Jane Mess Pfefferkorn ’58

Jane Mess Pfefferkorn ’58 has spent her life as a champion of the arts in education. With Midwestern sensibility, she decries the undermining of arts in wry fashion, “Of course, I deplore the situation. But, on one level I understand it,” she says. “The arts are destabilizing because they demand that people think for themselves. Terming the arts as frills is an easy way out.”

At Cornell she was drawn to the history department, and found an inspiring group of professors including Bill Heywood, Eric Kollman, and Howard Lane.

She went on to earn her master’s degree in drama from Wake Forest University 20 years after graduating from Cornell. In 1977, Pfefferkorn was offered a full-time position as a drama teacher. In 1995 she earned her Ph.D. in curriculum and teaching from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. For many years, she was program manager for Arts Education and Summer enrichment for the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

She and her husband, Bill, proudly preside over a thirsty-for-knowledge brood of children and grandchildren, including daughter Katherine Pfefferkorn ’85. Jane Pfefferkorn continues her education still. “We spend the summers at the Chautauqua Institution,” she says. “We take classes in everything and attend daily lectures on many subjects as well as nightly concerts, plays or operas.”