January 6, 2026
When Professor of Psychology Jenn Vitale started college, she had her sights set on the courtroom, not the classroom. “I was the classic liberal arts student,” she says with a laugh. “I thought I was going to major in English, go to law school, and become a lawyer.” That plan changed the semester she took a required psychology class—and discovered a passion she didn’t know she had.
What began as an academic curiosity quickly became a calling. Vitale double-majored in English and psychology before ultimately devoting herself entirely to the latter. It was the early 1990s, a time when news of serial killers saturated the collective conscience. Vitale herself was not immune to the fascination. When she entered graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, she focused on clinical psychology with a focus on criminal behavior and psychopathy, studying the minds of “the worst of the worst,” as she describes the segment of the criminal population she researched.
Initially, Vitale envisioned a career as a therapist. “Everyone who goes into clinical psychology does it because they want to help people,” she says. “The more I studied psychopaths and offenders, though, the more I realized how difficult they are to treat.” At the same time, she started spending time in the classroom as a teaching assistant and found that many of the qualities she found attractive in a therapeutic setting could be found through teaching. “Teaching gives you that same sense of helping people grow and function better. Plus, they want to be there,” she laughs.
So, Vitale pivoted once again—from therapist to teacher. Following the completion of her doctorate degree, also at the University of Wisconsin, Vitale arrived at Hampden-Sydney,
For her own efforts, Vitale teaches courses such as Abnormal Psychology, Psychotherapy, Psychology and Law, and the ever-popular Sports Psychology. This semester, she’s back to her roots, leading a special topics course on criminal behavior, inviting students to look beyond the headlines and into the data.
“Learning about crime from a psychological perspective is much less dramatic, and honestly more boring, than people expect,” she explains. “You’re studying things like genetics, upbringing, and personality traits. These small, ordinary factors combine to produce extraordinary events in inexplicable ways.” Her students often come in expecting something cinematic; instead, Vitale teaches them to appreciate the subtle, methodical work of psychological science. “When we talk about someone like the BTK killer, they read dramatic accounts first,” she says. “Then I hand them a technical article on identity complexity. The glamour fades, but their understanding deepens.”
Though she’s quick to acknowledge that media portrayal is how she first got interested in the field, Vitale resists the way crime stories are often glamorized or commodified. Instead, she challenges students to ground their fascination in evidence and empathy.
Her advisory style reflects that same flexibility and openness. “I’m a generalist,” she says. “I go where my students go.” Recently, that has meant the rodeo. Luke Lindquist ’26 came to Dr. Vitale with the idea to study risk behavior in rodeo riders, a project that took both professor and student on a journey that led Luke to further examine the connection between rodeo and religiosity.
The psychology major at Hampden-Sydney is intentionally designed to nurture that kind of discovery. With its emphasis on research, the curriculum ensures that every psychology major completes an advanced lab and a senior thesis capstone, experiences that often lead to independent studies and summer projects. “It creates a really nice back-and-forth between coursework and original research,” Vitale explains. “Students get to see themselves as contributors to the field, and they begin to understand the possibilities of a career in psychology.”
When she arrived at the College 22 years ago, Vitale was the most junior member of the psychology department. Today, Vitale is the most senior member of the department and has had the privilege of rebuilding the department after the retirement of esteemed colleagues such as Professor of Psychology Bob Herdegen. Vitale notes that she learned so much from the colleagues who nurtured and mentored her over time, and she enjoys providing the same mentorship for her younger colleagues as well as learning from their unique expertise. “We have new colleagues who are coming in who have different interests, and I'm seeing that inspire our students in new ways,” she says. “It’s really neat and inevitable. When you change who the people are and what their research areas are, you'll pull new things from the students.” The expansion and evolution of the department has even led to the development of a whole new neuroscience program, which Vitale has been instrumental in supporting.
After years at Hampden-Sydney, Vitale remains as engaged as ever, going beyond the classroom to serve in administration in roles such as assistant dean and directing the Compass program. “I love the ability to try new things. Hampden-Sydney really has given me lots of opportunities to flex new muscles in both academia and administration,” Vitale says. “That doesn't happen everywhere, and that's been great, because it’s kept me from stagnating.”
Teaching remains her anchor, though. “Working with undergraduates is just great,” she says. “Even when they’re being difficult or unmotivated, they have so much potential. You want so much for them.” Dr. Vitale’s dedication has not gone unnoticed; she received both the 2009 Cabell Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 2014 Thomas Edward Crawley Award for distinguished service to the College and its ideals.
Reflecting on her path from would-be lawyer to lifelong teacher, Vitale says: “Hampden-Sydney has given me opportunities to grow without ever pulling me away from what I love most: working with students. I’ve never been unhappy here, so why look anywhere else?”