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Alumni Spotlight
Nancy A. Hewitt '74
Class Year: 1974
What you are doing now: I am a Professor of History and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Major: History
Favorite class(es) at Brockport: “History’s Outcasts: Women, Children and Criminals”: Taught by Robert Smith at the urban outreach center in Rochester, this course convinced me to return to school full time.
Favorite professor(s) at Brockport: Robert Smith and Susan Stuard of the History Department. They changed my life with their incredible support, and they also encouraged me to apply to graduate school. Then, when I was in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania, I served as a teaching assistant with Ken O’Brien, who was then a visiting professor at Penn.
Most memorable Brockport moment: Winning the first Harriet Whitney Award in Women’s Studies.
Most interesting life experience: Teaching women’s history and women’s studies just as these fields came into being has offered MANY interesting life experiences. But at the moment, the experience that looms largest is the trip to Vietnam I took with my husband, Steven Lawson, in January 2007. Having been active in antiwar efforts while an undergraduate, it was hard to believe that I was in Vietnam as a tourist 40 years later. It would be like visiting Iraq for fun 40 years from now.
Most famous person I have met: Drew Faust, first woman president of Harvard University. I took a graduate course from her at Penn and had lunch with her in June in Cambridge, just two days before she took office as president.
Last book read: Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
CD most likely to find in your stereo: Patty Griffin, Impossible Dream or anything by Bonnie Raitt
Favorite movie: Love and Anarchy
Favorite vacation spot: Wailai Beach, Maui
Family: Dr. Steven Lawson, civil rights historian and Professor of History at Rutgers University. I also have a family tie to Brockport. My mother, Irene Takacs (Hewitt) received her B.A. and her teaching certification from Brockport in 1948.
What do you want to be doing next year: Finishing a book on Rochester abolitionist and woman’s rights advocate Amy Post.
What do you want to be doing in 20 years: Enjoying my retirement and visiting places like Maui.
Message to the students of today: Find something you love, and have some talent for, and build your education and career around it. I dropped out of Smith College after my sophomore year because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do and kept changing majors, which was depressing. But after working at Dunkin’ Donuts, Arby’s, Scrantom’s Book and Stationery Store, and Eastman Kodak, I was incredibly excited to take a history course through Brockport’s urban outreach program and so lucky that it was a history course. After that, I enrolled in Brockport full time and worked full time, but I was happy and I had found a career teaching and writing history that I love.
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