Memorial Scholarship

When Dr. Alexandria Holloway arrived in Miami in 1976, she came on a one-year trial basis — skeptical, unhesitant to say so, and fully prepared to leave. Then she walked into a classroom at MDC's Kendall Campus and saw something that stopped her in her tracks: students who arrived with minimal preparation and, given the right opportunity, simply soared. She never left.
 
For 35 years, Dr. Holloway poured herself into Miami Dade College. She built the music department. She directed the JUBA Gospel Ensemble — whose 1985 album was recorded at the legendary Criteria Studios — and pioneered the first gospel choir course in the state of Florida. She oversaw campus construction, served as dean across multiple campuses, and when College President Eduardo Padrón asked her to build something entirely new, she spent a year researching honors programs across the country and launched The Honors College in 2002 from the ground up.
 
It was, as her colleagues would say, her baby.
 
Under her leadership, The Honors College became more than an academic program — it became a family. Dr. Holloway didn't just open doors for students; she stood at the threshold and refused to let them walk away from their own potential. To the hundreds of students she mentored over the decades, she was teacher, advocate, and in many ways, a mother.
 
"I don't have any birth children, but I have hundreds of children," she said.
 
This scholarship, created by Honors College alumna Nicole Golden in Dr. Holloway's honor, carries forward that same belief: that every scholar who walks through these doors deserves someone who sees what they're capable of — even when they can't yet see it themselves.