“Janzow Jan” Retiring After 39 Years of Service

Photo by Robin Consier

by April Bayer

Janzow Dining Hall cashier Jan Pogreba, known to many students over the years as “Janzow Jan” and “Brommer Jan,” will be retiring in early April after nearly 40 years of service to the Concordia community.

Pogreba is originally from Iowa and attended college at Northwestern Institute in Minneapolis, Minn., where she met her husband through a wrong-number phone call.

She began her career at Concordia in 1979 when dining services were still located in Brommer Hall. She was looking for a job that would give her more free time in the evenings to take care of her newborn daughter after working in medical technology for eight years at Seward Memorial Hospital.

Pogreba said that some of her favorite memories at Concordia were when two students walked over seven miles to her house to visit her following the birth of her child and when a student gave her a “Concordia Mom” t-shirt as a gift.

“I’ve always taken on probably more than just a cashier role here,” Pogreba said. “It’s kind of like (the students) are my family, or they’re my son or daughter.”

Pogreba said her job has changed in many ways over the last 39 years. Students ate at 10-foot-long tables and had numbered meal cards punched each day when she first started working in Brommer. She appreciates that technology has made her job faster and easier but has also noticed that students are often more engaged in their phones than in conversation with each other. She also feels that Concordia now makes more of an effort to address students’ individual dietary needs.

Pogreba says her care for the students is what makes her so passionate about her job.   

“Concordia is more than academics. We are building you for a better tomorrow,” Pogreba said. “When they say well-rounded, what it means is that how you act with other students here in the dining hall is almost as important in the working world as what you know. If you put your feet up on the table here, that won’t work very well in an interview when you put your feet up on the table there.”

Pogreba and her husband will be moving to a retirement community in Austin, Texas, to be closer to their daughter. Pogreba hopes to find new activities to occupy her time and is looking at volunteering at a nearby elementary school.

“Everything we do, we pretty much let the Lord try and be in control,” Pogreba said. “He’s had a huge hand in everything, and I think He had a huge hand when I came to Concordia because He knew that I would love working here and that I would love working with the students and my fellow workers. It’s been an absolutely terrific job for me for almost 40 years.”