{"id":501,"date":"2024-02-29T15:06:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T15:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/?p=501"},"modified":"2024-11-14T17:43:59","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T17:43:59","slug":"seeing-greatness-pursuing-possibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/2024\/02\/29\/seeing-greatness-pursuing-possibilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing greatness, pursuing possibilities"},"content":{"rendered":"
Guess what. Sometimes, when you want something \u2014 a scholarship, an opportunity to do some research, some support for a project \u2014 it\u2019s actually right there for the taking. All you have to do is ask.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a 100% guarantee, said Dr. Kelli Johnson, Marshall\u2019s associate dean of Libraries, but in her experience, it\u2019s usually worth a try. And when she combines that positivity with her knack for identifying the talents and strengths in the people around her, it\u2019s a powerful tool for generating good ideas to improve the university, community and life for future generations.<\/p>\n

\n\t“The worst that can happen is they say no.”<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t- Dr. Johnson<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

\u201cThe worst that can happen is they say no,\u201d said Johnson, who has contributed to Marshall and the surrounding community in a variety of ways \u2014 from increasing and improving the free services available through the libraries to serving as a co-founder of the President\u2019s Commission on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, to collecting and preserving oral histories in the Fairfield Neighborhood of Huntington, and many others.<\/p>\n

That can-do spirit, her commitment to creating solutions, and her enthusiasm for recognizing the amazing contributions of the beautifully diverse people she encounters are among the many reasons to celebrate Johnson and others serving the same missions this Black History Month.<\/p>\n

For Johnson, celebrating multiculturalism is a natural thing to do. That spirit of diversity, of embracing both differences as well as commonalities of the people who touch history and lives, is a quality that Johnson brought with her to the Huntington area when she arrived in 1999, a single mother at the time, hopping off the Amtrak train with her two young daughters to live in her father\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n

She was born and raised in San Francisco amidst so much multiculturalism \u2014 in her own family, in her community and her school \u2014that she didn\u2019t even realize it was there. Her mother, Linda, was a nurse. She was white, the granddaughter of German immigrants who had settled in Iowa. Her father, Marvin, was a bus driver. He was black, raised in Proctorville, Ohio, and in the 1960s when he met her mother at a San Francisco YMCA, had recently gotten out of the military.<\/p>\n

Her babysitter served her curry and rice and ate without cutlery. And her grade school \u2014 the French American Bilingual School, as it was called at the time \u2014 introduced her to yet another culture.<\/p>\n

It was a stretch to attend a pricey, bilingual school, but her dad lived by that same \u201cmight-as-well-ask\u201d mentality that he passed along to his daughter. He had been driving his bus by the school each day and observed how the students wore uniforms and always looked orderly. He liked that.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, my parents, who were a bus driver and a nurse, thought, \u2018You\u2019re going to go to that fancy private school,\u2019\u201d Johnson said. \u201cAnd they marched in and were like, \u2018We want our kid to go here, but we don\u2019t have any money.\u2019\u00a0 I think they talked to me and decided I could meet their criteria, and I think I had a scholarship the whole time I was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

She went on to attend an academically challenging high school, Lowell High School, and then went through a series of jobs in San Franscisco. Eventually, as a single mom with a 9- and a 4-year-old, she decided to follow her dad\u2019s advice when he suggested she and her girls move back to his hometown, where he had moved some years before. So, they took the Amtrak across the country and settled in Proctorville.<\/p>\n

Then it was a matter of getting on her feet.<\/p>\n

\n\t“That\u2019s what I love about being a librarian \u2014 helping people.”<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t- Dr. Johnson<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

\u201cI enrolled in Marshall, and they said, \u2018Hey do you want to do this thing called \u2018work study?\u2019\u201d Johnson recalled. \u201cThey put me in the library as a work study student. And I never looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n

She had found her place.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a librarian is about making sure that everybody \u2014 everybody, regardless \u2014 has the best possible information that they need to make the best possible choices or be entertained or whatever it is,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I love about being a librarian \u2014 helping people.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the digital age, librarians are as important as ever, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much information coming at people so fast and in so many ways. It\u2019s hard to know what is trustworthy,\u201d she said. \u201cWe go to school to help people find the best information.\u201d<\/p>\n

As associate dean of Libraries, one of her roles is to set the tone for the public face of the library and remind the campus community of how much the library can help.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis building is open more than any other building on campus,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThis building was not built to just be quiet and filled with books. We help you with the research and your studying and all that, but we do other things too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with tapping into the talent to help create even better services for the libraries, Johnson has taken on another role \u2014 preserving the stories of those whose talents have contributed to the betterment of the community. A National Park Service grant helped Johnson record and publish oral histories of people in the Huntington community in a project titled, \u201cAfrican Americans in Appalachia during the Civil Rights Era.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t“I just think it\u2019s important for people to know about the amazing people, places and things in history. There are so many lessons we can learn from history.”<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t- Dr. Johnson<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been fascinating, and there are other oral histories I\u2019ve done before with a Humanities Council grant, and there are some articles we wrote about some local places, and all of that is on Marshall Digital Scholar<\/a> and is freely available,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThe important thing is you don\u2019t have to be a big, fancy person to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city of Huntington and many of its citizens are doing a great job of recording local Black history for present and future generations, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many people with the same goal in mind \u2014 let\u2019s preserve this rich history,\u201d she said. \u201cI just think it\u2019s important for people to know about the amazing people, places and things in history. There are so many lessons we can learn from history.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guess what. Sometimes, when you want something \u2014 a scholarship, an opportunity to do some research, some support for a project \u2014 it\u2019s actually right there for the taking. All you have to do is ask. It\u2019s not a 100% guarantee, said Dr. Kelli Johnson, Marshall\u2019s associate dean of Libraries, but in her experience, it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}