Nancy Schoenberg and her husband Mark Swanson are celebrating 25 years of marriage, but
they still can't agree about how they met while in graduate school at the University
of Florida. When I walked in and I saw her sitting there
and said "she looks cute" sat down next to her and that’s how we met. Alternatively,
I attended the Florida Anthropology student association and thought I'm going to sit next
to this guy because he looks like a nice cute guy. So this is the big fight of our marriage,
is who sat down next to who. A few years and two kids later they arrived
in Lexington What I do mostly is applied kinds of research
on the food environment and I'm interested in how the social and physical environment
can change what people eat. And I too am a health disparity focus researcher and I'm
most interested in understanding how to work with communities to improve their health.
I do a lot more teaching than Nancy does, and I would say the teaching is my favorite
part. There is something about being in a classroom when you can just see a student
get it, I can speak for both of us and say another favorite part is when we actually
get off campus and go out in to the counties and communities of Kentucky and see where
our research is really making a difference in people's lives.
In fact, both described Letcher County as kind of a second home because of Swanson's
work with the AppalTree program and Nancy's work with Faith Moves Mountains.
We've got a double storefront on Main Street and that has been a really welcoming rich
community for us, we've worked in eight counties in southeastern Kentucky and Letcher County
has been sort of our headquarters. As they work with communities they've come
to count on each other for advice. We've got a grant right now and that is a
grandparents raising grandchildren project where our intervention is gardening intervention,
now I am not a gardener but I am an gerontologist so Mark has been very helpful with the gardening
aspect of things, so that kind of partnership with him bringing knowledge of the younger
folks and also of the gardening really compliments a lot of the work I do with the older part
of the population. In my healthy eating project in Letcher County, this is a community driven
project and one of the components they really wanted to do was a cooking class and I don’t
cook and so being able to turn to Nancy and say " ok what are the components we need to
have" gave me a lot of confidence in being able to turn to her for advice.
And with each collaboration they learned even more about each other too.
He is a real inspiration in so many ways, Mark is a person who has definitely the best
judgment of anyone I know, in his quiet persistent integrity filled way, he inspires me tremendously.
Wow that's tough to follow. Sorry. Actually it's not tough to follow because Nancy is
the kindest most, thoughtful of what she does affects other people, and person I've ever
met. So while they still may not agree about how
they met, they're on the same page when it comes to impacting the people of their adoptive
state. If you look at the research that we do and
our goal to have an impact on the commonwealth at large, we have such commonality and values,
I think we both feel incredibly fortunate at the backgrounds we've had; the strong families,
the financial support, the security we've had and to try and help other families get
to that level where they can benefit from the kind of privileges that we've had, that's
something we've shared from the very beginning. We could sit in our offices or in the library
and do research all day, but for us it really comes alive when we are engaged with other
people and that requires us to be happily in community settings. I also think when we're
working in the communities of rural, particularly eastern Kentucky; it's a two-way street. It's
not like we're out there telling people "this is how you're going to have a better life",
it's people helping each other.