Jennifer Unger is the new voice for arts in Texarkana
TEXARKANA, Texas — The Board of Directors of the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council has named Jennifer Unger as executive director. Most recently in her 17-year tenure at TRAHC, Jennifer served as interim executive director, following the retirement of Brian Goesl at the end of August. She also served as the organization’s education director.
As education director, Jennifer partnered with local teachers to help bring art into classrooms and facilitated Theatre for Young Audience performances, according to TRAHC officials. She is a National Teaching Artist, bringing the arts to teachers and students across the country. She serves on the Kennedy Center Advisory for the Partners in Education.
“Jennifer brings lots of experience to the position of executive director. She knows the organization and she knows Texarkana,” TRAHC Board President Dr. Charles Fortenberry said. “With her unique background, she has been able to hit the ground running.”
That’s been her style in the past.
Last year, during the heart of the pandemic, she worked to transition workshops to online space, which is vastly different than the typical experiential, in-person style of guiding teachers to promote arts in the classroom.
Part of Jennifer’s job included being a national teaching artist and art integration consultant, creating arts-based professional development workshops.
She and others had to figure out ways to keep the arts alive while all around them human contact was being minimized in public settings. They took a proactive approach.
“The arts by its very nature is experiential,” Jennifer said at the time. “It’s not dry information that you can immediately translate it and say, ‘OK, just going to videotape me doing the lecture online.’”
Jennifer and the education team at TRAHC had already added online arts integration to their long-range plans, but the COVID-19 pandemic fast forwarded it all about a year.
“It’s forcing our hand to do something that we are interested in doing,” she said. “It’s just we’ve moved the timeline up to much sooner than I thought we would.”
During her time as interim executive director, Jennifer shared a larger vision for the future of TRAHC, the board president said, a vision he is excited to see unfold.
“Under her leadership, TRAHC will continue to grow in its mission,” Charles said. “Jennifer and her team are launching exciting new projects that answer the demands of our everchanging world, while keeping those familiar and historic TRAHC experiences alive with our Perot Theatre Series and programs at the Regional Arts Center.” President-Elect Phyllis Deese agreed.
“We are so excited for the future of TRAHC with Jennifer Jennifer as the executive director,” she said. “During her tenure, Jennifer has demonstrated a passion for the arts in education and our community. She brings her wealth of knowledge and experience into this leadership role, and we know that great things are ahead for us.”
Jennifer said she is looking forward to bringing her love of the arts and of TRAHC to the Texarkana community.
“It is an honor to step into this new leadership role,” she said. “I am privileged to be able to further TRAHC’s mission to ‘grow people and community through the arts’ every day. I look forward to working alongside the amazing people of this community to keep TRAHC on track in this new era of opportunity and growth.”
(A section of this story should be attributed to the late Aaron Brand. It came from a Texarkana Gazette story published in May 2020.)