Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Jeffery Van Buren who graduated in 1984.  The son of an officer in the United States Air Force, Jeff lived all over the world.  His family, however, finally settled down in southern New Jersey.  After graduating from Pemberton High School, Jeff began college at Western New England but soon transferred to Glassboro State, arriving on campus in 1981.  After graduating with his history degree and the Marius Livingston Award in 1984, Jeff went on to a successful career for the Walt Disney Corporation, becoming a senior operations manager who oversaw projects with budgets over $1 billion.  In 2023, he retired with the title of Director of Development at the Disneyland Resort.   As the memory below demonstrates, he credits one faculty member in the History Department in particular for changing his life.

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My family moved so often that I was always new to whatever school I was attending, so I decided to use humor as a way to fit in.  In my early years, people saw me as a jokester and an athlete, since I also played a lot of sports as well.  My grades were average, and almost no one, including myself, saw any great academic potential in me.  I began to take academics more seriously once I started college, but one person more than any other helped me see my worth and taught me how to think.  Her name was Dr. Marie Wanek. 

It is hard to put into words all of what she did for me.  The core of it, however, was that she saw something in me that I didn’t even see.  She saw beyond the jokester image and saw that I could be more.  She had a way of simultaneously humbling you while also strengthening your self-awareness and confidence in your own ability to succeed in the long-term.  This was just one of the ways that she was more than she appeared to be.  From a distance, she appeared to be a reserved and accomplished professor of history, but it was actually easy, for me at least, to converse and open up to her.

I took her for many classes, beginning with ones in United States history, but she also taught Asian history, and she helped me to fall in love with that subject.  I eventually developed a concentration in Asian Studies through her guidance.  In addition to her own classes, she guided me outside of the classroom as well.  She convinced me to run and become President of Phi Alpha Theta in my senior year.  She also advised me on non-history classes to take, and I will never forget her recommendation that I take an Honors class in Semiotics.  That course literally changed the way I thought about the world, and I would never have taken it without Dr. Wanek’s suggestion.   

I have worked all over the world after graduating and the many lessons that Dr. Wanek taught me often come to my mind all these years later.  I will give just one example.  When she was helping me with my writing, she told me that I needed to learn to think in paragraphs.  Once I figured out what she meant, my ability to convey arguments and to break ideas down into separate elements became so much stronger.  I still use what she taught me today in my writing.  Moreover, when reading the writings of colleagues and others, I often think that many of them never had a Dr. Wanek to tell them to think in paragraphs!

Of all the many teachers and professors that I have had in my life, she was the most important.  I wish that I had found my way back to Glassboro after I graduated to thank her personally for all that she did for me and to share with her some of the things I have been able to do with what she taught me.  Thank you for allowing me to share these memories of this very important person in my life.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University. 

Register for the Reunion on October 20^th:  alumni.rowan.edu/historyreunion2023.

Link to Project 100 on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/

Link to Facebook group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/251485937221524. 

Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.