Dr. Marilyn Johnson-Farr
Dwight E. Porter Professor of Education
Even as a child, Dr . Marilyn Johnson-Farr had an "old spirit ."
It's one product of being raised by grandparents - a good one, she says.
To her, an old spirit means you're grounded. It means you know to embrace life as it comes. And sometimes, an old spirit pushes you to make life better.
That's one reason why Johnson-Farr's face is familiar to boards and causes, from the Friendship Home in Lincoln to the National Council for Negro Women.
At Doane, it's why she works to increase diversity and see it embraced on campus.
Johnson-Farr lives in the south Lincoln neighborhood where she grew up. Her neighbors are Native American, Guatemalan and European American.
"I have this rich diversity just by walking across the street," she notes.
She wishes everyone could be so rich.
"Diversity is an opportunity to embrace human kind in its totality. It gives a sense that everyone contributes to the place we work and play in," said Johnson-Farr, Dwight E. Porter Professor of Education. She teaches practicum, multicultural and graduate-level education courses.
But she never expected to teach. As a child, her vocal talents created an alternate path. Plus, she didn't see her own reflection in teachers.
People of color taught Sunday school, but they weren't in her classrooms the rest of the week.
But when her experience as a music major hit a sour note, she found a second, quieter gift.
She could teach.
In her students, Johnson-Farr sees future difference-makers, like the second-grade instructor who first nurtured her musical gift.
One of her challenges as an educator is to teach classes of predominantly white students to be future difference makers to students in groups who have been marginalized historically.
She challenges students to move out of comfort zones, starting with a look inward.
An advocate of diversity of all kinds, she challenges Doane to look inward, too.
She's proud of the changes she has been part of on the Crete campus, where about seven percent of the student body come from multicultural backgrounds.
Last year, Doane added a diversity consultant. There are student groups in place now such as Students for Change, which celebrates multiculturalism.
But for her, the biggest rewards are still individual - seeing a student live up to expectations and knowing that "in some small way you helped." Even better, she said, is knowing that it multiplies.
"That's powerful," she said.
Education:
Years at Doane: 12