Faculty receive Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in Art and History

Gwyn Hervochon, Alex Sjobeck and Derek Ganong were honored for their work in history and music education

Every two years, the Boise Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in Arts and History recognize individuals for their contributions to Boise’s creative and cultural community. This year, three Boise State University professors were honored for their dedication to history and education.

Gwyn Hervochon, associate professor and archivist at the Albertsons Library, received the Excellence in History Award. Music professors Alex Sjobeck and Derek Ganong earned the Excellence in Education Award for founding the Gene Harris All-Stars Jazz Program.

These awards highlight community members who “demonstrated distinguished service, creative accomplishment and a record of publication, presentation or research that enhances Boise’s artistic, historic and broader cultural life,” according to the Boise City Department of Arts and History.

Gwyn Hervochon, Excellence in History

Hervochon, who has worked as an archivist at Boise State University since 2013, was honored with the Excellence in History award for her work curating exhibits, processing historical collections and teaching students about university and state history.

Hervochon has worked on many exhibitions for the library, though some stand out to her more than others. In 2016, Hervochon curated an exhibit displaying a first edition copy of Shakespeare’s Folio, his entire collected works. 

“The idea was to make the exhibit as big and engaging as we possibly could,” Hervochon explained. “I got to work with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, faculty in different programs, history professors and theater professors who all contributed. It was really a big celebration.”

Hervochon also helped bring the ‘Americans and the Holocaust’ exhibit to Boise from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. in 2023. She collaborated with local organizations on programming for the exhibit and drew in thousands of visitors.

“It was overwhelming how supportive and grateful people were. They couldn’t go to Washington, D.C., but we’re bringing content from these world-renowned collections to campus and to our community,” Hervochon said.

She noted while many traveling exhibits come from across the country or world, the team always aims to tie in local relevance.

“We always try to make local connections too, so people feel like it’s relevant to our own history and our own community,” she said. “That’s why we work with local organizations, so that we’re making those connections and making it relevant for people here in Idaho.”

Early in her time working in the archives, Hervochon began a project she referenced as a “highlight of her career” — processing the papers of pivotal Boise State professor Tom Trusky. 

The project took several years and fundamentally shaped her passion and interests as a historian.

“[Trusky] had a bunch of really cool and engaging research interests that went beyond the scope of what you might normally think of for an English professor,” Hervochon noted. “He was really into researching artists and writers who lived and worked in Idaho.”

Hervochon described the Trusky papers as the collection that “keeps on giving”, with research that remains culturally and historically significant. His studies focused heavily on art, poetry and films made in Idaho.

On Sept. 25, she will join a panel at the Kenworthy Silent Film Festival in Moscow, Idaho, to discuss the 1919 film ‘Told in the Hills’ — the first feature film made in Idaho that Trusky preserved and made available for future generations.

Considered lost for many years, the film resurfaced after Trusky located two surviving copies in archives in Russia. After reaching out to the archives, he brought a copy of the film back to Idaho. Missing portions of the film were recreated with the original scripts, and the modernized restoration will be shown at the festival.

From curating exhibits to processing historical collections, Hervochon said she feels honored  her work, and the work of her collaborators, matters to people.

“It means so much that we’re helping create meaningful experiences for people, and it’s not just for our benefit that we’re doing it,” she added. 

Hervochon said she shares the Excellence in History award with the entire campus community and those who have supported her and her work.

“The award is recognizing the work of other people too, because it’s not just me,” she said. “This isn’t just my solo research project — these are projects that involve a lot of hard work from a lot of people in all kinds of different ways on campus.”

Alex Sjobeck and Derek Ganong, Excellence in Education 

Sjobeck and Ganong founded the Gene Harris All-Stars Jazz Program in 2021 to fill an “unfilled niche” for students in the Treasure Valley — giving them the chance to play small-group jazz.

The audition-only, after-school program brings together high school and middle school students with a passion for jazz music to be coached by professionals. The groups rehearse biweekly and perform at gigs arranged by Sjobeck and Ganong.

“We expect our students to be professionals,” Sjobeck said. “These are top-level high-schoolers, and we expect a lot from them.”

This year, the program expanded to include a collegiate group, the Gene Harris Jazz Combo, made up of Boise State students.

Gene Harris, a jazz pianist born in 1933, was celebrated for his “cultural, artistic and educational impacts in Idaho and the community,” according to Ganong. 

The Gene Harris Jazz Festival was named after him, and community members began an endowment in his name to support jazz education. 

Though Harris passed away before it was fully funded, Ganong added receiving the Excellence in Education award is a hopeful step toward reviving the endowment, which would provide a significant boost to Boise State’s jazz program.

“We’re extremely understaffed and underfunded as far as jazz is concerned, and it’s only been through the support of the community and donors that we’ve been able to do things such as the All Stars [program],” Ganong said. 

Alongside co-founding the All-Stars program, Sjobeck recently co-founded Lala’s Jazz, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening Idaho’s jazz community and education. The organization will present the Gene Harris All-Stars and Jazz Combo monthly, giving students professional jazz performance experience.

“We’re creating a space for students to get the experience of presenting a show from the beginning of promoting it, to making a set list, to figuring out what they’re going to say in front of the audience,” Sjojeck explained. “That’s such an important part of our program as well, to give the students that experience of being a professional musician.”

Ganong emphasized the importance of showing music students the different pathways they can take while pursuing a career in music.

“Too often when we’re talking about music, people say, ‘Well, if my degree is in music, then I’m either going to be a band director or I’ll be playing on the street with an open case,’ but there are tons of things in between that.”

Sjobeck and Ganong hope to open doors for Idaho music students that weren’t open before. Both dived into their music education in New York City, where mentors and educational experiences shaped their careers, but they don’t want local students to miss out on similar opportunities. Through the program, students learn from professionals across the country while building a network in the Treasure Valley.

“They’re creating a community of serious student jazz musicians from all different high schools in the valley,” Sjobeck said. “They all get to know each other, and they all start working together, booking gigs together and talking about music together. It’s really cool to see, because it’s so advantageous to have that support community of your peers.”

Sjobeck and Ganong believe the jazz program at Boise State must grow to provide students the opportunities they deserve, hoping to eventually offer a Certificate in Jazz.

“I’m hopeful that this award will draw attention to jazz and will sort of say, ‘Hey, we’re actually doing really good things here, let’s continue to do good things,’” Ganong added.

All three Boise State-affiliated recipients emphasized that while the Mayor’s Awards are an honor, they also reflect Boise State University’s broader mission to create meaningful opportunities for students and the community — a mission made possible through campus-wide collaboration.

“In the arts, collaboration is extremely important,” Ganong said. “That’s something we should be teaching more in higher education, how we can collaborate, and not just in the arts, but in all facets. The fact that more than one entity at Boise State has won this award shows that we’re all working towards the same thing.”