Friends mourn loss of Women's Ctr. therapist

Alyce Higginbotham died at the age of 40 from Lupus complications. Family, friends, colleagues and former clients gathered at Christian Hope Baptist Church yesterday to celebrate the life and mourn the death of Alyce Renee Collier Higginbotham, the senior counselor and assistant director of the Penn Women's Center. Higginbotham died last Thursday night at the age of 40. She was awaiting a lung transplant in connection to health complications from Lupus, an auto-immune disease that is most prevalent among women and people of African American descent. Higginbotham began her work in 1994 at the Penn Women's Center, which is located at 37th Street and Locust Walk. As the center's only full-time therapist -- her responsibilities included overseeing the counseling and case study programs -- Higginbotham was the staff member with the most opportunities to counsel Penn students individually. Her contribution to the Women's Center also included working with her husband, a systems analyst, to develop a data-collecting computer program in order to examine trends in the issues facing women. Graduating from Penn with a bachelor's degree in psychology, Higginbotham went on to receive her master's degree in family therapy from Philadelphia's Hahnemann University. "One of the expertise she possessed was that she was very good around family violence and helping people heal from traumatization," said Women's Center Director Elena DiLapi. According to her colleagues, Higginbotham's dedication to helping students overcome trauma was exceptional. "She was very creative and she had a gift for figuring out how to help individuals," DiLapi explained. "It was not always sitting on a couch. Sometimes it was writing or taking walks. She worked with people's individual styles." When one of her former clients from Penn was notified that Higginbotham was near death, he flew to Philadelphia from Boston to say goodbye. According to DiLapi, another student said that Higginbotham had saved her life. Gloria Gay, the associate director of the Women's Center, added that she felt Higginbotham was exceptionally talented at her work. "She was someone you thought you had known for a long time," Gay commented. Attending Penn as a black woman gave Higginbotham a particular knowledge of "the impact of racism, sexism and classism" on individuals within Penn's culture, and this knowledge aided her ability to form personal relationships with students, Dilapi said. While at Penn, Higginbotham was president of the Gospel Choir, and she remained active in the Black Alumni Association until her death. Her husband Stephen Higginbotham, son of former U.S. Appeals Court Judge Leon Higginbotham, described his wife to The Philadelphia Daily News last week as "the kindest, most unselfish, forgiving, warm, intelligent, sensitive person." He added that "she will be greatly missed."