VTSU Castleton McNair Scholars Director Brittney “Brit” Green was on her couch after making dinner as Lola, her 13-year-old boxer Pitbull mix, creaked up onto the couch next to her. 

Her husband, Brandon Green, would sit next to Lola on the couch, watching shows with her, or applying for teaching jobs in his office while Green played games on her phone. 

That’s often how Green unwinds after her day at the office, sitting on the couch with her husband and dog watching “Gossip Girls” for the 101st time. 

However, Dr. Brittney Green was once just Brittney Green, who was once just Brittney Murphy, who was once just a child. 

When Green was 2, she choked on a McDonald’s hamburger, not only scaring everyone around her, but also scaring herself, as she then refused to eat for the entire month before Thanksgiving. Thankfully, after much trial and error, the toddler decided that eating wasn’t scary anymore and began eating again just in time for the heavy-eating holiday. 

Green was the third child of four. Her two older siblings, Tommy and Meredith were 13 and 12 years older than her. When she and her younger brother by three years, Brandon who Green called “Bubba,” were children, they attended a summer camp at the Herald Rec Center in Florida. 

There was an arcade there and the two wanted to play. However, coming from a low-income family, they knew that their parents wouldn’t give them any cash. Needing coins for the arcade and knowing their dad had coins in a jar in the closet, the two hatched a plan to get some of the coins from the jar so that they could play at the arcade. 

The heist was a success and the two spent the coins at the arcade and won some cute little animal figures. However, after their heist was unearthed, they learned that the coins had been real silver coins, worth hundreds of dollars. She still feels a little bad about it today but keeps the prizes in her office as a memento. 

“We were always cooking up schemes,” said Green, smiling when recalling the memory. 

After Hurricane Charlie decimated their Florida town, the Murphy family moved around a bunch throughout the then Brittney Murphy’s, middle school and high school career. It wasn’t all bad for her however, as she got to have two sets of best friends, and she noted that she felt like moving around didn’t really affect her that much. 

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While enrolled at the University of Central Florida to study humanities, Green worked full-time for a majority of her undergraduate career. For her freshman year, she worked as a model on the weekends. Her second and third years, she worked in a restaurant, which grew a secret passion for the restaurant industry. 

“You might find one day that I’ve just up and left and that’s because I have some restaurant I want to work at,” Green joked. 

Work and school became separate worlds for Green, with work often taking precedence over academics. 

“I was working so much that I wrote down the exam times wrong,” Green said. 

Her G.P.A started to tank, and everything was beginning to become very stressful. It wasn’t until Green learned about and joined the McNair Scholars program that she was forced to quit her job because her McNair director told her to. 

“‘You can’t do nearly 40 hours in a restaurant and still do good in school,’” Green said. So, after quitting her job to focus on school, the director offered Green a position in the office at $10 an hour, which was a livable wage for her at the time as she had also applied for scholarships. 

“That’s really when college felt like it started for me because it felt like I had a purpose,” she said.  

Before that, Green had just been going through college like she thought she was supposed to do, taking courses that interested her. 

“I was flailing all over the place. I certainly was having fun, but I don’t know if I was really doing well in college or going in that direction,” she said. 

She didn’t know what graduate school was until she joined the McNair Scholars program, learning skills and knowledge that she would use in life. She also eventually found what her two majors and minor would be; World Religions and Cultural Studies with a minor in Mass Communications. 

She did research, going away for two research summers, one in Irvine, California and the other in Croatia. These experiences prepared her for her master’s degree, which she pursued at Dartmouth College. 

From living in Florida her whole life to moving to the northeast for grad school, Dartmouth was the start of her graduate school journey. 

“The look of it, the feel of it was just so different,” she said. “The folks that go to a school like Dartmouth are generally, very, very wealthy.”  

She felt that the students really wanted to be there. So, she felt like she really fit in academically. “McNair prepared me really well for graduate school,” she said, adding that while there was a short period of time where she didn’t fit in culturally or socially when she first got there.

She met one of her best friends at Dartmouth who was also from Florida. She also started waiting tables again at a restaurant called TipTop Cafe in White River Junction, now called Time. She worked there during her second year while she was writing her thesis. 

“I needed to, ya know, live,” she said. 

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Green’s dog Lola came with her from Florida to New Hampshire, but this loyal pup didn’t mind one second. 

“Lola’s a big part of this story,” Green said grinning. “Why did Brittney, at 20 years old, go and get this big giant dog from the Orlando pound? I still can’t tell ya for sure why that happened. I just had to take her right then and there.” 

From New Hampshire, they took off across the country to Los Angeles, as Green had been accepted into UCLA’s Ph.D. program for Cinema and Media Studies. In L.A., Green settled in a very small, 225-square-foot, bachelor efficiency apartment, which she said was about the size of her office. Equipped with a bathroom, a sink, a microwave and a mini fridge, Green started a new chapter of her life on Hollywood Boulevard. 

Starting in a new place, across the country again in such a famous place was completely different and strange to Green. 

“Holy cow was I scared of starting my Ph.D. at UCLA and I felt imposter syndrome from the moment I started,” Green said. 

It was at UCLA that Green met her best friend who would later also become her husband. He would help her through her Ph.D. journey, being there to support her through some of her toughest times. 

“It’s such a cliche to be like, we were friends and then we weren’t, but it was like that and I didn’t even think that was possible,” Brandon said. 

The two had been friends for a couple of years before their relationship developed into something more. 

UCLA was a huge step for Green, one that would make her question whether or not what she was doing was what she wanted to do. She enjoyed what she was learning about, as since she studied film, that meant she got to watch all different kinds of TV shows.

“I think I’m the only person in my family that reads, if it’s not the bible,” she said. 

But growing up, Green didn’t have any books in the house, so her way of entertainment, was TV.

She was shocked to learn that there was another way to “do” TV other than making it, starring in it, or watching it. 

“Gilmore Girls” is one of the most impactful shows in her life. Watching the show as a young girl, she wanted to be like some of the characters she was watching on the screen.

“I knew I wanted to go to school like Rory, but I wanted to BE like Lorelai. I wanted to be this person, that like could talk to anyone,” said Green

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When COVID hit, the duo along with Lola, would move down to Florida to live with Green’s parents.

But after months, Green decided she needed to move on. She was still supposed to be working on her dissertation on gender and disability in media and television, but she instead started to look for jobs, eventually finding the open McNair director position at VTSU Castleton in 2022. She had applied for other jobs, but this was the job she wanted the most, and after getting the position, she, Brandon, and Lola took off once again to sweet old Vermont where they have been the past three years. 

Being the director of McNair was everything Green had wanted. She is a mentor to young students, just like she was once. 

“It was so hard when I loved what I did at work every day and then I had to come home and do this thing that I wasn’t very good at,” Green said talking about her dissertation. 

“She comes home and she’s crying, where she’s just really sad or emotionally exhausted and she has that 1,000-mile stare,” Brandon said. 

Green said she feels that she’s not a natural student in the way that she feels she’s a natural mentor. However, that didn’t deter her from finishing her dissertation and graduating as Dr. Green the summer of 2024. 

“There were so many moments, so many moments, that I actually thought I was gonna drop out,” she said. 

As the director of McNair, her goal is to teach her scholars what graduate school is, how to apply, and eventually graduate with a graduate degree. Holding the doctor title herself gives inspiration to some of the students that she mentors. 

“If she can do it, why not us,” said McNair scholar Deacon Watson when referring to Green achieving doctor status. 

While it was a difficult task for the director, her perseverance and determination to see it through got her there. 

Her role as the McNair director has been an important one. Many of the scholars see Green as a motherly figure. Green herself calls the McNair scholars her “kids.” 

“Brit made me like chicken noodle soup when I was sick like a couple weeks ago,” said student Sharon Asolmia Aganah.

Others talked about how likable and fun and animated she is. 

“That woman has no control over her facial expressions,” said another scholar, Rory Rivers-Rozell. 

Green seems to be the person you can go to whenever you’re in need, which can also be her downfall, as she will sometimes overbook meetings, try to do too many things at once.

“I think it’s no secret that Brit struggles with deadlines,” said coworker Deborah “Debbie” Warnock, assistant director for McNair. Warnock, however, was hired to help Green with those issues, working in tandem together, and often complimenting each other’s personalities.

“She is a raging extrovert,”  Warnock said. 

The constant in and out of the people in the office makes it hard for Warnock to focus, but the two are slowly, but surely figuring out the best working style for each of them. 

Back at home, Green turned the TV off and gave Lola a pet before going to bed to get ready for her next day at the McNair office. She’s now experiencing the peace of not having a dissertation to write into the long hours of the night. Instead, she has more free time to cuddle with Lola. 

Green has always helped those in need, from taking care of her mom whenever she would get ill to helping scholars get food during the summer. Those who know her say she is an amazing example of how perseverance and support can help one succeed in life. 

“That’s my favorite part. That I just didn’t quit,” she said.