Mary Newsom, director of urban policy initiatives at the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, has been elected chair of the board of trustees at the Charlotte Museum of History. Newsom had been vice chair of the board, which she joined in 2013.
The museum, located on Shamrock Drive in east Charlotte, engages the community in the history of the Charlotte region through exhibits, programming, dialogue, stories and preservation. It is the steward of the Colonial-era Hezekiah Alexander Home Site, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the oldest surviving structure in Mecklenburg County. Hezekiah Alexander is considered to have been one of the signers of the May 20, 1775, Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. In 1776, he served on the committee that drafted North Carolina’s first Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Also elected officers of the museum trustees were:
- Brian Madison Jones, dean of the College of Arts and Letters and James B. Duke Distinguished Associate Professor of History at Johnson C. Smith University, elected vice chair
- Hugh Dussek, history instructor in the Behavioral and Social Sciences Division at Central Piedmont Community College, elected secretary
- Eric Ridler, vice president and audit manager at Bank of America, elected treasurer
Among the other museum trustees are Nancy Gutierrez, dean of the UNC Charlotte College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, as well as UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture alumnus John Howard, manager of the Charlotte Historic District Commission.