CMU’s Brian Brunner appointed to Michigan Humanities Council board of directors

Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Mount Pleasant resident and Central Michigan University alum Brian Brunner to serve on the Michigan Humanities Council Board of Directors last month.

“Brunner attended his first MHC meeting Feb. 8 and has already taken active role in MHC programming,” MHC spokeswoman Kate Bartig said.

Brunner will serve a three-year term on the 24-person board, she said.

Eight new members joined the board, four appointed by Snyder and four elected by current board members.

Brunner, the director of the CMU Chippewa Athletic Fund, said he has been inducted into MHC under unusual circumstances after being appointed to serve on the Board of Podiatric Medicine and Surgery last year.

“My term was supposed to start in January,” Brunner said. “Then Nancy Short, the deputy director of appointees for the governor, called me and said, ‘Hey, I know your term hasn’t even started yet, but you’ve been promoted.’ I feel this Board is a much better fit for my background, you know I was a creative writing student, a journalism major at CMU, so the arts and humanities and promotion of culture is a very important cause to me. I was extremely honored to be appointed to any board though.”

Brunner earned a B.S. in journalism from CMU and is currently working toward a Master of Science in Administration. He is a published poet and former CMU quarterback. Brunner also played professional football abroad for the Schwaebisch Hall Unicorns of Schwaebisch Hall, Germany.

The Council’s job is to plan events and activities revolving around the introduction and promotion of the arts and culture to the communities in Michigan.

Brunner said his work will be similar to that of the Board of Trustees at CMU, which the president answers to.

“The staff of the MHC reports back to the Board of Directors like, ‘here’s the state of the budget, here’s a list of programs we’d like to do, etc,’” Brunner said. “It’s basically an oversight board. Then there are committees after that as well, and I’ll serve on one of those as well. My appointment is so new that I don’t even have a committee assignment yet. But basically my involvement will include that, and then we have board meetings three to four times a year.”

MHC is composed of a group of people dedicated to bringing culture to the population of the state of Michigan, according to its website.

“Our over-arching mission is to connect people and communities, and to connect people to culture, the arts, and who we are as a people,” Brunner said. “I’m working with a great group of people, the staff is composed of an amazing group of people who work very, very hard to get their job done.”