler and the dog, and they snuggle the dog, they pet the dog, they play with the dog, they ask the handler questions.” She says she likes to use the same dogs over and over again so students can “establish relationships with them.”
A few weeks ago, Salve hosted its first in-person Pet Therapy Stress Buster since the pandemic—and it was a huge success! This particular event was joined by Salve Nursing students as well. Two years ago, Professors Louise Sullivan and Ellen McCarty approached Professor Hoffmann about conducting a “scientific study of the efficacy of pet therapy at Salve.”
Nursing students took students’ blood pressure before and after engaging with the dogs to see if the measures decreased. “We are in the process of writing several papers right now to publicize our results,” she tells me, “and our results are amazing: about 90% of students report feeling more connected to Salve after Pet Therapy Stress Busters.”
After Sasha passed away in December of 2020, Professor Hoffmann says, she received a multitude of gifts and emails from students and other members of the Salve community about how much Sasha meant to them and how he had helped them through a tough time. Because of this, Professor Hoffmann realized that she “couldn’t come back to campus ‘empty-dogged.’”
In September, she adopted Astro, a ten-week-old Havanese puppy who is “extremely outgoing, friendly, and confident.” He has been “evaluated by three outside breeders for his temperament, and they all agree that he would make a great therapy dog.” Professor Hoffmann just recently received clearance to bring him to campus and engage with students outside on Ochre Point Ave.
“Astro is a little sassy,” she says with a smile, “but he’s really sweet, and he loves, loves, loves coming over to Salve and meeting with students. It’s his favorite thing to do.”
The next Pet Therapy Stress Buster will take place on the last day of classes on Friday, December 10 at 3:00pm in Gerety Hall. Professor Hoffmann already has eight dogs lined up to attend, and she is hoping that she can bring Astro, who will be five months old then, to this one as well.
“Most universities who run Pet Therapy are lucky to get 1-2 animals,” Professor Hoffmann says, so it is wonderful that Salve is able to host so many dogs to help so many students. “We’re rocking and rolling with pet therapy!”
Professor Hoffmann, retired from her job as a full-time professor, now serves as the Special Assistant to the President for Student Success. “I am very lucky,” she says of this opportunity. She loves students, and she encourages anyone who is going through a tough time to contact her, so she can introduce them to Astro and help them in any way she can.
You can follow Professor Hoffmann’s and Astro’s adventures on Instagram, @sashaatsalve. Be sure to keep an eye out for the pair on-campus, and mark your calendars for the next Pet Therapy Stress Busters event!
