When history professor Orlan Svingen encouraged nontraditional student Janet Creighton to complete her doctorate at WSU in the 1990s, he had no idea that she and her husband are philanthropists and longtime generous supporters of WSU.
This year, the couple became the greatest benefactors of Svingen’s work, pledging $230,000 to establish the John and Janet Creighton Public History (JJCPH) Project. The four-year outreach will connect the WSU public history program with ongoing historical and cultural interpretive work by government and Native American groups in southwest Montana and east-central Idaho.
“As an older, married student, not all universities welcomed me with open arms,” Janet Creighton recalled of her Ph.D. studies. But Svingen “treated me like a recruit. He spent time in his busy day to explain the program, how I would fit in and what classes I should take.”
“Janet entered a rigorous Ph.D. program, lived in McEachern Hall, dined at the Rotunda with a spectrum of undergraduates, joined a lively group of graduate students on a research adventure in Montana,and produced a dissertation on an important topic in American history,” Svingen said.