Doane College's Board of Trustees has four new appointees. The 36-member board gathers for sessions each fall and spring, and members serve four-year terms.
Ann Songster Cahill, Class of ‘72
Cahill, a 1972 Doane graduate, is an active volunteer in the St. Louis, Mo., community where she resides with her husband, Jack, a 1971 Doane graduate. The couple has three grown children.
Cahill volunteers on the St. Louis Woman's Exchange Board of Directors as its recording secretary and has also held the office of treasurer. She has held several offices with PEO, including president. For the past 10 years, Cahill has been a member of the St. Louis Children's Hospital Board. She is a past member of the Board of Trustees for the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, a nonprofit, independent K-12 preparatory school. The school is recognized as one of the nation's leaders in independent education.
Cahill holds a bachelor's in education from Doane and taught for four years in the Nebraska public school system. She also worked for Edward Jones as a branch office administrator for two years.
Jim Keck
Keck is senior minister at First-Plymouth United Church of Christ Congregational in Lincoln. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley, Calif.) and is the founding president of a multi-faith network in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Keck holds a bachelor of arts from the University of Colorado (Boulder), a master's of divinity from the Pacific School of Religion and a doctorate of ministry from Andover Newton Theological School. He has been an adjunct faculty member at Pacific School of Religion and a guest lecturer at numerous colleges. He also has served on the board of Matt Talbot kitchen and outreach center in Lincoln.
He and his wife, Karen Taylor, have two children and live in Lincoln.
Jane Renner Hood, Class of '66
Hood brings 23 years of experience working in nonprofit education through the Nebraska Humanities Council. She retired from her position as executive director in 2010. Among the council's endeavors was collaborating with the Nebraska Library Commission to start a bilingual reading program in communities with low reading scores. Crete was one of those communities.
Hood graduated cum laude from Doane in 1966 with a bachelor of arts degree. She went on to earn her master's and Ph.D. in history from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has taught history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Creighton University and Northwestern University (Evanston, Ill.) Hood has given decades of service to local, state and national organizations. Currently, she is the vice-chair of the Cooper Foundation, a member of the University of Nebraska Press Community Advisory Council as well as the Lincoln Downtown Rotary Club 14, The Round Table, the Willa Cather Foundation Advisory board, and the history advisory board for OLLI at UNL. Hood resides in Lincoln, where she volunteers as a tutor for Lincoln Literacy. She has one son and two granddaughters.
Thomas Sorensen Jr.
Sorensen is a financial advisor for Edward Jones and has been with the company since 1988.
He holds a degree in animal science from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Currently, Sorensen serves in the Crete community on the Crete Area Medical Center Foundation Board and the Crete Public Schools Trust Board.
He is also a member of the Rotary Club and United Church of Christ.
In 2007, he received the Service to Mankind Award from the Crete Sertoma Club.
Sorensen and his wife, Vicki, have four children and reside in Crete.