The Center is delighted to announce that Ron Nurnberg and Joe Osgoode of Oxford, Mississippi, have joined the Ventress Order, an organization that administers gifts to the departments of the University’s College of Liberal Arts. Nurnberg and Osgoode have designated their gift to the Center.
“Rolling our annual giving into a Ventress Order membership made sense,” said Nurnberg, who is an alumnus of the graduate program in Southern Studies. “The Center gave so much to Joe and me. My years in Southern Studies were golden years, which were wonderful and life- altering.”
Osgoode, an artist whose works include photographic collages of Ventress Hall, Barnard Observatory, and the Lyceum, agreed, commenting, “Southern Studies brings in a very lively group of people. Even though I was not a student, it offered so many events that I felt as though I was a part of the community.”
Prior to embarking on his master’s degree in Southern Studies, Nurnberg, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business and interpersonal communication from Central College in Pella, Iowa, was associate director of a study abroad program for American students at Trinity College, Wales. In addition, he helped start, co-owned, and operated Dressel’s Pub in St. Louis, Missouri, a town favorite that honored the arts, especially Welsh and American literature, opera, jazz, and blues.
Nurnberg
left the for-profit business world to pursue his degree
in Southern Studies. His work in the program focused on
the preservation and reinvention of Vicksburg’s St. Francis
Xavier Convent and Academy previously run by the Sisters
of Mercy. Closed in the early 1990s, the complex of 19th-century
buildings, one of them antebellum, faced an uncertain future.
Building on the work of three prior Southern Studies graduates
and drawing his vision from other cultural centers throughout
the Southeast, Nurnberg worked closely with the city of
Vicksburg to purchase the property, transforming it into
the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation. He also led the
search for the Foundation’s first executive director.
Following graduation in 1995, Nurnberg went to work for the National Trust’s Main Street program in Helena, Arkansas, as the project’s executive
director. Nine months later, he became executive director for Teach for America in the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta, a position he has held ever since. Having expanded its presence from 32 teachers in 1996 to 134 teachers currently, he is focused on helping his teachers close the academic achievement gap by up to two years for every year that Teach for America recruits spend in the classroom. “Educated youth in these communities are a countermeasure to the brain drain that the Delta has been experiencing,” he
said. Another of his goals is to turn Teach for America alumni into lifelong advocates for this pursuit.
Nurnberg and Osgoode remain involved with the Center. Each year, at the home they call Ditch Crest, they host a welcome party for new graduate students in Southern Studies. They also regularly offer Ditch Crest as a gathering place for visiting writers to the Oxford Conference for the Book: previous guests have included Jill McCorkle and Lee Smith.
“Joe and I believe in what the Center for the Study of Southern Culture is doing, and wanted to take part in supporting that. The Ventress Order was an ideal way to do this.”
Named in honor of James Alexander Ventress, a founding father of the University, the Ventress Order encourages recognition of the College of Liberal Arts as one of the country’s outstanding centers of learning. College of Liberal Arts graduates, family members, friends, or organizations may join the order and designate their gift to particular departments or programs within the college. Corporate and full individual memberships are available by pledging $10,000 and $5,000 respectively. Gifts are payable in lump sums or installments not to exceed 10 years. Affiliate memberships are also available through a pledge of $1,000, payable in a lump sum not to exceed four years.
