Mindy Farmer, the new director of the May 4 Visitors Center, started work July 1. Farmer is the former education specialist of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and will begin as an assistant professor starting spring 2015.

“I am humbled to stand on the shoulders of giants,” Farmer said in a Kent State University press release. “From the faculty who worked to build the center, to the deans who pledged their support and the students who continue to inquire, learn and reflect, I know that this is a campus dedicated to understanding its past.”

The press release states that Farmer plans to use the events of May 4 as a teaching tool.

“Sometimes, it is in the difficult moments that we can learn the most,” Farmer said in the press release. “The mission of this center is to continue the conversation that started in the 1970s using the technology and issues of today. I firmly believe that Kent State should lead the national, and indeed international, discussion on how to teach and interpret the events of May 4, 1970.”

Contact Bruce Walton at [email protected].