For the past 25 years, the humanities at UL Lafayette have had the academic equivalent of guardian angels. Friends of the Humanities is celebrating a quarter century of service this year.
Its members attend University events, such as art exhibit openings, lectures and socials. They take classes, including some designed especially for them.
They also raise money for courses and programming. Since its inception, the group has contributed about $500,000 to the humanities.
The nonprofit organization was created by a group of enthusiastic women who took arts and humanities courses just for the pleasure of learning: Suzan Allen, Elsie Bernard, Willa Dean Chesson, Betty Fleming, Betty Hensley, Jane Purcell, Harriet Shea and Patricia Stiel. Two founding members, Helen Bailey and Yvonne LaHood, are deceased.
The group has grown to 237 members and has set a goal of reaching 250 members by the end of the year.
Faculty members guided the development of the group during the economic bust of the 1980s, recalled Dr. Vaughan Baker, former head of the University鈥檚 Department of History.
鈥淭hey had repeatedly taken courses, so we had worked with the University to get them parking privileges and to generally encourage them to keep taking courses,鈥 she recalled in a recent interview.
鈥淢ath茅 Allain, who was in the Modern Language Department, had also been teaching in the interdisciplinary program for a long time. We were talking one day about the lack of resources. Math茅 said, 鈥榃e need to have a Friends group like the library does. And we ought to call it the Friends of the Humanities.鈥 鈥
Baker invited the women to meet at a Lafayette restaurant. 鈥淚 asked them to raise money for classroom resources so that we could provide the kinds of materials they had been wanting in the classes they were taking.
鈥淚 told them, 鈥榃e鈥檙e not asking you to raise thousands of dollars. We鈥檙e just asking you to raise hundreds of dollars. And I know you can do that.鈥 鈥
The group began to raise money by holding social events, such as its annual Christmas Tea, and organizing trips.
Baker soon turned an unused office in Griffin Hall into a resource room stocked with VHS tapes, slides, recordings, books and other materials purchased by the Friends. The late Dr. Barbara Cicardo then wrote a successful grant to establish the Humanities Resource Center.
In 1997, the group gave $60,000, matched with $40,000 in state funds, to establish an endowed professorship. Dr. Darrell Bourque, now professor of English emeritus and former state poet laureate, was the first recipient. Another major gift was used to help create the Ernest J. Gaines Center on campus.
In 2000, the Friends supported an international, interdisciplinary conference in Rome to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Puccini鈥檚 opera, 鈥淭osca.鈥 Dr. Susan Nicassio, a UL Lafayette history professor, worked with a Harvard professor to organize the event.
鈥淚t was extraordinary,鈥 said Baker. 鈥淲e were invited to have lunch at the American Academy in Rome and the people from the Academy were coming up to us and asking, 鈥樷楬ow do you all do it? How do you raise the money? How did you manage to get this done?鈥 The Friends realized that, academically, this was as important as it gets. What they were doing was really world-class.鈥
Baker said the Friends鈥 support is crucial. 鈥淚nterdisciplinary courses were then, and are even more so now, a way to get some really significant humanities exposure, to music and art and literature, in curricula that are getting tighter and tighter.鈥
Dr. Lisa Graley, a professor of English, is coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Program.
鈥淭o my knowledge, there isn鈥檛 any group like the Friends of the Humanities, people who go directly to university professors and say, 鈥榃hat do you need next semester to teach the classes you鈥檙e teaching? Do you need videos, guest speakers, projectors, easels?鈥 Then they go on to buy these things for you,鈥 she said.
Graley said the Friends鈥 contribution of funds to the College of Liberal Arts for faculty travel has been especially valuable in recent years. Travel is a budget item that has been reduced due to drastic state funding cuts. 鈥淭he Friends have stepped up and said, 鈥楴o, it鈥檚 important that our faculty present their work and be exposed to recent scholarly theories and discoveries. We鈥檒l help fund that.鈥 鈥
She noted that the Friends have made contributions as lifelong students, too. 鈥淭hey are such a gift to teachers. For one thing, they always do their reading! But, beyond that, they share what they鈥檝e learned with teachers and undergrads.
鈥淲hen they鈥檙e in my classes, I become a student and learn from them.鈥