For its 201-year history, Thomas Jefferson University has been without an official alma mater song.
Until now.
Elizabeth Avril Barden, a customer-experience specialist at Jefferson Health Plans and recent summa cum laude graduate of the school, has written one.
“Jefferson How We Adore Thee” will be released to the university community at its annual gala Tuesday. The university held a contest during its bicentennial last year, and Barden’s piece was selected from dozens of entries, the school said.
“Elizabeth really captured the essence of the Jefferson community,” said Jefferson President Susan C. Aldridge “Learning, collaborating and innovating are all part of our collective DNA and I couldn’t be happier that we finally have an alma mater which captures who we are as a university as we venture into our third century.”
Jefferson has had a handful of songs that students have written over the years and a processional theme that launched in 1974, but never an official alma mater song, said F. Michael Angelo, Jefferson archivist.
One reason could be that at its founding in 1824, Jefferson was a medical college and over the years evolved into a university. But it was always medically focused until the school merged with the former Philadelphia University, best known for its design, engineering, and health science programs, in 2017.
“Philadelphia University, as far as we can tell through their archives, never had an alma mater song, either,” Angelo said.
Barden, 32, who received her bachelor’s degree in Health Services Management from Jefferson this year, said a colleague encouraged her to enter the contest. She has written about 30 songs, she said, so it wasn’t an off-the-grid venture.
It took her just 25 minutes to write the lyrics and music for the one minute, 55-second piece, she said.
“If you’re creative, you just flow,” she said. “You flow like water because it’s already in you, and you don’t have to overthink what’s already in you.”
And with the help of producer Keegan Myers, who played the music while Barden sang, the chorus goes:
It’s the Jefferson strong and true, where innovation leads us through. Together we achieve our best, as we prepare for what’s next.
“In every step I was taking at the university, it was preparing me for the next level of life,” she said.
Barden has been singing in front of people since age 2 and wrote her first song at 7, she said. Her parents, both Christian pastors originally from Haiti, encouraged her musical talent as she grew up in Brooklyn surrounded by gospel music, she said.
“Me and my six siblings, we were essentially the choir,” she said.
In high school, she won a song-writing contest and got to meet Grammy-winning R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan, who, she said, encouraged her to keep writing. She had written her high school’s alma mater song, too. And when she was a student at Delaware County Community College, she sang the national anthem at two ceremonies.
“Any school I go to, I want to leave a piece of me there,” she said. “Music to me is connection. That’s how I connect to people.”
For winning the Jefferson contest, she received a $200 gift card to the school bookstore, lunch with Aldridge, and a Jefferson mug.
“But the greatest gift was my name being attached to this alma mater song,” she said.
Barden said her aim in writing the song was to give Jefferson a gift.
“Jefferson gave me a lot,” she said, including a scholarship. “There were moments where I needed to talk to professors because life was happening. They were always kind and patient with me.”
Barden attended community college in New York after high school, but left when she got pregnant. When she moved to Philadelphia in 2016, she enrolled at Job Corps and then moved on to the Delaware County college. She continued on to Jefferson, while raising her four children, now ages 2 to 13.
In 2023, she began working there, too. Her job entails focusing on the patient experience and helping patients navigate the system.
“For the most part, I’m kind of like a clean-up person,” Barden said.
She’s currently enrolled in a dual program at Bryn Mawr College and Jefferson to obtain her master’s degrees in social service and public health. She plans to become a licensed clinical social worker and to incorporate music therapy into her work.
As part of her studies, she’s doing research on how music therapy can help those suffering from post-traumatic stress.
“I do believe that the incorporation of music,” she said, “has the ability to communicate with anyone … and help them learn how to cope.”
