Episode 23: A Legacy of Design and Education with Tom Neff, AIA, LEED AP

Join us as we explore the illustrious design career and remarkable creative leadership journey of Tom Neff,  AIA, LEED AP.  From growing up in Coshocton, Ohio to becoming a prominent figure in central Indiana’s K-12 architectural design community, Tom has contributed to encouraging equity and equality in K-12 schools. Learn more about his design strategy and the impacts he has had on countless students. 

With degrees in Architecture from The Ohio State University, Tom is a gifted architect who loves painting, sketching, making watercolors, and mentoring others toward achieving their career goals. Hear about some of his favorite stories and who the biggest inspirations in his life are and how they have influenced him and the work he does.    

Transcript

Sarah Hempstead: Welcome to Illuminate Navigating the Unknown through Creative Leadership. I'm Sarah Hempstead, a seasoned leader in creative problem solving and principal in charge at Schmidt Associates. And today I'm joined by retired principal in charge, Tom Neff, who spent over 19 years of Schmidt Associates influencing central Indiana's built environment.

Sarah Hempstead: With an outstanding resume of projects in Schmidt Associates, K 12, higher Education and Community Studios, Tom has positively impacted our owners through his work and dedication. In addition to his outstanding design experience, Tom serves the firm as a mentor where he is influenced the careers of young and seasoned architects.

Sarah Hempstead: Engineers, interior designers and construction administrators. And in this episode we'll talk about Tom's work, his most memorable experience and passion for the design world. Tom, thanks for joining us. 

Tom Neff: Wow. After that introduction, I don't know, is that me? I don't wanna make you blush. Thank you. But no, it was very generous, so I appreciate that.

Sarah Hempstead: I wanna talk about growing up in Kock in Ohio and and how you got interested in design in the first place. I suspect you were not full of architects and engineers just all around your community, but maybe you were. 

Tom Neff: No. KA was an interesting kind of place to grow up because it was one of those communities where a lot of businesses started and then went bigger.

Tom Neff: Things like there was a thing called Preti products that made rubber items that became rubber made and went on and on big time. And there were a bunch of other kind of small companies. There was Cloud Corporation where my dad worked to, made cast iron pipe that became US Steel and on on on. And so all the hydrants and things you see all over the country.

Tom Neff: Kind of came from that plant that was in Kock in Ohio, the Klau family. Anyway, there was a lot of that. My grandfather actually was a bank president of a savings and loan bank, and he had all the mortgages for most of the people in town. An interesting kind of thing of a big family area where a lot of entrepreneurs kind of people had settled in and then went on to other things.

Tom Neff: That was an interesting thing. My mother was actually a Zig, she was captain of the Ohio State Women's Golf team. Oh, wow. Yeah. She was the 

Sarah Hempstead: Ohio State. 

Tom Neff: And an amazing golfer and all that who gave all that up to have become a mom. But she was the ultimate mentorish mom. And I remember at her memorial service, they asked me to say something, say something about your mother.

Tom Neff: I said, when think about my mother, was she really believed that. You always had to look for the sense of wonder in something that if you found the sense of wonder, that's amazing. Then you capitalized on that and turned it into something else and I became the experimental wonder kid, whatever, having gotten, gotten, placed into so many camps.

Tom Neff: And things that sent me all over the country and every place else as a kid. So then I can have the sense of wonder and then capitalize on it to make it turn into something else. My father was an engineer. His background was actually a, an undergraduate degree in mathematics. So he was a math wizard and on, and ended up moving into engineering, metallurgical engineering.

Tom Neff: So that's basically what he did for this cast iron pipe company. And, and so he had said to me, you should really think about being an architect because you like to draw, you like to do all these different things. And I said, well, there's not 

Sarah Hempstead: many engineers who would recommend architecture to their kids.

Sarah Hempstead: I've heard it go the other way. 

Tom Neff: You asked my, my father was a very clever guy who really did understand. More about careers and things. Anyway, I said, what's an architect do? What's it like? He said, what's sort of like engineering? And I thought, no, I don't. I don't wanna do that. No, no slide rules. And so anyway, I ended up going into arts and sciences as a biology major because that seemed to be the most logical thing.

Tom Neff: Because I liked science. You know, I obviously, I like to draw always drawing and those kind of things, but I was really interested in science and I think the reason I was interested in science was that you get into other worlds, you get into, especially in biology, understanding. How different creatures, animals, plants, et cetera, live, develop, and add to the whole environment.

Tom Neff: So environment to me was really interesting when capturing environment in my mind and, and my sense of wonder and what to do with it. It was really something that fascinated me. The other thing that I was fascinated in was language. I love languages. My mother ended up becoming a Spanish teacher because that was part of her undergraduate degree, and so I actually took Spanish from my mother and then able to ended up going to school in Spain for a semester and blocked some of that Spanish in, but I also just, for the heck of it, took German at Ohio.

Tom Neff: I know it's like what? And got involved in this, uh, experimental, conversational program. 'cause back then, and this is way back in the seventies, languages were taught where you learn vocabulary and, and um, this was one where they were trying out to see if they could actually teach it verbally. Like the kid did to talk.

Tom Neff: So they made us commit if we signed up to do this to five quarters of German and then we could go to German Village in Columbus and all this kind of stuff. And at the end of the thing, we ended up taking the international fluency test to see where we placed. Sure. And so see if the thing worked. So I got a rating and by that time I transferred into architecture.

Tom Neff: So hold the German rating thing. I'll go back to the fact that when I got into organic chemistry at Ohio State, it was like, this is not good. This is not good. Like those carbon molecules, carbon atoms, they are not staying in place. This, this. And it was just not something that I, I enjoyed at all because it was very like down, very tight and very, a lot of pre-med students and a lot of ruthless people trying to make sure they got the A and you didn't.

Tom Neff: Anyway, I had a history class and there were a bunch of guys who came in with these really cool things like drawings and models, and I'm like, what? What do you have to take to get to do that? And they said, architecture. And I thought, well, that doesn't sound like what my dad told me. My dad had a friend, another engineer who was actually in the, he was assistant dean at Ohio State in the engineering college.

Tom Neff: Well, school of Architecture is in the College of Engineering at Ohio State. So he, through his friend, got me in the middle of the, the year my grades were good enough. That wasn't a problem. I get in, get dropped in, and I'm in with all these people who had already had the basic courses and it was like, oh.

Tom Neff: But it was also one of the things where like my, as my mother said, sense of wonder and what do you do about it? It was me, man. This is it. It was awesome. You know, you got to do all these things and experience all these things and capture environments. And then it brought in the art stuff that I love.

Tom Neff: 'cause you got to draw at Ohio State, it was one of the last Boars programs, so you had to do watercolors and full blown perspectives and all that kind of stuff. And, and, and an undergraduate, you didn't even get to present your projects. You put them up on the wall and we had to stand outside. And we all looked through the, the window on the door.

Tom Neff: They graded them, and if your perspectives weren't good or if the colors weren't good in your watercolor, they take 'em off the wall and throw 'em on the floor. And that's how they narrowed the class down. So we went from like 150, and when we actually graduated, we graduated with 10. Geez. Isn't that wild?

Tom Neff: That's brutal. It was something else. So anyway, but it was a good thing. And through that, go back to the German thing. There was a program to do international work exchange at Ohio State, and most of the work exchanges were England or Scotland, or an English speaking country. And they're like, oh boy, we can send you to Germany and then get a German student to come here.

Tom Neff: It'd be awesome. So I'm like, Hey, that sounds great. So I ended up going to Munich and worked for the state of Bavaria, get this, the school division for what would've been a a, I had a work permit, a four month work permit, and no one spoke English. Sure. It was one of those, like I was good for about an hour in German.

Tom Neff: At the end of the hour. It was like, oh my God. But I remember waking up two weeks into it. I woke up in the middle of the night saying, and I thought I'm dreaming in German, was really good snap and that, that I learned that immersion in something is really what makes you absorb. The culture, the experience, and then weave that back through.

Tom Neff: So at the end of the day, it was phenomenal experience for me and a real kind of transformational thing that ultimately, if I fast forward all that's really for me, what architecture became. It became an immersion experience of literally making myself part of whatever the challenge or the group or the client is or was, so that I can extrude back through what they were and what they thought.

Tom Neff: The other thing was that whole sense of wonder is I also believe that when an architect is someone who digests a client's dreams and then makes them a reality. And that's really the thrill for me of what being an architect has always been, and seeing that on people's faces when they're like, oh, that's, and I'm thinking, that wasn't me.

Tom Neff: What I did was I just. Became part of your world as much as I could, and then we collectively made that happen. That really was the kind of life changing thing for me. It also becomes the kind of life changing thing as a parent, that becoming part of your kids' world and understanding what that means to them, how they see that, and then expanding that so that they can see it in a bigger.

Tom Neff: Richer place, environment, et cetera. When you mentioned mentoring to me was not something where you say, okay, I'm gonna be your mentor, but it was becoming part of part of someone's world so that you could see how their world worked and then expanding that so that not only did I gain from that, but collectively.

Tom Neff: The group of us were able to do so much more. I think one of the things, and it's funny, you talk about design becomes that amazing thing where environments develop and evolve in, in. Excite and challenge and, and then ultimately go on in, in time. In a moment of digression, an architect I worked with many years ago from Chile that the test of a true design is that you take it down to a ruin.

Tom Neff: And he said, and if from that ruin, you can build it back. That is a piece of architecture and a piece of true design because the language that goes into a building is there in the ruin and in the framework of what you find, which I thought. Isn't that interesting? Because it isn't the superficial facade, it's the total environment that gets created.

Tom Neff: So that's always been a challenge because it needs to have that. That kind of richness that goes on in time. 

Sarah Hempstead: Tom, something that you and I worked together a long time and something, something that I've always found so enticing about working with you is architects and engineers to get a, get a bad rap about being one of two things, either cynical or egotistical.

Sarah Hempstead: Like we, we dress all in black. We, we, we've had, we've got our big fancy glasses and we've got our Warby Parkers and, and I don't find. And I never really have much of either of those traits in you. I, um, every project you work on. You get excited about and like, curious, maybe that's a good word. Really curious about who's gonna use it and why, and how we talk about that a little bit and the, the role, um, of that kind of curiosity and optimism in, in design.

Tom Neff: Thank you for saying that because that is exactly what I've been talking around. That sense of wonder or curiosity is the, to me, the essence of what all that is. I do have no glasses and I'm glad you noticed. One of the aspects of design or architecture there in all of it that sometimes gets missed are the more subtle things like textures or what you actually feel or smell or sense when you're in a space, and that is an interesting component about the curiosity of making that.

Tom Neff: That experience last longer beyond you, et cetera. I think the thing I that that's interesting to me is I think one of the things that I helped push through were these crazy facility studies that we did. Which when you think about you think, why would an architect want to get so involved in a facility study analysis?

Tom Neff: I learned more from those than anything I've ever done. Because what you learned was not only about the building, but you also learned how the facility, like school or set of school facilities, how they became what they were and. What they could become in the future. And that is really that challenge, that curiosity, that mystery.

Tom Neff: Not only did I learn a lot, but I think it expanded their horizons because they had to deal with what I thought, what the client thought and what the other engineers thought. So there was much more of a holistic experience of existing building and then. What the building could become and the hierarchy of importance of what those things that we found could contribute to, to, to going forward in the future.

Tom Neff: So that's been in the end of the, that was like end of career. At the end of my career I discovered this, but also a very humbling thing. It was because it takes that mystery of the design architect out of the picture because you've gotta become the problem solver of understanding what works, what doesn't, and how you can make it better.

Tom Neff: So it's like taking something Yeah. I'm sorry, go ahead. 

Sarah Hempstead: I was gonna say, so what brought you to K 12 education? Was that a goal or a passion to problem solve it there, or was it, is it a thing that happened that you embraced? 

Tom Neff: Now it's really funny because I've done all kinds of different architecture and one of the things I had kind of fallen into when I had early in my career was church architecture.

Tom Neff: Now I worked for Lero Troyer in South Bend, Indiana, Michel Market, mark Indiana, and Leroy was, had been Amish and became Mennonite and ended up being having a. Significant presence in Indiana architecture and then actually nationally, he linked arms with Jimmy Carter and they did all of the build it things, house build it thing, 

Sarah Hempstead: the Habitat for Humanity things 

Tom Neff: and yeah, habitat for Community all over the country.

Tom Neff: And I mean, he was he amazing thing. Anyway. Because I could draw and draw quickly from all my Ohio State experience, Leeman, would Dr. Take me to all these different kind of consultations with these different Mennonite church groups all around the country? And then we'd do these kind of group work sessions and that involved also into Catholic churches doing like whole Catholic church work sessions, which then the Catholic thing ended up being a book that I worked on.

Tom Neff: With the Archdiocese of Chicago on how to, uh, build or renovate Catholic churches. And that kind of got adopted by the Council of Bishops. Now that said, that was profoundly, um. That was very important to me because I, that I actually was how I became Catholic work on a book. You internalize it, you understand what all this is about and it changes you and it did.

Tom Neff: So that was a good experience. My, so the thing with schools. Was a real quirky thing because I had this, all this experience working with large groups, breaking them down into smaller groups and doing work sessions and flip charts and questionnaires. And then I ended up in working, like you'd go to different firms, worked with.

Tom Neff: Firm in, uh, farming Indiana, Hinkel Schultz. And they had this big school project they had just gotten and I had all this crazy experience that dovetailed right into that kind of work. But isn't long before you go through a couple of projects and pretty soon you are a school architect. And I thought you're the expert.

Tom Neff: If anyone had told me I was a school architect back when I was gonna be this, you know. Uh, and design architect of notoriety. It's like, you gotta be kidding me. However, that's definitely me. It, it hits all the, hits, all the, the bells or whatever for me, in terms of working with people. Problem solving, mentoring, not only staff I'm working with, but staff at the school to open their eyes.

Tom Neff: The community involvement became a huge component of what I did and what Schmidt does. Wayne Schmidt was the master of working with communities. I'll never forget him one time, one of my first experiences getting to parallel work with him, I think at Wayne Township. He said, we're gonna spend the next five days doing workshops and everything.

Tom Neff: And I remember Terry Thompson at the time, the superintendent was like, five days, you've gotta be kidding me. They ended up being several years. That kind of work and that kind of involvement really leads to something. Far more powerful than anything a singular person could ever draw or do. So learning and incorporating and working through, I think, are really significant components of what I see, or I saw myself as an architect and I think really made me who and what I am and what I am.

Sarah Hempstead: So, so working as much as you did with. Leadership in K 12 education, you probably had the opportunity to work with some creative transformational educational leaders over time. Are there a couple that like stand out as just being e excellent at working with their community, leading their group, changing the lives of kids?

Sarah Hempstead: Y Yeah. 

Tom Neff: Yes. I, I would say one, uh, Terry Thompson, who I just mentioned, amazing. That guy brought things in, brought people in, and totally changed the way the facilities looked operated, and, and in that process changed all of us who worked with him. He had a vision and he had a passion that drove that, but he also had a magnetism that drew people in.

Tom Neff: To go with him, and that's the lesson to be learned. You don't go out there alone. You go out there linking arms and you bring people with you and they actually end up being the people who lead you. I remember, I think Wayne used Wayne Smith. I'll go back to Wayne. Used to talk about birds that fly. That fly in like the, like the V.

Tom Neff: Yes, I was gonna say yes. 

Sarah Hempstead: The migratory patterns. Yeah. 

Tom Neff: Thank you. Yes. And they take turns leading the V because that's the main air break. And then they take turns and they, originally it was thought that the primary bird led the pack until their studies were done. That showed that they. Took turns doing that.

Tom Neff: That is, that's the lesson. That's the lesson. And that was what Terry Thompson did in that, that particular situation. And I, we still see Terry and Linda to this day. And it's great. Not only friends, but reminisce on things that, that have happened in the past. And I'm not, I'm gonna turn this back around on you, Sarah, and say you.

Tom Neff: You are a, a leader of people and you are someone who challenges people to be a little bit better than they thought they could be. I've seen you do that with many people, including me. Thank you for doing that. But that is someone who expands horizons and you keep expanding those horizons when sometimes you would have a vision that I think, oh, that's ridiculous.

Tom Neff: We're never gonna get there. And we did. We and you are continuing to do that. So seeing beyond and then making sure that you bring everyone with you, that's a pretty unique talent and gift that I would. Turn back to you and say Thank you for what you've done and what you continue to do. Not really. That was not the point of the podcast, 

Sarah Hempstead: but no, that was not the point of the podcast.

Sarah Hempstead: Thank you. That's very gracious. 

Tom Neff: But that's important to make decisions that include and that move, move people forward, that that's the most significant part of life. 

Sarah Hempstead: So, Tom, when I think about your leadership, anybody who knows you well will know that in pretty short order, you'll start telling us about your wonderful kids and their families and all the things that that they're doing, and you've got great stories of Mr.

Sarah Hempstead: Momming it as you ran a company and raised children at the same time, which could take a whole podcast in and of itself, but, but I wondered if you. Take a minute and talk about mentoring your kids who are not architects and engineers. They went on their own path and what that kind of family leadership looks like as you compare it to business and community leadership.

Tom Neff: The, that's very good. And I think, let me first say that I'm very fortunate to have met my wife, Marilyn. She's my soulmate on, but she also is one who mentors by creating experiences she. She continues to do that and, and enforce and push and when say, come on, we can do more. We can do better, we can. Um, but that the thing that's interesting about our kids was we both were working.

Tom Neff: Mm-hmm. And. You and Greg know it's all a challenge. I remember dropping the kids off at daycare and stuff, and you're like, and they just be like, uh, the famous calls of who? You get the call, your son is sick at school. It's, oh, no. How 

Sarah Hempstead: sick is he though? 

Tom Neff: Oh, who's got the most? And I, anyway. So the mentoring of kids is, again, I think you want, you, you can't make kids be what they aren't or don't wanna be in the same way.

Tom Neff: You can't make people be what you want them to be. You have to get into who they are and, and work that through. So, two sons very different. The older son is very our son, older son, Matthew. Is very driven, very cerebral and works very hard and but has the quality of always wanting to help somebody else.

Tom Neff: And that quality sometimes has been difficult for him because he's ended up sacrificing himself in some situation to help somebody else. I think that all comes back, uh, to you in the end. What's interesting about Matthew is. He started out in architecture

Tom Neff: because we would like. I was sent all these different things. We sent our kids to all these different things. So he went to a, um, a summer program in high school at Washington University in St. Louis and was wonderful. I, I wanna be an architect. So he ended, got, got into Cincinnati and was doing really well.

Tom Neff: And then they said, okay, the next semester we're gonna place you and you're gonna work and we have to get you trained on the computer. And he is like computer. I just draw, to make a long story short, he said, I should have known better. I know what you do, dad. I, I really don't want to be an architect. So he transferred to Indiana University and he got two degrees.

Tom Neff: One, I got a BFA in painting and a BA in art history, and ended up grading, graduating magna cu. So we didn't know he was graduating like that until we actually went to graduation. So very driven. Very, and, and then he ended up at University of Pennsylvania, where now he's the director of the Undergraduate Fine Arts program.

Tom Neff: Mm-hmm. Very successful. He is like at the top of his game and extremely well known in that whole Ivy League world and the art world, and Couldn proud of him. But to him, the most important thing are the students that he sees succeed. And he's a resident faculty person in one of the housing units. As we know.

Tom Neff: They do not call them dorms, but. And he's so thrilled with that role because he works with students to help them work through problems and issues. And these are kids who are in engineering, da, da, da, da, all these other things, not just minor arts students in general as well as faculty. So he just recently had someone do a PhD.

Tom Neff: The, uh, just the dissertation just got accepted and he, and this woman wrote in her like intro that it was because of Matt Neff that she, that's wonderful. And I thought as a parent, oh my God, that is to him, your child reach all these things. It's nothing can be more thrilling to see someone go on and succeed like that.

Tom Neff: Awesome. Quick digression before I do, James. What has been for me, also the enriching part of my career as an architect to watch so many people at Schmidt especially become far more than they thought they could be or I imagine they ever would be. And that's just like a parent. You just brings tears, eyes to see that happen, to see somebody stand up and take over and take charge, and it's thrilling.

Tom Neff: I go to my son James, who was. Driven to do two things actually. He wanted to get his MBA and he wanted to get his equity card and he wanted to sing on Broadway. Now, he ended up getting a full ride at IU in opera as a Beartown, and this is when our older son was still in IU as a double fine arts major.

Tom Neff: People would say to us, you're letting kids go into like careers where they'll never make any money. It's their passion. It's what they're gonna do because if you try to remove them or stop them from that, they're still gonna do it anyway because you can't stop the passion that drives you to live.

Tom Neff: Mm-hmm. That is, that's how he became an architect. Mm-hmm. I was not gonna be a biologist, wasn't gonna be there. But anyway, so, uh, that son went on. He ended up, he did get his equity card. He did sing on Broadway. He was in the last callbacks in South Pacific. And the director said, oh, great voice, but not the look next.

Tom Neff: And he, it's hard. It's a hard business. I, I can't change the look. So when he went back on his MBA and, and went on to a very successful career and with Abbott Nutrition, and now the interesting thing is he quit and he's a stay-at-home dad and he's a fantastic dad because from all those experiences realizes that.

Tom Neff: You have to work through with your children who are very different. Our two grandsons very different to make them be who they are, because you have to understand who and what they need to be able to do that. So another great mentor, and he still has people who he worked with in the past who are still in contact with him saying, oh, what do you think about this?

Tom Neff: How should I handle this? Maybe it's, uh, a fatal flaw that I. That you can't help, can't help helping people. So what do I do now? Okay, the next question is, so how do you make that work now, Tom? 

Sarah Hempstead: That was good. That was good. All right. Now that you're in a new phase of life, well, how do you manifest that? 

Tom Neff: I volunteer at the airport.

Tom Neff: So I'm one of those people who in the information booth, you come up to me and I, you say, where's my luggage? How do I get a record? So I do that. And then I also use the German and the Spanish. 'cause I help out at customs, which is great. I help them get through customs, where the restrooms are, where their baggage is.

Tom Neff: That's a great challenge and it also is helping people through an experience. What do you do to feed your 

Sarah Hempstead: creativity these 

Tom Neff: days? Oh, I still draw. I still paint and we do a lot with our grandkids. That experience of building things with them. They love to build things, so that's a lot of creative kind of stuff that, that we do.

Tom Neff: But both my wife and I do with the grandkids, and as I said, there are just a lot of other kind of experiences to help out and to be challenged. I headed up a, a pretty large renovation and, and expansion of our amenities from the building to the pool to pickleball courts. You, you, you have to recognize, I think.

Tom Neff: That, that it is the curiosity, the challenge, the sense of wonder, and constantly opening up new worlds and then working with 'em that, that make life enriching and exciting. 

Sarah Hempstead: Two final questions for you, Tom. One, one that, just for you and one that I ask everybody. So, so the, just for you, do you think back on your career, is there one project that really stands out as.

Sarah Hempstead: I hope people remember to connect me to that one. 

Tom Neff: Yeah, there is, and this is interesting. I many and I used to tell people and they would say, what's your favorite 

Sarah Hempstead: project? 

Tom Neff: And I say, oh, that's like asking me, which is my favorite child. 

Sarah Hempstead: They're, you're all my favorite. I, I know they're all your favorite, but 

Tom Neff: they all have, and someone would say, there's no.

Tom Neff: A particular project. There's no opportunity for design in that, and I said, oh, there's always an opportunity for design. This design is discovering the unseen beauty that you can then uncover and enrich. Or the challenge or the experience anyway. But I'll tell you the one that was like, whoa. Hammond High School, incredible commitment and cooperation among the faculty.

Tom Neff: The community really ended up rallying around that whole project, and there were just a lot of interesting things that occurred out of that project. 

Sarah Hempstead: All right, so last question, Tom, and it's a reading question so I can answer it one or two ways. What's a book you're currently reading that you're really into, or what's a book that you just recommend?

Sarah Hempstead: Everybody read 

Tom Neff: The Lincoln Highway. That's a really good book that keeps slipping characters in terms of the narrative, and that to me was fascinating. Anyway. Excellent. Excellent. 

Sarah Hempstead: Tom, this has been an absolute pleasure as I knew that it would be. It's really great to reconnect to learn more about Tom. To learn more about Schmidt Associates, visit our website@schmidtarc.com.

Sarah Hempstead: We can read about Tom's transformative work and some of our most noteworthy projects in. Indiana and in Kentucky, and you can learn more about the Hammond Project too. Thanks for listening to Illuminate navigating the unknown through creative leadership. We hope the episode has inspired you and supplied you with valuable insight into the world of creative leadership.

Sarah Hempstead: Please subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcast, so you never miss an episode, and we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. So feel free to reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at Schmidt Associates. Until next time, keep navigating the unknown with creativity and confidence.