Written by Ben Cox – When asked if there’s a doctor in the house, a pair of Howard Payne professors can now gladly say yes, there are two of us.

 

Dr. Jennifer McNiece is the Assistant Professor of Government, as well as the Director of International Study and Academic Travel. McNiece recently completed her PhD in Business Administration with an emphasis in Homeland Security after working towards it for the last six years, during which time she worked full-time at the Guy D Newman Academy of Honors alongside her husband. 

The other Dr. McNiece, Matthew, is the Director of the Honors Academy as well as the Associate Professor of History and Government. The pair met in 2001, and attended the Delta Chi Rho Crush Party as their first date while students in Howard Payne’s honors program. The pair reconnected after McNiece returned to Texas in 2004, married in ’05, and returned in 2007 to Brownwood for teaching positions with the Honors Academy.

Jennifer says the move away from Brownwood was a purposeful one. “We knew when we moved to Ft Worth it was really an effort to do what we needed to do to get back here to Brownwood. And here we are and here we plan to stay.”

She says Brownwood is important to them because of their personal history here. ”This place had so much to do with forming us into the people we are. We are thankful to be able to be here and be a part of helping this generation and a few more after them grow during the part of your life where so much is forming about how you see the world.”

Seeing Brownwood through two sets of eyes is an interesting vantage point, according to Matthew. “As a student your community is your core group of friends, but when you come back as an adult its also the people you go to church with, that you see at your place of business, that you see with whatever community activities you’re involved with. Brownwood’s actual size hasn’t changed all that much, but compared to when we were students, it’s a lot bigger and has a lot more diversity in terms of things to do and people to meet than we thought there was. It’s been interesting to see it from both perspectives.”

The couple are also heavily involved with the Brownwood Lyric Theatre, with Matthew onstage, and Jennifer behind the scenes. He is currently in rehearsals for the title role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, while Jennifer sits on the organizations Board of Directors and volunteers in the box office during performances.

Matthew says that despite the pairs extensive travels as part of Jennifer’s job as the Director of International Studies, the variety available in Brownwood rivals that of most cities, just on a smaller scale. “It’s nice walking to a grocery store (in London) for things for dinner and hearing 10 different languages, but Brownwood has it’s own kind of version of that. You can go downtown and get street tacos two doors down from Filipino food. You go up Coggin and you can get two different kinds of very much home cooked, authentic Asian food.”

The pair is glad to be a prime example of how Brownwood Feels Like Home. In this case, twice.