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LINEC Steering Committee Members 2024-2025
Nola Jordan, Chair 
Nola is a retired high school French teacher. Born and raised in Kentucky, she spent her working life in Connecticut. When retirement brought her to New Hampshire, she began seeking ways to become part of the community. She worked part-time in a small independent bookstore – a dream job for a lifelong reader – and began volunteering with several organizations: Concord Hospital, the Concord Cold Weather Shelter, Kearsarge Food Pantry, and the Friendly Kitchen. She served three terms as a trustee of her local library, the final four years as Treasurer.
In 2010, friends introduced her to LINEC. Taking courses through LINEC has enabled Nola to pursue ongoing interests and explore new ones. An added benefit has been getting to know and connecting with so many interesting fellow learners.
Throughout her life, learning about the world through travel has been Nola’s great passion. Closer to home, she loves being outdoors, whether hiking, skiing, golfing, or birding. When Mother Nature keeps her inside, she enjoys reading, knitting, and learning to play the recorder.
Richard A. Hesse, Vice Chair
Prof. Hesse graduated from Georgetown University Law Center and served as a community lawyer in Philadelphia on a fellowship from the University of Pennsylvania. He headed a police-community relations project in Philadelphia before moving to Boston, where he headed a national project focused on consumers’ constitutional rights. In 1974, he joined the faculty of Franklin Pierce Law Center (now University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law), where he concentrated on state and federal constitutional law and international human rights.
Prof. Hesse has been an active advocate for civil and human rights for over 50 years and was twice awarded the Bill of Rights Award by the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union. He has served as a Humanities Council speaker since the early 1980s, presenting programs on Civil Liberties and National Security, Free Speech, Freedom of Religion, the United States Supreme Court, The Founding Fathers, Daniel Webster, John Winant, and John Marshall.
In the late 1990s, he became active in LINEC as a student, a member of the Steering Committee and Curriculum Committee, and as a presenter of courses including “1776: The Year That Changed The World,” “Daniel Webster and John Winant,” “Founding Fathers: What Were They Thinking,” “Music As A Mirror of History,” “The Freedom Riders of 1961” and several others.
Lee deBell, Treasurer
Lee has been an active member and Treasurer of LINEC since 2011.
Before retiring from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2010, Lee spent the final eighteen years of his career as a national training specialist, developing implementation and training plans for the nationwide rollout of multiple large strategic computer systems in the agency. He also served as the lead instructor for many training courses. He led a team that developed and implemented a “Train-the-Trainer” program to develop additional instructor teams throughout the United States.
Lee is also a volunteer Instructor, Deputy State Director, and Data Manager for the AARP Driver Safety Program in New Hampshire and enjoys teaching the AARP Smart Driver classroom training course.
Lee enjoys photographing nature and finding ways to use technology to improve how we manage and carry out our daily lives. He and his wife, Charlotte, also enjoy their family and friends, reading, international travel (before Covid), and spending time enjoying nature.
Chris Hague, Secretary, Publicity and Marketing
“As I set out in life, I had no expectations of becoming a librarian. I taught fifth grade at the school I had attended, under the same beloved principal who was there when I was a child, then moved on to Hatfield, Massachusetts, where I taught fifth and sixth-grade language arts while earning my PhT (Put Husband Through) at UMass. When he graduated, we moved to New Hampshire, where I taught
in Bow and held various positions in the Bow Education Association, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But I left and spent some years at a scattering of part-time and full-time jobs as a young parent.
Quite by chance, I was recruited to the evening shift at the Weare Public Library. From there, my responsibilities and work hours expanded until I retired in 2016 after 17 years as director. The bridge between classroom teaching and library services is short. Today’s library is more than a repository for books. It’s an institution that fosters lifelong learning and personal development.
With this vocational history, I was naturally attracted to LINEC, where people share a common interest in the topics LINEC presents and the personal contacts it fosters. Besides enjoying LINEC classes, I am Vice President of the Eleanor Campbell Charitable Fund and Co-Chair of its Scholarship Committee. I’m a longtime member of Kitchen Table Writers, a spinoff from the writers’ group I started at the library. Other interests include knitting, sewing, reading, and spending time exploring outdoors with the family.”
Shirley Hesse, Nominating Committee Chair
Shirley was born and grew up in Maine. She earned her BSc degree at Farmington (ME) State Teachers College (now the University of Maine at Farmington) and her MSc degree at the Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University). She taught high school in Maine and New Jersey.
In the summer of 1961, she took a wonderful trip around the world before starting graduate school. Shirley moved to NH with her family (husband, daughter, and cat) in 1978. She enjoys reading, music (especially opera), gardening, photography, history, and traveling. With her husband, she has visited all 50 states, most of Canada, and all the continents, including Antarctica and above the Arctic Circle. Shirley and Dick have also enjoyed more than 50 Elderhostel/Road Scholar programs and trips. She has been a member of LINEC for more than 30 years.
Curtiss Rude, Curriculum Chair
Curtiss Rude has a BS in Physics from Carnegie-Mellon University and an MS in Electrical Engineering (solid-state physics) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He worked in the microelectronics industry for IBM in Vermont for 20+ years in various engineering and engineering management roles. His second career was as a high school chemistry and physics teacher for seven years.
Upon retirement, he took up astronomy as a hobby. He also plays club chess most weeks. Curtiss and his wife Suzanne have two grown daughters and reside in Loudon. Curtiss has been teaching a LINEC course during the spring and fall sessions.
Ann Ludders, Catalog Editor
Growing up on the West Coast (Vancouver, B.C., to be exact), Ann moved to New England with her husband in 1973 and has immersed herself in the region’s history and beauty ever since. After her third child entered the school system, Ann worked in early childhood education for several years in several capacities.
Finding it difficult to say no to a request for service, Ann has been on the Board of the Weare Public Library, the Weare Historical Society, and currently, the Weare/Henniker Quaker Meeting. She is an avid outdoors person, and although she no longer hikes the 4,000 footers, she gets out on the trails regularly. When not hiking, she loves getting her hands dirty in the garden. Ann and her husband have enjoyed LINEC classes for over 10 years.
Linda Graham, Steering Committee Member
A graduate of Case Western Reserve University in classics, Linda’s life adventure quickly veered into the culture of the time. She and her husband, Ralph Jimenez, built their home in the woods of New Hampshire, off the beaten path and off the grid, where they lived, intent on life in the arts, for many years. Returning to live in Concord, she worked in various capacities in Early Childhood Education, retiring from the NH Dept. of Health and Human Services, Bureau of Developmental Services.
Free now to continue her work in the visual arts, which has been a tangent to all her other work, she practices her art in painting, drawing, or collage on a daily basis. She has also taken the lessons learned from years spent in the woods to speak to and advocate for our wild natural places, especially as the NH leader of the Great Old Broads for Wilderness.
Lisa Melander, Steering Committee Member
Lisa M. Melander holds a BA in philosophy from NEC, where she was a student of the late R. Peter Sylvester and an M.Ed. in education from Plymouth State U. She has served as a 4th, 5th, and 6th-grade teacher in public and private schools. Lisa was also a math coach, mentoring teachers and developing math intervention/enrichment programs for several schools.
In recent years, Lisa has designed and taught professional development courses for educators and worked with school districts on curriculum mapping. She currently works as a math tutor. Her studies have richly informed her teaching of philosophy and poetry.
Glenn Stuart, Steering Committee Member 
Glenn Stuart, Professor of Theatre Emeritus, taught at New England College from 1984 to 2021. He also served as the resident scenic and lighting designer as well as technical director for the Theatre Department. At that time, Glenn designed scenery for more than 140 productions and lighting for more than 80 plays and dance concerts. In 2003, Glenn founded The Open Door Theatre, where he designed and directed 21 productions, including Hamlet, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, In Cold Blood, North of Boston, and Winesburg, Ohio.
In 1991, he received a Kennedy Center Award for Excellence in Scenic Design for his design of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. That same year, he and his student technical crew received the ACTF Region I Award for Technical Excellence.
He taught a wide range of courses in theatre and liberal arts, including History of Theatre, Shakespeare, Stagecraft, Advanced Stage Lighting, The Design Process, and Human Rights on the World Stage and Screen. In 2006, he received the Robert A. Kilgore Award for Teaching Excellence.
Glenn was an active supporter of high school theatre throughout New England, adjudicating high school drama festivals in New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Maine. He was also active with the Community Players of Concord, NH, designing and building scenery and serving on the Board of Directors.
Glenn completed his graduate studies at SUNYA, working with Jarka Burian, Roger Herzel, Robert Donnelly, and Judith Barlow. Glenn began his commercial professional design career at the New London Barn Playhouse in the summer of 1978. He spent over 13 years working the Straw Hat Theatre circuit as a scenic designer and technical director. Glenn also worked as a freelance lighting designer for Hayles and Company, Travis-Stuart Dance, The New Hampshire Dance Alliance, and Petit Papillion, The Children’s Ballet Company of New Hampshire.
He continues to teach Shakespeare for LINEC and does freelance scenic and lighting work at WMUR-TV. Since 2005, he has served on the Board of Directors of Community Bridges NH.