{"id":4695,"date":"2017-04-21T12:14:52","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T16:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/?p=4695"},"modified":"2017-04-21T12:14:52","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T16:14:52","slug":"loren-spears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/shg2017\/loren-spears\/","title":{"rendered":"Lor\u00e9n Spears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"profile-pic\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1303\/Loren-Spears-200x300-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Loren Spears\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" \/>Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Executive Director of the State of Rhode Island\u2019s Tomaquag Museum, Spears has accomplished a great deal throughout her career. She has worked to preserve the history, experience and culture of the local Native American people and leads this state\u2019s only American Indian museum.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, the museum received the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, the nation\u2019s highest honor given to museums and libraries for service to the community. Also this year, Spears received the Tom Roberts Prize for Creative Achievement in the Humanities from the Rhode Island Council on the Humanities. She was honored for her \u201ccompelling work as an advocate of Indigenous People\u2019s history and cultural heritage in preservation, the arts, and education.\u201d In 2010, Spears was named as one of 11 Extraordinary Women honorees for teaching and education.<\/p>\n<p>Spears received her undergraduate degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1989 and master\u2019s degree from the University of New England with a focus on elementary education. She founded the Nuweetooun School affiliated with the Tomaquag Museum and was a teacher in Newport public schools for 12 years. Spears is well known as an activist, essayist, artist, and two-term Tribal Councilwoman of the Narragansett Tribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em>Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Executive Director of the State of Rhode Island\u2019s Tomaquag Museum, Spears has accomplished a great deal throughout her career. She has worked to preserve the history, experience and culture of the local Native American people and leads this state\u2019s only American Indian museum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":581,"featured_media":4698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shg2017"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/581"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/commencement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}