Black History Month holds an even deeper meaning for Berea College because the man who founded it earned his Bachelor’s of Literature here in 1903. Now known as “the father of Black history,” Carter G. Woodson went on to spread his alma mater’s founding principles from coast to coast. Now, his legacy lives on here at Berea College through the Carter G. Woodson Center, where a new director recently joined us—Dr. Jessica D. Klanderud.
At the Carter G. Woodson Center, students and community members of all racial identities learn from one another through programs designed to help everyone see, appreciate, and learn across our differences. Dr. Klanderud became the Center’s new Director and Assistant Professor of African and African-American Studies last August, coming to us from a professorship at Tabor College in Kansas, where she was also the chair of the History department.
Kentucky is the ninth state she has called home, hailing from Alaska to upstate New York and everywhere in between. Here at Berea, she reports feeling profoundly at home, not only because of the lovely community itself, but because of Berea College’s commitment to true interracial co-education.
She tells us, “I really enjoyed seeing the Great Commitments being lived out at Berea. I study the history of poverty, so programs designed to help people get out of it with education were very much in line with my own work. It was a very good fit for my family and me.”
And she, her spouse, and their two children have also been an excellent fit for Berea College. Though this February is only Dr. Klanderud’s first Black History Month in her new role, she has already increased community engagement. Through her continuation of productive dialogue events like True Racial Understanding Through Honest (T.R.U.T.H) Talks and the biennial Civil Rights Tour, as well as her public screenings of racial justice documentaries, Dr. Klanderud is creating durable bonds between the Center and the Berea community at large, just as she planned.
She says, “I want alumni in here, I want current and future students, I want grandmas, and kids, donors and everybody here to enjoy what the Woodson Center is doing to move us all forward.”
And her efforts are already paying off. In her three other roles in the community as Assistant Professor teaching Berea students, as professional historian collaborating with fellow faculty, and as the mother of children in the local school system, Dr. Klanderud is using all of her burgeoning relationships to bring more people into the Carter G. Woodson Center’s orbit.
Dr. Klanderud also credits her programs’ successes to the spirit of togetherness fostered at Berea College for more than 150 years. She says, “At our events, about half the room is students, and half the room is faculty, staff, and administration. We have a lot of institutional buy-in here, and that is not the same everywhere.”
By SAM MILLIGAN