At the time of the interview, Doug and Janet Nelson served as co-chairs of Krannert Center's 50th-Anniversary Community Celebration Committee. As audience members, advocates, donors, and representatives of a corporate sponsor, Doug and Janet reflect and recount their experiences at Krannert Center and their hopes for the future.
Rebecca McBride retired from Krannert Center in 2016 as Senior Associate Director after twenty-four years. A member of Krannert Center's 50th-Anniversary Community Celebration Committee and a consultant to the Center on its 50th-Anniversary celebration, Rebecca also provides marketing, strategic planning, and communications consulting to other non-profit organizations.
Tom Roadcap earned a B.S. in civil and environmental engineering, with a minor in music, from the University of Illinois. At the time of the interview, Tom was a graduate student at Illinois pursuing his M.S. in civil and environmental engineering. Tom was offered a Fulbright grant in 2018 to conduct master's research in Munich on railroad track safety and design. Tom recounts his experience at Krannert Center as as student.
Wendy Mathewson and Beth Watkins (both BA '96) met in an avant-garde honors seminar, "The History that Music Made." They became roommates and lifelong friends. Both graduates of the Department of History, both women are employed by the university today. Mathewson is the undergraduate advisor for the Department of History, and Watkins is the Education and Publications Coordinator at the Spurlock Museum. In this interview, they describe campus life in the 1990s and the gradual shifts in their political, religious, and worldview perspectives that they attribute to a liberal arts education. They reflect on enduring friendship across deep differences, the value of finding smaller communities within a large university, exposure to diversity, and the importance of resilience.
