Kaitlyn Hughes | news editor

Jill Nolan Jankowski stepped off a Greyhound bus in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and immediately knew she made a horrible mistake — she was throwing her future at Duquesne away.

She left the university to live with her mother who was lonely in Florida, but Jankowski knew her mother didn’t need her.

She turned to her high school journalism teacher, Boyd Ogle, to give her guidance. Instead, Ogle gave her the money to come back to Pittsburgh. Years later, she tried to pay him back, but he simply told her to pass it on.

“Which I eventually did,” Jankowski said.

Out of an appreciation for the money she received from her former teacher and the full-commission scholarship she earned at the university, Jankowski and her husband began the “Jill and Stan Jankowski Endowed Scholarship,” which will be dedicated to the opinions editor at The Duke each year.

“I just felt that if it wasn’t for the scholarship that Duquesne gave me, I would have done something different,” she said. “I think everybody needs a college education.”

On Oct. 9, The Duke’s newsroom in 113 College Hall was dedicated as the Jankowski Student Media Hub.

“It will be a lasting tribute, and sign of our deep appreciation to Jill and Stan, for their generous support of current and future generations of Duquesne University journalists,” Duquesne President Ken Gormley said at the dedication ceremony.

Jankowski first began her journalism journey in high school as a columnist for the school’s newspaper and as editor of the school’s magazine. She came to Duquesne in the 1960s because Ogle said there was a good journalism program.

Duquesne was the only college Jankowski applied to, and at first she did not think she got accepted because an acceptance letter never arrived.

Instead, she came home one day to a letter saying her government loans got approved and that she had an upcoming appointment at the university. Thinking that the date of the appointment was when classes started, she made arrangements to stay with her grandmother and come to Pittsburgh. When she arrived in the Steel City a family friend told her Duquesne classes started two weeks prior.

“I got here. I knew absolutely nothing,” Jankowski said. “When I got here all I had were a pair of sandals.”

But her lack of preparation did not stop her from developing her career.

As a journalism major, Jankowski wrote all different types of stories, but she naturally gravitated toward column writing at The Duke.

Duquesne wasn’t solely about academics for Jankowski; she also held a job at Bickford’s Restaurant in Downtown and met her husband, Stan Jankowski, while in school.

One day, a Duquesne alumnus reached out to Jankowski and told her he had been reading her columns and he thought she should go into advertising. He said he was willing to help her get a job, but it could not be at the big advertising agency he was working at because the creative director did not believe in hiring women.

“That was the kind of stuff you used to run into,” she said.

Jankowski found herself working at Joseph Horne Company in advertising, but she said the work was boring because she already knew how to do everything. During her time working there she met Pat Carfagna, who became one of Jankowski’s good friends.

Carfagna kept getting in trouble for being on the seventh floor of Joseph Horne’s, which left her confused because she was never up there. One day as she was going up the escalator she looked over and saw Jankowski, and she understood why she kept getting in trouble — they looked exactly alike.

“We were like twins,” she said. “We were friends ever since.”

At the dedication ceremony, Carfagna was not only excited to see Jankowski after a long time, but proud to celebrate with her.

“I told her ‘no one deserves it more than you,’” she said.

Jankowski eventually married Stan and the pair moved to Midland, Michigan.

During her time in Michigan, Jankowski’s career blossomed. She wrote for the Midland Daily News, worked at a community college’s public relations department, got her master’s degree from Central Michigan University and she worked in marketing and communications at Dow Corning Company, which allowed her to travel around the United States and out of the country.

Despite starting out as a journalism major in college, Jankowski was glad most of her career was spent in advertising and public relations.

“None of my newspaper jobs were very challenging, and I think the marketing and communications side gave me more opportunity both to have a career and also do things I wouldn’t have normally done,” Jankowski said. “I wasn’t stuck behind a desk all the time.”

Stan Jankowski is not only proud, but impressed by the work his wife has done throughout her career.

“I just think it’s great that Jill got honored the way she has been. It’s going to continue, and we’ll just push forward to help anybody we can have the same experience,” he said.

Kaitlyn Hughes can be reached at hughesk10@duq.edu