Drs. Mike and Sally Hunnicutt arrived at VCU’s Department of Chemistry by very different routes. Sally always knew she was meant to teach — she spent her childhood volunteering for every opportunity to stand in front of a classroom, from Sunday school to summer programs. Mike took the longer road: 25 years in private industry, developing consumer and healthcare products from dish detergent to over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. As he shifted into management and felt the pull of the science growing distant, he made himself a promise. At 53, he decided it was time to try something different.

What united them, once they were both in the classroom, was a shared conviction that great teaching is never finished. It listens. It adapts. It starts with the student. “Learning is a two-way street,” as Mike put it, and both Hunnicutts took that seriously from the start, leaning on student feedback to reshape their approaches and deepen their craft. 

For Sally, that process led her to POGIL — Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning — a team-based pedagogy that transformed her classroom and, eventually, spread well beyond it. She researched the method exhaustively, piloted it in her own courses, and then spent years helping colleagues adopt it too, organizing faculty workshops across the college and meeting weekly with fellow instructors to troubleshoot and refine. She shaped curriculum, championed faculty mentoring, and played a foundational role in establishing the Campus Learning Center. When students resisted the shift toward active learning (and some did), Sally held the line, confident that the results would speak for themselves. They did. VCU took note: She received the College of Humanities and Sciences Teaching Award in 2012 and the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014. And her vision lives on in the STEM Building itself, which would not exist without her passion and persistence. 

Mike’s impact, meanwhile, is written in his students. He came to teaching with a central question: “Could I be an effective teacher? Could I pass on the excitement of science, the joy of science?” The answer, as his students will tell you, was yes. Former students have described him as someone who built their confidence in the scientific research process, believed in them during their hardest semesters, and made the lab feel like a place where they could grow. As director of Project SEED, he also mentored local high school students across Richmond, planting seeds for future Rams and future scientists alike. 

Mike retired in 2022, and Sally followed in 2024, though retirement has done little to diminish their investment in VCU. The Hunnicutts continue to support the institution they spent their careers building, including through the Distinguished Chemist Fund, established in April 2014, which has supported 11 students to date. They also gave generously to the STEM Building, and two spaces there now bear their names: the Dr. Sally Shaffer Hunnicutt Science Hub and the Dr. Sally Shaffer Hunnicutt and Dr. Mike Hunnicutt Organic Chemistry Teaching Lab. The Hunnicutts also place strong importance on regularly supporting students at VCU, making annual gifts to several high-impact funds at CHS. 

For the Hunnicutts, giving has always been intentional. “The thing that I’m most proud of is any giving that we do contributes to students’ success,” Mike said, “providing them with opportunities that they can be successful with, as well as providing them financial support so they can succeed.” Sally put their philosophy simply: “I believe very firmly that we should be generous with our time, talent, and treasure. And when we’ve been fortunate, that giving is important.” 

All annual report topics