Alumna creates nonprofit to promote social and economic prosperity through education

From being a tenured professor to starting a nonprofit to build a school in a developing country, calling Dr. Jan Hansen passionate about education is quite the understatement.

The St. Cloud State University alumna credits her alma mater with encouraging her to think globally. She lived outside of London for a year on an exchange program from SCSU, and during that time took the opportunity to explore other parts of Europe. It was also where she'd meet her future husband, who was a St. John's University student at the time staying abroad in Alnwick, England.

"St. Cloud State opened my eyes to an international, global view," Hansen said.

She earned degrees in both art and psychology from SCSU in 1979, and went on to earn a master's in psychology from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in educational psychology from Purdue University. For nearly 30 years Hansen worked in higher education, including as associate director for the Gifted Education Resource Institute at Purdue. She then moved on to St. Thomas University — where she co-founded the Center for Engineering Education.

In 2008 an engineering colleague invited Hansen to accompany their team on a trip to Karagwe, Tanzania.

The rest is history.

"When I got there, the engineering project didn't work as expected. But as an educator, I went into the schools and did a needs analysis of what the school could use, got to know the staff members and the teachers, and came away with a needs assessment," Hansen said. "When I came back to the U.S. after that month in 2008 in Karagwe, Tanzania, I started raising money for the one school we visited that had no curriculum whatsoever — no notebooks, no pens. They just had the people, the teachers, the blackboards and some benches. That was it. And a lot of hope."

Hansen continued to raise funds for the school while teaching at St. Thomas. When university funding later fell through for a second trip to Karagwe, Hansen and her husband, Steve Hansen, decided to sponsor their own trip.

"In 2010 he came with me to Africa. He's an environmental scientist, so they looked at solar, at wind development, water resources. And as you can imagine, there's terrible drought. We came away with an assessment. But before we left, the people in Karagwe asked us to be their ambassadors and their partners," Jan Hansen said. "When I returned, we decided we needed to form a nonprofit because we needed a structure to handle this. Steve and I can't do all this. I have been the CEO and president of Educate Tanzania since resigning my tenured position at St. Thomas in 2010."

Hansen is proud of everything Educate Tanzania Inc. has been able to accomplish.

"It's been extremely enriching. I want to punctuate that professionally, the things we've done over there that I feel so good about, is we act on the priorities of the local community. We don't come in with developed-country ideas, parachute in, tell them what they need, and then we do that. We are very close to our partners. We act on their priorities. It's a lot of conversation, but that's how we do it," she said. "They had a grassy hill and 1,000 acres; they wanted a university. All their young people would move across the country because there was only one other university in the country that focused on agriculture. Ninety percent of the people are agricultural; they're subsistence farmers. We said we'd help with that. We now have KARUCO College of Agriculture on a thousand acres in Karagwe, Tanzania."

KARUCO is accredited and has 400 graduates and counting. It also runs on solar power thanks to a project led by Hansen's husband. In addition to the university, Educate Tanzania started a micro-enterprise loan (MEL) program that so far has helped graduates start nine new businesses. The nonprofit is also leading efforts to create a food-processing plant to help eliminate food wasting before it can be consumed or sold at market.

"This is so not about Steve and me. This is about our partners. If we didn't have our partners and the 500 people we communicate with in our newsletter, this would go nowhere," Hansen said. "I believe things are supposed to happen. This was supposed to happen."

Hansen encouraged others to find their purpose and to pursue it wholeheartedly.

"Follow your heart. Know where your passion is. Listen to that passion. I'm grateful to St. Cloud State, because I was so young when I got a global perspective, and I know that's much more common now. But for a year abroad — living in Europe, traveling and meeting all these people — that's priceless. Take a look at the world. There's a big world out there," she said. "Take the first step toward your passion. Find people who celebrate you, not just tolerate you. Find people who support your passion and hang on to them. We've had friends for 50 years from St. Cloud and they're some of our best friends. I would say don't be afraid to take that first step and have a plan to persist when the going gets rough. Because it will."