Hixson-Lied Advisory Board

Deon Bahr

Deon Bahr of Lincoln, Neb., is the Founding Principal of Bahr Vermeer & Haecker Architects, Ltd. He received his Bachelor of Science in architecture from UNL in 1961. He has served as the president of the National Society of Architects and served as a critic/juror for the College of Architecture from 1983-2000.

Bahr has also served on the Nebraska Art Association Board of Directors from 1983-1991, serving has chair of the Bird House Competition in 1988, chair of Acquisitions and Collection in 1988-89 and chair of the Sculpture Garden Committee in 1983-84. He has also served on the boards for KUCV (Nebraska Public Radio Network) and Nebraska Statewide Arboretum.

He served on the Mayors Blue Ribbon Committee on the Arts in 1987 and was a member of the Mayors Public Art Action Committee in 1991. He has served the Lincoln Arts Council on the Public Art Committee for the Lied Center for Performing Arts, chairman of the Public Art Consultant Selection Committee and member of the 12th St Public Art Selection Committee.

His own artwork has been exhibited at the MEDICI exhibitions in 2002, 2004 and 2005; Hayden Art Gallery, Sheldon Museum of Art, Modern Arts Midwest and The Sawmill Gallery.

Terry L. Fairfield

Terry L. Fairfield is currently Vice Chairman of the University of Nebraska Foundation. He previously served as CEO of the University of Nebraska Foundation from 1987-2008. He is a graduate of Kearney High School and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, he has completed post-graduate work at UNL and The George Washington University.

Fairfield recently led the Foundation's largest and most successful fund-raising campaign ever. Campaign Nebraska raised more than $727 million dollars to benefit the four campuses of the University of Nebraska. During the campaign 95 endowed faculty positions and nearly 1,000 new scholarships were established.

Under his leadership, Foundation assets have grown from approximately $166 million to more than $1 billion, and benefits transferred annually to the university have increased from over $17 million in 1987 to more than $69 million in 2001.

Fairfield has additional fund-raising and alumni programming experience from his previous positions at Northwestern University and the Council of Advancement and Support of Education.

Christina M. Hixson

Christina M. Hixson graduated from Clarinda High School in Iowa in 1944. She borrowed $600 from an Uncle and moved to Omaha, Nebraska, to attend business school. After seven months, she went to work for Mr. Lied's car dealership as a switchboard operator and took dictation since his secretary could not. After the war, Miss Hixson became his secretary and also took on the accounting duties. Miss Hixson joined Mr. Lied in Las Vegas in 1960 and became his assistant. She attended all business meetings with him as he relied on her instinctive judgment of people to guide him in his transactions.

After his death in 1980, Miss Hixson became the sole trustee of the Lied Foundation Trust. As such, she has turned the Lied Foundation Trust into one of the largest Foundations in the state of Nevada. Miss Hixson has tried to keep in mind the types of grants Mr. Lied would want her to make. She has made contributions to projects in California, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah and Washington. Miss Hixson has a special fondness for young people who, like her, come from a challenging family background and are willing to work hard. Therefore, she has set up a scholarship fund at Iowa State University for students academically capable of college work but with no hope of attending without a financial boost. As Trustee of Lied Foundation Trust, she has demonstrated a keen insight in selecting for funding those projects that could only become a reality with a pace-setting gift that would, in turn, elevate the sights of other donors.

Heather Jones

Heather Jones received her Bachelors' degree at the College of Saint Mary in Omaha in early childhood and elementary education. She is currently attending the University of Nevada Las Vegas to receive a Master's of Education in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Literacy.

Charles O'Connor

Charles O’Connor is the Hixson-Lied Endowed Dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He returns to Lincoln after nine years, having started in 1993 as a faculty member in the Department of Theatre Arts, now the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film.

From 2008-2012, Chuck was the Dean of College of Visual and Performing Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne. There, he was instrumental in securing an endowment from Sweetwater Sound, Inc. in support of a new music technology program. As the Chair and Executive Director of the Department of Theatre and the Nevada Conservatory Theatre from 2003-2008, Chuck raised substantial money and doubled the audience size of the theatre.

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the 1990s, he envisioned and formed a film and new media program implementing the early use of digital technology and interactive media. He served as the faculty liaison in the planning and design of the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center and the renovated Temple Building, which houses the film and new media program.

William Nunez

William J. Nunez has been the director of the Office of Institutional Research and Planning since September 2003. His office provides data and analysis to support academic management, evaluation and planning, and is also responsible for the campus physical master plan, campus space planning, and operation of examination services, providing testing and scoring services. He joined the Office of the Chancellor as Associate to the Chancellor and Chief of Staff in April, 2010.

Nunez came to UNL from the University of Louisville, where he was assistant director of planning, institutional research and institutional effectiveness in the office of planning and budget. He is an assistant professor in the College of Education and Human Sciences and has also taught at Louisville, Indiana University-Southeast, and for Jefferson County Public Schools Adult and Continuing Education in Louisville. Nunez holds bachelors and master's degrees in business and master's and doctoral degrees in education.

James W. Strand

James W. (Jim) Strand is a native Nebraskan and graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with Bachelors and Masters degrees in Psychology, as well as a Masters in Business Administration.

His business career of 27 years was with the Lincoln Telephone Company/Aliant/ALLTEL, retiring in 2001 as Executive Vice President and Director. He also served on the boards of Illuminet, a Seattle-based telecommunications company, and the Cellular Telephone Industry Association in Washington, D.C.

His community activities include past president of the Lincoln Symphony and the Lincoln United Way. He currently serves as director of the University Place Art Center, the Lincoln Library Foundation, and Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital. He is a member of the Board of Governors of Nebraska Wesleyan, a Councillor for the Knights of AKSARBEN, and a member of the Advisory Boards for the Lied Center for Performing Arts and Peter Kiewit Institute for Information Sciences.

Frank Tirro

Frank Tirro (B.M.E. 1960) is professor of music and former dean of the Yale University School of Music. A specialist in both the history of jazz and music of the Renaissance, he is the author of Jazz: A History, Living With Jazz, Renaissance Musical Sources . . . In Bologna, and co-author of The Humanities: Cultural Roots And Continuities, and editor of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Before coming to Yale, Tirro served as Chairman of the Department of Music at Duke University. In addition to many scholarly articles and reviews, he also wrote, for young students, the entry on "Jazz" for The World Book Encyclopedia and many of the individual biographical entries for jazz musicians. He has served as an associate editor for the new American National Biography, sponsored jointly by Oxford University Press and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Tirro received his B.M.E. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, his master's degree from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He was a Fellow of Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, and he has also served as Director of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He lectures on jazz and Renaissance subjects, and his professional responsibilities have taken him across the United States, to Europe, China, and South America.