A Lifelong Learner Gives Back

By Robyn Murray

Carol Hoffman does not describe herself as exceptional. In fact, she often does the opposite — downplaying accomplishments that form a remarkable life. A lifelong learner, Carol, a Burnett Society member, went from a class of three in a one-room schoolhouse to teaching across the country, including in subjects she taught herself. Driven by her natural curiosity, she leaned on a skill gained in her rural school and later at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln: the simple practice of how to learn.

‘If you learn how to learn, you can do most anything’

Carol grew up on a grain farm about 10 miles from Shelton, Nebraska, a village in Buffalo and Hall counties, population 1,034. She never had more than two classmates in her early school years. And by the time she reached high school in Shelton, where she graduated as valedictorian, that smallness had become an unexpected strength.

“Because it was so small, I had an opportunity to try just about everything,” Carol said. “Even if I had no talent for it, I was in there trying it.”

When Carol arrived at UNL, the transition was less intimidating than she had expected. Despite the larger setting, many of her classes were still relatively small. What stood out most was the opportunity to get involved. She joined multiple organizations, served as president of a women’s club and was named Homecoming Queen in 1963. She also was named one of the top five female students at the university and coincidentally shared the honor with another Shelton resident. “If we didn’t get the best education in Shelton, we must have learned how to study and how to work,” she said.

Carol graduated early, earning a bachelor’s degree in French with a minor in Spanish in what was called the Teachers College at the time. After teaching for three years in Colorado, Carol married her college sweetheart, who had been a law student at Nebraska, and followed his career across the country. Eventually, after a move to Alabama, she returned to the classroom herself, this time in an entirely new field.

It began as a casual interest in interior design courses and grew into a master’s degree and, unexpectedly, a long teaching career. Encouraged by faculty at the University of Alabama, Carol found herself moving from grading papers to teaching architectural drawing, then graphics courses in engineering. Eventually, she was teaching mechanical engineering students 3D AutoCAD software and had written the course’s graphics manual, all in a discipline she had taught herself.

For Carol, there is nothing unusual about this progression. She credits it all to the foundation laid decades earlier at UNL. “It taught me how to learn,” she said. “If you learn how to learn, you can do most anything.”

That belief continues to shape her life in retirement. Since leaving the classroom in 2004, Carol has traveled extensively, volunteered as a reading tutor for young children and enrolled in adult learning courses.

Her gratitude for her education and the opportunities it created led Carol to make a planned gift supporting students at UNL through the University of Nebraska Foundation. Along with two endowed scholarships in her and her late husband’s names, her estate plans ensure future support for students who may be starting where she and her husband once did, with limited resources but boundless potential.

“We both came from fairly humble backgrounds,” Carol said. “I’d like to see somebody else maybe in our situation, or even more in need, be able to use something like this.”

It is a quiet legacy, much like Carol herself: steady, generous and driven by the belief that learning changes lives, one opportunity at a time.