Hastings College Fine Arts Hall of Fame to induct seventh class
(Hastings, Nebraska) – The seventh class of the Hastings College Fine Arts Hall of Fame features six visionary artists who will be recognized during a reception and ceremony held in conjunction with Hastings College Homecoming on Friday, September 25 at the Jackson Dinsdale Art Center.
Inductees include:
Charlie Austin ‘75 of Seattle, Washington, for music
Michelle (Schrad) Kondrich ‘04 of University Park, Maryland, for art
Becky Noble ‘76 of Omaha, Nebraska, for theatre
Jamie (Call) Reimer Seaman ‘00 of Papillion, Nebraska, for music
Dena (Summerfield) Swasey ‘92 of Sugar Land, Texas, for theatre
Mary Vaughan ‘82 of Hastings, Nebraska, for art
The Fine Arts Hall of Fame recognizes Hastings College alumni who have made a difference in their communities. It recognizes their extraordinary contributions to the arts and the lasting impact on culture and society.
The reception for inductees begins at 5:30 p.m., with the ceremony beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the JDAC (700 E. 12th Street). Tickets for the event are $30 for adults, $15 for children ages 4-12 and free for children ages 3 and under. They may be purchased by contacting the Hastings College alumni office at 402.461.7363 or at hastings.edu/homecoming.
Inductee Biographies
Seward native Charles Robert Austin ‘75 is an internationally acclaimed operatic bass-baritone. “Possessor of a strikingly beautiful voice” and “completely commanding on stage” are but two of the powerful phrases used by critics and writers to describe Austin’s vocal talents.
A 1988 Metropolitan Opera Competition Finalist, he has sung numerous roles and productions with the Metropolitan Opera, National Opera DC, Opera Pacific, Cincinnati Symphony, Pittsburgh Opera, Virginia Opera and the Tokyo Philharmonic. He was also a participant in the critically acclaimed “Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart Emerging Singers Program,” a program sponsored by the Wagner Society of Washington, D.C.
Austin’s operatic repertoire features over 100 roles, and his performance resume covers venues in North America, Europe and Asia, including seven Carnegie Hall appearances. He has appeared with the Chicago Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, the Holland Festival at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Spoleto Festival in Italy, Canadian Opera Company, Vancouver Opera in BC, the Tokyo Philharmonic, Mexico City Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Dallas Symphony and Dallas Opera, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, DC (Kennedy Center), Greater Miami Opera, Florentine Opera, Hawaii Opera Theater, Anchorage Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, Los Angeles Master Choral, LA Opera and the VARA Radio Symphony of the Netherlands.
A former Marine Corps Officer, Austin can be heard on several recordings including the benchmark recording of Menotti’s The Consul as the Secret Police Agent, recorded under the direction of the composer himself at the Festival of Three Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, as Praise God Tewke in Howard Hanson’s Merry Mount, La Fedelta Premiata by Haydn with the Padua,Italy Chamber Orchestra, as well as Shostakovich’s The Execution of Stepan Razin, with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
Michelle Kondrich ‘04, a Nebraska native, received her bachelor of arts degree from Hastings College where she focused on studio art.
After a decade of developing as an illustrator and building a successful freelance career, she joined The Washington Post in 2023 as a designer and art director for the Opinions desk, and was recently promoted to senior designer. There, she creates illustrations, commissions other illustrators and has had several comic-style pieces published.
Prior to joining the Post, Kondrich's career also included positions at The Getty museum in Los Angeles and Georgetown University, where she worked for the School of Continuing Studies. While working in these roles, she continued her freelance work providing editorial illustrations for an extensive client roster that included The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Financial Times, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and NPR. In 2017, she also created and hosted a podcast, Creative Playdate, in which she interviewed artists about pursuing creative careers while raising children. She interviewed well-known illustrators such as Lucy Knisley, Keith Negley, and Dan Santat.
Her work in illustration and art direction has been recognized multiple times by the Society for News Design, American Illustration and The Society of Illustrators. With her illustration, Kondrich focuses on giving a narrative feel to even the most conceptual ideas, and she is passionate about telling visual stories in often surprising ways. In her art direction, she is persistently looking to bring in new artists with a diversity of perspectives and styles to engage readers on nearly any subject.
She lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband and daughter.
Becky Noble ‘76 is passionate about transforming lives through music and theatre. She graduated from Hastings College in 1976 and taught music in Nebraska, Iowa and Massachusetts. In 1991, she founded Cabaret Theatre, a professional jazz ensemble that tours throughout the region and produces a sold-out Christmas Cabaret each December. In 1997, she purchased the Dundee Dinner Theatre, producing eight shows yearly until the theatre closed in 2004.
In 2006, Noble began teaching at South High Magnet School, soon becoming the visual and performing arts curriculum specialist. Her 16-year tenure led to specialized curriculums in piano, dance and guitar. In 2008, a summer performing arts academy was added; in 2017, it became the South High Summer Musical, whose mission was to maintain the integrity of multicultural musicals. Collaborating with local theatre companies, community actors and students, she produced critically acclaimed performances of In The Heights, Once On This Island and West Side Story.
Noble retired in 2022, and in 2023 became the interim executive director at the Omaha Community Playhouse. Six months became nearly three years; she recently retired for the last time.
Theatre credits include A Christmas Carol, Sweeney Todd, Parade, A Little Night Music, Nunsense, Godspell, the national tour of The Sound of Music and Hands On A Hardbody, for which she received the Playhouse Best Supporting Actor award.
Noble sang for four summers at Great Woods in Massachusetts with Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas. She served as chorale director of the Aksarben Coronation for seven years and co-directed, with husband Keith Allerton, the Nebraska Humane Society galas and Press Club shows for several years. Noble was a founding member of the professional chorale, Soli Deo Gloria Cantorum. She earned her M.Ed. from Doane University in 2008. Noble received the 2020 Governor’s Arts Award for excellence in Arts Education.
Recognized for her rich tone and nuanced storytelling, soprano Jamie (Call) Reimer Seaman ‘00 , who is known as Jamie Reimer professionally, has appeared in opera, oratorio and recital venues across four continents. She received the Gold Prize for Best Professional Singer at the 2024 London Virtuoso Competition. Concert highlights include soprano solos in Mozart’s Requiem, Handel’s Messiah, Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Choral Fantasy, as well as Liszt’s Christus for the American Liszt Society. Her operatic repertoire includes Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte), Contessa Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Erste Dame (Die Zauberflöte), and Anna Maurrant (Street Scene).
Reimer and pianist Stacie Haneline form a dynamic duo that performs regularly throughout the United States and Europe, with recent appearances in Antwerp, Belgium. Their performance of Words Like Freedom — a song cycle composed for the duo by Shawn Okpebholo — earned the Gold Prize at the 2024 London Virtuoso Competition. Their recording, The Last Songs of Robert Owens (Centaur Records, 2020), was recognized by The American Prize for championing the art songs and chamber music of composer Robert Owens.
With a particular focus on contemporary American art song, Reimer’s scholarly and performance work centers on the life and music of Robert Owens, for which she received a Special Judges’ Citation from The American Prize in 2021. She gave the world premiere of Owens’ 4 Sonnets to Eleonora Duse — written for her voice — in 2012 and performed the role of Ursula in the North American premiere of his opera Culture! Culture! in 2015.
In 2025, she hosted the Robert Owens Centenary Festival at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she also released the Robert Owens Songbook Centenary Edition, a collection of the composer’s unpublished works discovered in his archive.
A member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) since 2003, Reimer was a NATS Intern in 2006 and has presented at three national NATS conferences. Reimer was recently elected West Central Regional Governor for the organization. She is also a member of Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity and serves as the new music project director for Sigma Alpha Iota Philanthropies, Inc.
Reimer is the Richard H. Larsen Distinguished Professor of Music and Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and serves as Artist-Faculty at the Orfeo Music Festival in Vipiteno, Italy.
After earning a bachelor of arts in theatre and English with a minor in history from Hastings College in 1992, Dena (Summerfield) Swasey relocated to Michigan to pursue her passion for stage management. Following a brief but formative experience in summer stock theatre, she took a leap of faith and moved to Houston, Texas, to join The A.D. Players, a nationally recognized Christian theatre company. During her four seasons there, Swasey contributed to both mainstage productions and children’s theatre, refining her skills and deepening her love for collaborative storytelling.
While volunteering with the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo Speaker’s Committee, Swasey met local actor John Swasey. Their shared appreciation for the arts led to marriage and new professional opportunities, including Swasey’s work with Actors Etc., a talent agency representing a diverse roster of Houston-based and regional performers. She later returned to the stage management world, collaborating with respected Houston companies such as The Ensemble Theatre and Stages Repertory Theatre.
In 2000, Dena and John welcomed their first child and eventually grew their family to five. As a devoted stay-at-home mother of three, Swasey continued channeling her creativity by founding Chaos to Order, a business specializing in personal assistance and organizational consulting.
Recognizing the need for a stronger arts presence at her children’s school, Swasey became fine arts director at Westbury Christian School. Over more than a decade, she built and expanded a comprehensive arts program encompassing theatre, music, dance, and visual arts, leaving a lasting impact on students and the broader school community.
In the years since leaving Westbury Christian School, Swasey has remained a devoted patron of the theatre and has supported her family’s artistic endeavors, and is now stepping back into the professional stage management realm.
Mary Vaughan ‘82 is a narrative, yet, abstract painter whose work exudes a strong painterly style through intuitive variations on land and earth entity.
From Nature Forms based on ecology, to her playful “Bio-tiques Series” (based on the words biotic and antique), Vaughan combines painting with vintage finds and inlays. This unique aspect of built composition, brings the past into the present through visual metaphor.
Vaughan holds a BA in Art, Literature & Education from Hastings College, an MA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA (analytical theory guiding studio practice) from the Maine College of Art & Design. Vaughan taught Art and Art History in a prep school in Princeton, New Jersey, for 14 years before becoming a full-time painter in Santa Rosa, California in 2001.
Vaughan has had significant success showing her work over 20 years on the West Coast and in her home state. Accomplishments include recognition for provocative exhibits for Newcomer Artists under 30, coordinating Earth-Art shows every April to encourage environmental awareness, winning the cover image for the acclaimed Art Trails of Sonoma County magazine, having her work exclusively on localismwines.com labels, having her art digitalized as set design for Cather’s April Twilights as operatic song through the University of Nebraska, being the solo artist for Wings over the Platte at Stuhr Museum and, more recently, awarded a team residency in Nova Scotia though the Maine College of Art & Design.
Vaughan has maintained her ties to Nebraska, despite living on both coasts all of her working life and acknowledges the author Willa Cather as influence to becoming an artist.
Born in Hastings, Vaughan was encouraged to think in creative ways by a father whose love for old fonts and color as a commercial printer (William Byron Vaughan) and by a mother (Evadne Linnea Lonnquist-Vaughan) whose literary interests ignited intellectual thinking. Vaughan’s parents were also Hastings College graduates.
Vaughan recently restored a 1933 warehouse in Hastings as her Midwest galleries and studio. This art space will offer the public in-depth art shows and projects to boost the importance of the arts in the region and beyond. March of 2028 will launch the official opening of this venue with “Winged Migration: Dance of the Braided Stream” — hosting artists across Vaughan’s art life to celebrate the sandhill crane and what the natural world means to humanity.
Vaughan’s artwork can also be viewed online at maryvaughan.com.