Cynthia “Cindy” Koziol, who worked for Virginia Tech for 35 years, the majority of them as an undergraduate student advisor in the department of psychology, died on January 28 in Christiansburg, Virginia. She was 68 years old.
Koziol joined the department of psychology — then part of the Virginia Tech College of Art and Sciences — in 1984, first working as a secretary for the clinical psychology program and the Child Study Center until 2001, when she moved to the role of undergraduate advisor. She remained in the latter position until her retirement in 2019.
Kurt Hoffman, a senior instructor and director of undergraduate studies in the department of psychology, said Koziol, as the only full-time department academic advisor, would work at any given time with 800 undergraduate majors. “Cindy was a hard-working, organized, and dedicated advisor. For a large group of our majors, she was the person to talk to, particularly when things weren’t going so well. She was their sounding board, their cheerleader, and their advocate,” he said.
A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Koziol earned a bachelor’s degree in teacher education from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1973.