Jane Christie ’58

After graduating from Smith College in 1962, Jane continued her studies in European history at Washington University in Saint Louis and Yale and taught courses in European and World History for the next 35 years at the Universities of Maine, New Haven and Hartford. However, her lifelong commitment to education was expressed primarily through positions of administrative leadership within the state humanities councils and the community schools of the arts, where she directed initiatives to foster understanding and engagement with the liberal arts for people of all ages and backgrounds. As director of educational programs (1979-1997) for the Connecticut Humanities Council (one of 52 state-based programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities), she developed the Connecticut Humanities Alliance, a collaboration among museums, universities, and city schools to create multi-cultural curricula and professional development for teachers. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, it received the National Council for the Social Studies 1992 National Award for Excellence and the Schwartz Prize from the Federation of State Humanities Councils for outstanding humanities council project in the US in 1993. As director of advancement for Neighborhood Music School in New Haven (1997-2007), she was a founder and director of “City Initiative,” a long-term musical partnership between NMS and New Haven public schools, designated a finalist for the National Arts & Humanities Youth Award by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 2014.

She recently (2019) completed her fourth term on Alumni Council as a member of its Executive Committee, Annual Giving Board, and Abbot@Andpver Committee. She was a member of Andover’s Bicentennial Campaign Committee in Maine (1977-1978), several times a class agent, co-chair of the Class of 1958’s fiftieth, fifty-fifth, and sixtieth reunions, and is a recipient of Phillips Academy’s Distinguished Service Award (2009).

Jane now lives in her family home in Kingston, NH. A former board member of New Hampshire Humanities, she currently serves on the boards of the Kingston Heritage Commission and the Kingston Historical Museum. She is the mother of Timothy Drinkwater Smith PA’85 and Andrew Hamilton Smith PA’87, and the grandmother of Drew Hamilton Smith PA ’24.