When Mary Grace Newman, BA ’20, MA ’21, was 12, she volunteered to narrate and record children’s books at the Wolfner Talking Book and Braille Library, located in the shadow of the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. Years later, she’s a library technician at the Library of Congress, next door to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. 

Newman’s path between libraries in the two capital cities was bridged by a third domed seat of power: Jesse Hall, where she was introduced to the Kinder Institute through a freshman political science class at Mizzou. “It felt like this high-in-the-sky place on the fourth floor of Jesse,” she says. “Majoring in political science and minoring in history and constitutional democracy, I kept going back to Kinder. I kept craving that learning environment and that space where I got to ask those questions of professors and experts outside of class and see the forefront of research.” 

This story originally appeared on Show Me Mizzou. 
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