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NHC Alumni
The NHC alumni are our most precious resource. You know what the Nebraska Humanities Council is. You know what we do. You know firsthand what the council offers Nebraskans and how worthy of support it is. As an active member of the NHC Alumni group, you’ll find opportunities for personal enrichment and continued involvement in the council’s work. With these special web pages devoted to NHC alumni, we want to help you reconnect with the NHC and other alumni, keep you informed about opportunities to be involved in the council's work, offer programs and events tailored to your interests, and to recognize the wonderful ways our alumni have contributed to making the NHC everything it is today. The amount of time or involvement you can give to the group is entirely up to you. Even if you no longer live in Nebraska or cannot actively participate, please consider offering us your suggestions and comments. This special section of the NHC website consists of several pages: The Alumni Directory is an alphabetical list of past and current members of the Nebraska Humanities Council (NHC), the Nebraska Foundation for the Humanities (NFH) and the NHC staff. Included are name, place of residence and years of involvement with the NHC. More details will be added as you submit them. The Calendar of Events is a chronological list of humanities events throughout Nebraska that may interest alumni. The Photo Album is a collection of photographs taken at alumni events. The first photos were taken at the premiere alumni event April 12, 2003, in Kearney. The Scrapbook is a 12-page publication. It is a collection of memories and archival photos of NHC alumni spanning the first 30 years of the Nebraska Humanities Council. It is available on this page in a PDF format. The Alumni News is an annual publication devoted to news about and for our alumni. Send us news items for possible publication. The Alumni News is available on this page in a PDF format. NHC Executive Director Hood to retire by year's end
Virginia Knoll served on the Nebraska Humanities Council (then called Nebraska Committee for the Humanities) from 1984 to 1987 and on the Nebraska Foundation for the Humanities from 1985 to 1994. In addition to chairing the council, she also chaired the search committee that hired Jane Hood in 1987. On June 28, 2010 Virginia interviewed Jane about her years as director. VH: You have been with us for 23 years, almost a quarter of a century. You were particularly well suited to become Executive Director because you were a Nebraskan to start with. Tell us about that. JH: I grew up in Crete, Nebraska and had gone to Doane College for my undergraduate work and then had done my master's and PhD in history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. So I had spent most of my life in Nebraska. VK: But then you left Nebraska. JH: We moved to Chicago in 1977 and I worked with the Illinois Humanities Council. VK: How did you happen to do that? JH: When I came out with my newly minted PhD, there just weren’t many jobs in colleges and universities. VK: Especially in history! JH: Yes! I had been a scholar on a couple of projects that the Nebraska Committee for the Humanities had funded and just loved it. I thought that it was wonderful to use what I had studied in history to help citizens better understand current issues. So I applied for a job with the Illinois Humanities Council. VK: When you first came can you remember how you decided to begin?
JH: One of the reasons I was interested in being your director was that the Nebraska Humanities Council had a very good reputation among the other state humanities councils. For example, one of the IHC’s program officers came out here to see how Nebraska did Chautauqua because the Illinois Council thought that it was a very interesting project. And you had begun a Humanities Resource Center. Also, of course, I was moving home to a state I thought I knew well. Working with a state humanities council has to be one of the best ways to learn about a state. VK: In what sense? JH: Obviously its history, but more than that, its distinct culture: what makes Illinois, Illinois; Nebraska, Nebraska. In moving back to Nebraska, I was seeing the state in different ways than I had seen it growing up here. VK: You were sort of getting a new definition of the place. Of course, you were working across the social sphere because you were going to little towns and the cities, talking to people at the universities and talking to the high school teachers and citizens of the community. JH: My years in college and graduate school were very valuable for broadening and deepening my understanding of the humanities, but I hadn’t had much opportunity to work on the local level. With the Humanities Council, I began to work with libraries, local historical societies, and with people engaged in their communities. I got a much clearer sense of Nebraska as well as the value of these organizations to local communities and their sense of place. VK: I remember when I was invited to be on the Council in 1984 I was told that it was a delightful volunteer job and that you read all of these grants and gave away money that was given to you by the Federal government, and there was no fundraising involved at all. I thought, “What a deal.” But by the time we were hiring you in 1987, it turns out there was going to be a little fundraising, and we were beginning to set up a Foundation. Did you understand that when you came? JH: Yes, I did. That was made clear to me. Illinois had started some fundraising—grants from foundations. Both the Illinois and Nebraska Councils realized that we simply couldn’t do everything that needed to be done in public humanities programming if we were just relying on funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. And then we had all had a scare at the beginning of the Reagan administration when an influential national report from the Heritage Foundation didn’t look favorably on federal funding for cultural activities, and both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts were in jeopardy. I think that’s when the Nebraska Council started its Foundation. VK: Yes, we began to understand that we had to be actively involved. That had another result of bringing people all the more into the effort to support the humanities. When you asked for the money, then they often gave their personal support. It was probably good for more than one reason. JH: That’s right. I think it’s made us a stronger council by giving Nebraskans an opportunity to really be part of what we’re doing—to invest in their state humanities council. VK: After I was no longer on the board, we corrected the rather cumbersome Nebraska Committee for the Humanities and fell in line with the rest of the states and became the Nebraska Humanities Council. I found it very exciting that the Humanities Council could actually help these small-town historical societies with not just money, but with directions for professionally done exhibits. It was really an exciting cooperation between the towns and the Council, not only for the money, but for the expertise. JH: You had started another very fine program just before I came here that worked with a half-dozen small museums across the state. The project provided a professional archivist and exhibit designer to work with the museum, look at their holdings, and work with their staff—often volunteers—to see what stories their artifacts told. Each of the museums put together an exhibit that told that story.
VK: It’s an amazing story. JH: It is an amazing story, and I’m not sure that story would have been as well known had it not been for the project that the Nebraska Humanities Council supported in that community. VK: What were some of the early projects you did? JH: One of the things we did was to expand on some of the programming that was already in place. The Humanities Resource Center, for example, had tremendous potential for serving the entire state. VK: What was that? JH: For some of the small communities we are one of the few resources they can turn to that will offer an educational program in the humanities. The largest expansion of our programming has been the speakers bureau. Last year we funded over 400 speaker programs all across the state, and the catalog has nearly 300 different programs that organizations can book through the speakers bureau. We still have videos (now DVDs), books for reading and discussion, exhibits, and now cultural encounter trunks for children, but the major thrust of its growth has been the speakers bureau. VK: I remember at the time I was going off the Council, we had a map of Nebraska with pin points for each town where there was a project or a speaker or something going on that was connected to the Council. I remember seeing a lot of white space in that map. To me that’s just the visible demonstration of your 23 years: that map is so filled in now; we’ve reached all over the state. JH: A lot of these program changes came as the National Endowment for the Humanities realized that probably the state humanities councils knew what was needed most in their states and began to allow us to do our own council-conducted projects rather than solely awarding grants. The Endowment has far fewer restrictions on the state humanities councils now than they did when you were Chair. VK: We had people from the Endowment coming out and looking us over, making sure we were doing our job right, I remember that. JH: That was a real change, and it has allowed each of the councils to go into very different directions to meet needs that may be unique to their state. One of the needs in our state, as you have said, is that we have a lot of space out there. We would never have been able to serve rural areas as well as we have if we relied only on a grant program. We needed to go beyond that if we were going to give all Nebraskans an opportunity to benefit from the humanities. VK: But the grant programs are still very strong. JH: It is still strong; it is still essential because we want to give organizations and communities an opportunity to develop their own programming. We don’t know exactly what each community needs – their people know what they want. So we have a very strong grant program. VK: We’ve talked about the fact that there was Chautauqua and a speakers bureau and grants, but there have been a lot of new projects since then. One that I don’t even know the name of is connected with young people learning about government. Talk about that. JH: This is our “Capitol Forum on America’s Future.” We work with Brown University’s Watson Center for International Studies, which has developed a curriculum for high school students that looks at American foreign policy and the options our country has in its relations with other nations. It focuses on topics such as immigration or trade policy or nuclear proliferation and develops very good resource material that high school teachers can use in adapting curriculum for their classes. In late March, each of the 25 teachers selected for the project brings four students to the state Capitol to explore the topics in detail with other kids from across the state and with their elected officials. The students prepare a defense of a particular topic for a mock-Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing. A student who believes that the United States should take world leadership in fighting nuclear proliferation—be the world’s policeman—may be assigned to a group developing a defense for the United Nations as being the best means to approach international problems. The students learn to see issues from a variety of perspectives, they understand the historical and political context is for the various positions, and they become much more adept at analyzing positions and political pronouncements. VK: Has that been going on for a decade or so? JH: We will be doing our 13th Capitol Forum in the 2010-2011 school year. We do the project in collaboration with the Secretary of State John Gale’s office. We also have several of our Congressmen and Senators meet with the students at the Capitol or talk with them via videoconference if they can’t be in Lincoln. For example, the students get to question a congressman who sits on the Agriculture Committee about trade policy and its impact on Nebraska farmers. They are talking with someone who is part of making national policy that affects our state. VK: Well, that’s really important. Another big project that you do every year is the Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities. JH: It is also one with interesting origins because it grew out of another perilous time for the state councils in 1995-96 when many in Congress wanted to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities. We would get calls asking: “Are you still there?” So we thought maybe instead of just saying, “We’re here,” that we would do something very public that really said, “Yes, the Nebraska Humanities Council is here and we’re going to continue to be here!” So we approached then-Governor Nelson and asked him if he would be interested in a Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities. Governor Nelson was always very interested in our programming, so we started the Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities in 1996 with Ted Sorensen. It said to people, “We’re here to stay.” VK: Yes, and you got distinguished people to come, and it’s been a sellout for several years. JH: Steven Ambrose gave our third lecture, and we had to turn people away. We realized we could charge more for the event and make some money for our work rather than just breaking even on our cost. So we did, and it has become an important public humanities event that continued with Governor Johanns and Governor Heineman. The lecture is always free and open to the public, but the benefit dinner before it helps the Council fund its statewide programming, VK: So the Governor’s Lecture in the Humanities has become important for the publicity it gives the Council, and the general feeling of good will and as a fundraiser. Speaking of funds, talk a little bit. about the fact that you have to be a fundraiser as the Executive Director of the Nebraska Humanities Council. JH: Fundraising has become a much bigger part of any director’s role in non-profits today. We are fortunate that we get nearly 40% of our funding every year from the National Endowment for the Humanities. But if we want to do these wonderful programs, we have to go out and raise funds for them. I think that it gives people a really fine opportunity to invest in their own state humanities council. I should add that we had an additional incentive for that because our state appropriation requires a match. VK: That’s right. Tell about that. JH: We worked very hard with all of our supporters to persuade the Legislature that what we were doing had significant impact in their communities and that they had people in their districts who would support state funding for the Council. In 1989, the Legislature said, “All right, we will give you state money if you can raise private money as a match.” That was a real stimulus to do some fundraising. VK: It was a very unusual idea. Wasn’t that noted nationally”? JH: I think we may be the only state humanities council that has to raise private money to get our state appropriation. Later on when we had another near-death experience in Congress, we decided that we needed to establish some kind of permanent endowment to sustain us. The Arts Council was thinking in the say way, and so the Arts Council and the Humanities Council went together to the Legislature and used the same principle: we will raise private funds to match state funds that the Legislature appropriates to an endowment fund. In 1998 the Legislature established a $5 million state endowment fund that also required a private match on its earnings. So we couldn’t pull down the earnings on the $5 million state endowment fund until we had raised private funds equal to those earnings. VK: And it’s a cooperative arrangement with the Arts Council and Humanities Council. JH: That’s right. The legislation also created an entity to do the private fundraising called the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, and its members are elected by the two councils. VK: So that we kind of had three cooperating organizations to continue the health of Nebraska’s culture and humanities. JH: We are very unique in that. For many years we were the only state that had a state endowed fund that benefited both the arts and the humanities. There were several states that had state endowments benefiting the arts, but we were the first to have it for the arts and the humanities. VK: Another part of your responsibilities that is related to money is the Nebraska Foundation for the Humanities, which was sort of getting started just as you came, I think. JH: That’s right. VK: I went off the Council, but stayed to be part of the foundation for three or four years. That’s had an increasing impact in the fundraising, too. JH: It has been really important to us. I remember when Jack Campbell said that we had to get the Foundation to be a real working organization if we are going to raise money. I think you came on when Jack was helping us reorganize it. He knew that unless we had people on the Foundation who could help us raise money and then directed our attention to it, we were never going to get serious about raising money. So the Foundation has becomes an extraordinarily important element in our fundraising. But the Council is involved too—you can’t come on the Council with the same understanding you had originally about fundraising because our Council members work with our Foundation in raising money. I think that invests the Council members more in what we’re doing if they know they have that responsibility as well. VK: I’m sure it does. It’s really encouraging to see the list of people involved from across the state. I see you, Jane, as having many faces in your job, and maybe you could talk about this a little bit. We’ve touched on lobbying. Talk about that a little more. JH: I think the “many faces” aspect of this work is one of the things that has kept me here for 23 years. Virginia, I didn’t know how to fundraise or lobby when I came here. But that is why this job has been really fascinating because I wasn’t doing the same thing all of the time. I had to learn new skills, and I had to stretch. Fortunately when the NHC went to the Legislature we had some people on our board who said, “It’s not amateur hour over there; hire a lobbyist.” So we hired a good lobbying firm, and I learned a lot about how to organize a campaign and work with the senators and their staff. And I continue to learn from our board members who are experienced in advocacy. I remember coming out of a meeting with one of our Congressmen in Washington a couple of years ago during Humanities on the Hill and a board member who was with me and who does a lot of lobbying for his organization said, “Don’t use in-house language like Prime Time Family Reading Time; say it’s a literacy program.” I’m learning all the time. VK: So you’ve been to Washington to lobby senators and the congressmen. And you’ve been to the unicameral a lot. How do you get to see the people? JH: You know, one of the things I like most about Nebraska is that our legislature takes quite seriously George Norris’ commitment to openness in government so that the citizen can be watchful. It was so easy here to call up a legislator’s office, and say, “I’m Jane Hood with the Humanities Council. I’d like to come over and talk with Senator so-and-so about the Council and what it does in his or her district,” and get an appointment with the senator. The senators were very accessible. I learned to be more sophisticated about it and take a board member or find someone from their district who would be willing to go on visits with me. It’s really interesting to talk with our senators about what the Humanities Council is doing because they care about people in their districts, and they want their districts to be well served. VK: They consider it part of their job to listen. JH: I think so. They take that seriously. That was just so refreshing to come here to Nebraska and find that accessibility to elected officials who would listen. From the stories I hear from my colleagues around the country, our elected officials in Nebraska—and this includes our Congressional delegation—are so much more accessible to the public compared to other states. VK: You also needed to call on individuals who might give money or perform some task for the Council, so you’re sort of an ambassador as well as a lobbyist. JH: Well, yes, except this is why you have to have good board members because they are so important in opening doors for you. This has been strength of our board that we have members who are committed to what we are doing and willing to go on calls with me or with Chris Sommerich, our development director, and tell people why they think our work is important. VK: You’re working at many different levels, it seems to me, as part of your job. You’ve also had to be a liaison between the National Endowment and the council. JH: I think that’s an interesting part of it, too. Because when you’re doing that, you’re also finding out about other opportunities for us at NEH and you’re learning about what other states are doing. We also have the Federation of State Humanities Councils—our national membership organizations—which Nebraska was important in forming. Keith Blackledge, who was one of our Council’s founders, was also one of the original founders of the Federation. VK: And he has been faithful every since. JH: He absolutely has. The Federation was founded initially because we felt that we needed our own professional association to see how we could do things better, to share what we were all learning in the field, to find out from other state humanities councils how they had gone about approaching a particular challenge. But we also found that we needed the Federation to unify advocacy work because we would have to make the case to Congress for funding NEH and the state councils over and over again. It can’t just be the Nebraska Humanities Council asking Senator Nelson or Senator Johanns to support us; it has to be all states councils contacting their members of Congress at the same time. VK: Again, you’re working with another group of people. I think of you as becoming the face of the Nebraska Humanities Council. I’ve been with you on just enough calls that I’ve been very impressed with how you could talk to everybody and do it is such an articulate way. With each person you knew where to start and how to develop the conversation. That has to be a skill that came naturally to you and then you just developed it. I found your ability to do all that really quite amazing. JH: Thank you. VK: In addition, we’ve seen the office grow. And you just mentioned the development officer. Talk about how your staff has changed. JH: I think an executive director is only as good as the team that he or she can put together. You have to identify really good people who are passionate about the humanities and serving Nebraskans. We have an extraordinary staff that works well together as a team. When the Council took on more programs, we simply had to have very talented people who could work with organizations around the state. VK: Can you give an example of a program? JH: We do a program that grew out of the success the NHC had with the museum project developed under your leadership that I mentioned earlier. It’s called Museum on Main Street that brings national exhibits that the Smithsonian refabricates for smaller museums that do not necessarily have professional curatorial staff, or climate control, or sophisticated security to host major touring exhibitions. Mary Yager, one of our senior program officers, works with museums in Nebraska to host the MOMS exhibits and also brings the museums together with professionals from the Nebraska State Historical Society to learn how they can use their own artifacts, their own collection, to compliment MOMS exhibit. VK: So it gets interpreted locally. JH: That’s right. The MOMS exhibits are wonderful, and museums use the Smithsonian name to pull a new audience into the local museum. But they’re also learning how to tell a story with their own artifacts. They’re learning how to use their own resources to tell the community’s story that compliments the exhibit. VK: How large a staff do you have now? JH: We have nine people altogether. We have three program officers and one program assistant who are responsible for managing Chautauqua, Museum on Main Street, Prime Time Family Reading Time, the Humanities Resource Center, Capitol Forum, and the Nebraska Literature Festival. And they have all of our grants to administer. VK: It was all a lot smaller; we hadn’t branched out so much. It was just the beginning. That’s very exciting development. JH: Plus we have to sustain our fundraising for those programs, so we have a director of development and a development assistant as well. And a director of finance to manage the accounting and all of the various fiscal reports. Also an office manager to keep us all on track. VK: We kind of flew over the very interesting project with NET and the humanities. I listen to that every now and then. JH: Do you mean “Nebraska Stories”? We support that as a grant program. NET has been such an important partner with us since the very beginning. I remember Don Peterson saying that there is only one other organization that does comprehensive educational programming statewide besides the Humanities Council, and that’s NET. VK: But you also have an ongoing one with NET Radio? JH: That’s right. Occasionally if we have continued to fund a project through grants and the Council believes that it meets our long-term goals in a significant way, the NHC may decide to support the program through an on-going contract. Our weekend “Humanities Desk” program on NET Radio developed like that. VK: I hear the “Humanities Desk.” That’s a very good partner for you. With all of this, how much time are you in the office? Are you on the road a lot of the time? JH: I probably averaged almost two days out and three days in, especially in the last couple of years with the planning and implementing of the National Humanities Conference in Omaha in November 2009. VK: Yes, that was quite a coup. Tell us about that. JH: It was an extraordinary amount of work for all of us and also so much fun! It was wonderful to showcase the humanities treasures of Nebraska and Omaha for cultural leaders from across the nation. The organizations and individuals that we worked with in offering cultural tours were terrific and such gracious hosts. We worked with Film Streams, the Durham Museum, Bemis, Kaneko, Loves Cultural Center, El Museo Latino, Joslyn Museum and Joslyn Castle, and across the river, Union Pacific Museum and on the river Nebraska Games and Parks and the Nature Conservancy!
VK: So you’ve been emphasizing increasingly collaborative projects working on a wider and bigger scale because of being able to do that, right? Rather than everything being done solely by the Humanities Council. JH: Oh gosh, yes. This has been a great strength of our program, and another reason why I’ve liked working in Nebraska. Organizations don’t seem to be as turf-conscious here and they are willing to collaborate to accomplish things. Another program I forgot to mention that features that kind of collaboration is the work we do with the Thompson Forum to simulcast the forum speakers across the state. VK: So people can gather in a place and see them and submit questions as well? Why don’t you say where the Thompson Forum is? JH: The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues brings outstanding speakers to the Lied Center every year that explore global issues. The series has had Archbishop Tutu, Premier Gorbachev – just an extraordinary range of speakers on international issues. The NHC collaborates with local colleges and universities to do this through NET’s simulcast system. We host viewing sessions at Western Community College in Scottsbluff, Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Hastings College, Central Community College in Columbus, Wayne State College and University of Nebraska-Omaha. VK: I see that as one of your great accomplishments. As I remember from the very beginning, you went around and began to meet people immediately so that people know about the humanities and they know you. You have made a difference because you, yourself have increased that collaborative way of doing things. JH: It just makes us so much stronger. Plus it’s a real pleasure. You get to meet the best people across the state because they’re interested in their communities. VK: I see you as definitely the face of the humanities for the last 20 years. I wonder if there is any other favorite project that I haven’t asked you about that you would like to comment on? JH: We didn’t talk a lot about Prime Time Family Reading Time, which I love. As a matter of fact, it was the Lincoln Public Library that pulled us into Prime Time. They were very interested in bringing a program available to libraries through the America Library Association for low income, low literacy families. The Louisiana Humanities Council had developed Prime Time with its library system. A storyteller and a discussion leader model for parents how to read to their children. During a six-week program the families read award-winning children’s books that focus on certain values—honesty, courage, neighborliness—which become the topic of discussion. VK: Are the children coming to these meetings? JH: The children come with their parents. Children from ages 5 to 10 or 11 read and discuss the books with their parents, and the parents learn how to read a book to a child so it’s not dull and boring. They’re also learning about their library because a lot of times these families haven’t necessarily seen the library as theirs. This is why the libraries are so interested in the project. When Louisiana developed a Spanish-language Prime Time, we saw a real opportunity to help reach Hispanic families in Nebraska. Various studies had indicated that Latino students have the lowest graduation rates in our state, and we thought if we could do this program with Hispanic families we could help kids improve their chances of succeeding in school. And it complemented our program emphasis on “New Nebraskans” which looks at the growth of new immigrants and refugees in our state and the implications for Nebraska of that demographic change. VK: Are you doing it in Spanish or in English? JH: We do it bilingually: either the storyteller or the discussion leader does it in Spanish and the other in English. We piloted it in Scottsbluff, Schuyler, and South Omaha – three very different situations. We learned what we needed to do to make it more successful, and we’ve been doing Prime Time since 2004. We worked with the Nebraska State Library System to expand the program across the state and have received funding from local businesses, foundations, individuals and from the state in order to serve 13 communities from Scottsbluff to South Sioux City. Some are in their fifth or sixth year of offering Prime Time. VK: I think that’s very exciting. What I’m picking up on here is that the Nebraska Humanities Council is a force in the state, partnering with all of these different entities, and it isn’t just within the state; it’s other state and national programs as well. Instead of being a lonely little group advocating for the humanities, you’ve become an operating force. JH: You know, I think you’ve hit on it. The state councils have been in business long enough now that there are some models that we know work well. If they are going to help us meet a need in our state, we can use them if we can find the financial support. However, they also have to fit into our strategic plan developed by our board. VK: Tell me how members are involved. I remember coming to meetings and doing the grants. I don’t remember being involved in the policy. JH: Every five years we go through a reauthorization process with the National Endowment for the Humanities, sort of like the North Central Accreditation process that “certifies” colleges and universities. This also resulted from a change in NEH policy when Sheldon Hackney was head of NEH. He had been a university president and knew that an institution can’t do everything; it has to plan carefully for the best way to serve its constituents. Chairman Hackney started the process when the Gingrich revolution in Congress was trying to eliminate NEH. I think Hackney may have been trying to find a way to save the state councils if NEH were eliminated. A national accrediting process that would have made it easier for us to get state or private funding to continue would have authorized us. When you were on the board, I think you wrote a grant to NEH every few years. VK: We had to report, I remember that. JH: Part of this process is that the Endowment encourages us to go through a rigorous self-assessment process to measure the effectiveness of what we’re doing as part of a deliberate planning process for what we’re going to do for the next 3-5 years. The board is involved in all of this. VK: How does the board do that? JH: Let me describe the process. We were up for reauthorization last year. A site visitation team from NEH that had reviewed our self-assessment and new strategic plan came to Nebraska to meet with our stakeholders to see what they think of our plan and our work. We had begun our planning nearly a year before the site team was here. With some expertise from UNO’s College of Public Policy, we developed a survey that was included in our spring 2008 newsletter and on our website that asked our readers to rate our programming and identify high priorities for our work. Then we took the survey results to a series of public meetings across the state beginning in late spring and ending in late summer 2008, again trying to see what our constituents wanted us to do. We compiled all of that information and gave it to the Council and Foundation committees responsible for the various areas. As part of their committee work during the fall, they also set performance benchmarks for each activity. Then the executive committees for both the Council and the foundation reviewed each committee recommendations and drafted a strategic plan for the NHC and NFH to review at our January 2009 board meeting. It was tweaked a bit there, and out of that came our new strategic plan for 2009-2013. So the board is very involved in our strategic planning as well as the public. VK: How often does the board meet? JH: The board meets three times a year. We devote our January meeting to evaluation and planning. If we’re moving into a new program emphasis identified in our plan, we bring in professionals in that area to meet with the board so the board more fully understands the subject. It’s at the January meeting that the board annually reviews its strategic plan. While it’s a program-centered plan, it also looks at all aspects of our work; for example, the kind of work we’re doing in development to sustain program. Is our annual campaign bringing in new donors? It looks at the kind of publicity we do. Are public relations efforts effective in reaching audiences we need to reach? Our Finance Committee looks at our budget. Do we need to be thinking about how much our costs have increased in travel or printing, for example? The board reviews our plan annually to see if our practices make sense, to see if we’re meeting the benchmarks we set for various goals. And every five years, the board begins the strategic planning process all over again. VK: So everybody who serves on the board gets a chance to be part of the planning. It’s really kind of a wonderful democracy, isn’t it? Kind of a grass-roots democracy. JH: I think that’s what the Endowment wanted: careful planning that involves our public and regular assessment. VK: We touched a little bit on how we were moving into the future with contemporary technology, but talk about that and what you see about the future. What’s coming up after your retirement? JH: I think the new director is going to have the same opportunity I had, and that is to build on a really strong program. We have an engaged board of directors, and we have a wonderful staff that works well as a team. So he or she is going to be building on what we have done up to this point. I think there are going to be some challenges, and they are identified in our strategic plan. VK: What are they? JH: One of them is technology. I think information technology offers us such potential to reach people across the state, but it’s also a challenge since it changes so rapidly. You really have to keep abreast of what’s happening, and that requires funding so you can continually update the software and hardware. However, I sometimes wonder—at least from my own behavior—if it prevents us from thinking as carefully about things as we should. I will never get caught up on my emails until I retire! I miss the luxury of being able to think about things more thoroughly before I have to respond. I also notice that I don’t read as carefully as I once did because I’m reading so fast to get through everything that I miss things. I worry about the impact of that on the humanities, since one of the qualities of mind that the humanities demand is careful thought. So I think it’s going to be a challenge to balance the advantages and disadvantages of instant, global communication. VK: I’ve just been thinking that technology kind of splits your tenure in half, your time here, because of the technological changes of the past decade. With the millennium came these enormous changes. And so that has had an influence on how you present the humanities. JH: You’re right! I remember that it was a big deal to buy a fax machine during my first year here! And there are wonderful opportunities with the amazing things it allows us to do: the simulcast of the Thompson Forums, for example. And you can listen to the speakers on the Forum’s website whenever your want to. Our grants are submitted electronically and our board members read all of the grant proposals via our website. We interviewed candidates on Skype last fall from Greece and Japan for a program position, and we had an orientation using Skype for one of our new board members this spring from Scottsbluff who couldn’t make the regular orientation meeting. VK: That’s wonderful! JH: Another challenge the Council is going to have is the graying of our audience, even though we’re doing so much more with students now. I just got back from Chautauqua in North Platte and Columbus, and that audience is older. You don’t see many people in their 20s and their 30s—even their early 40s—under the tent. That’s one of the things we have identified as a priority in our strategic plan: engage younger Nebraskans in the 20-to-40 age group in what the Council and Foundation are doing. VK: Isn’t it possible that actually the younger people might be even more interested in their heritage than people once were? JH: That’s an interesting observation. We worked with the Young Professionals in Omaha in preparing for our National Humanities Conference, and “field-tested” one of the Cultural Tours with them. In a focus group after the tour we found that one of the things they were very interested in was learning about was the religious culture and history of some of the new immigrants and refugees in Omaha. So I think you’re right—they may be not only interested in what we have considered traditional Nebraska history, but also in the impact of new people, new cultures, coming to Nebraska and understanding where they all fit in. And that’s another reason that technology is becoming so important to our work because that age group uses information technology to learn and to connect. VK: So they may be demanding a new design of some kind. JH: Exactly. New technology offers us so many opportunities, and on the other hand, there are some challenges with it for the humanities. I think also that finding the financial resources for the humanities is always going to be a challenge. Looking at the next year or two when our state is facing the kind of funding crises that the rest of the states have been dealing with for several years is troubling. We had a 7% cut for this next year. President Obama’s budget for NEH for next year is the same that his was last year, which means that it drops the $2 million increase we were able to get in Congress for the state councils last year. With the federal deficit it’s going to be a challenge to continue to make the case for the humanities both on the state level and the federal level. But it’s also an opportunity to get Nebraskans who know our value to be engaged in making the case for what we’re doing. And I think they will. Nebraskans are interested in their heritage, their history; they’re community-minded and they appreciate the kind of collaboration we’ve always stressed. VK: The more things change; the more they stay the same in some sense. What about your own future? What are you planning for yourself? JH: I’ll stay in Lincoln. I’ve been here for 23 years; my friends are here and Lincoln is a great town to live in, and I love Nebraska. It’s home. VK: So you can go to events and not collect the evaluations! JH: Right! I’ve been thinking about this for well over two years: when would be a good time to make this transition? When the Antiquarium was leaving Omaha and transplanting itself to Brownville, I scooped up at least six novels by Nadine Gordimer at its going-out-of-business sale, and I have them in a bag waiting to be read! I’m also interested in doing some travel—a friend and I are looking at a trip to Africa in the early part of next year. I want to do some travel that would require more than the week or 10 days I felt comfortable with when I was with the Council. In terms of volunteer work, I might take a different tact and do some work to benefit women and girls. I did volunteer work on women’s issues when I was in Chicago, and I sort of put that on the back burner while I was here. So that’s something I’m also looking forward to, volunteer work. VK: And it’s good to be doing something different from what you’ve been doing. You have some exciting plans, and as one of your good friends of long standing, I can hardly wait for you to retire and do some of these exciting things with me. JH: May I tell you one more story before we close, and it gets us back around to program? It just happened during our “Bright Dreams, Hard Times: America in the Thirties” Chautauqua in North Platte, and it’s like experiences I’ve had so many times over the years at our programs and it’s another reason I’ve loved this work. As the scholar who portrayed Zora Neale Hurston was answering audience questions, a man who looked like he could be a rancher—tall, rangy, calloused hands and wearing a cowboy hat—stood up and said, “I didn’t know what Chautauqua was—I’d just come into town to pick up my daughter and thought I’d come in and try it. I didn’t know who Zora was but I really enjoyed your presentation, and I’m coming back tomorrow night.” And the next night he was back under the Chautauqua tent to hear Huey Long! VK: While I have no official position with the Council any more, I will assume the authority to thank you for your wonderful service to the Council and Nebraska. Thank you, Jane. JH: And thank you for hiring me for the best job in Nebraska! |
Phone 402-474-2131 or e-mail nhc@nebraskahumanities.org |
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