Walter K. Hurst

Director of the Norris Theatre, Louisburg College

Class Year

1976

Professional Background

BA from Duke with completed majors in English, Economics, and Political Science. J.D. University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, 1981. MA in Shakespeare Authorship Studies, Brunel University, London, 2013. Currently Director of the Norris Theatre at Louisburg College, in addition to being an instructor in Poltical Science, Business Law, and Drama. I have previously taught English courses here at the College. Prior to that, I was the Managing Director at Lakeland Theatre Company, Littleton, NC.

How has being an English graduate from Duke University helped shape your professional success?

I was always a reader. The English Department at Duke helped focus my reading skills, sharpen my ability to communicate, and understand what I was reading in a significant and transformative way. With brilliant professors like John Clum and Reynolds Price, I learned to explore, unafraid, the boundaries of what I understood, and to actually crave that new knowledge as if it was food and life itself. Can you be "taught to learn"? I was taught to desire learning, and that desire has translated into a lifelong love of learning. As I went through llaw school and a career as a lawyer, writing for the law review, I used the skills I learned at Duke to make myself clearly understood. As a lawyer and a lobbyist in California, I used my writing and communication skills to carve out a successful career. And when I decided to "retuen home" to North Carolina, i used those skills to transform a strugglintisticg little theatre into an artistic powerhouse of creativity. Now, bringing back a long-dormant theatre program here at Louisburg College, I use my skills and my love oof learning to try and transform young peoples' lives and make them lovers of learning, too.

Walter K. Hurst