Category Archives: West Central School of Agriculture

Errors Caught and Lessons Learned

Century America, Digital History, error, Hist 1914, historical research, mistakes, Morris Minnesota, research, research error, the great war, West Central School of Agriculture

Earlier today, when I came into work, my boss at the archives gave me some copies of old articles of the Morris Tribune from 1917-1919 that he had recently come across.

Although I’ve considered myself formally done with my research for a few weeks now–I mean, our website is due next week–I was grateful that he thought of the project. I decided they might have some nice information in them to beef up my existing pages on the website. I never got around to looking at the newspapers when I did my initial research, though it probably would have been a good idea.

Good thing I decided to take a look, too: as I was looking through the articles related to the West Central School of Agriculture, I came across a glaring error in my research.

One of the articles reported that in 1917, 150 students were enrolled in the school, a thirty-five student increase from the previous year.

This was all fine and dandy until I realized I had documented and included on one of my website pages that there were 500 students by 1914. This could not be correct! The math did not add up. 500 in 1914 and 150 in 1917? No, that was impossible! The source I got the 500 number from was The Great War documentary created by the Stevens County Historical Society. I’m not sure if I wrote down the numbers wrong when I was watching the movie or if they reported inaccurate information in the film.

Regardless, I found myself freaking out because I didn’t want to be responsible for shoddy historical research! As I thought about it more, I realized that the small size of the campus couldn’t have even supported 500 students in 1914. The two residents halls weren’t big enough  (The Boys Dormitory, which is currently known as the upper-class residence hall, Spooner Hall, only houses up to 90 students today) and the few other ill-equipped buildings on campus in 1914 couldn’t have sustained such large numbers. As I found out by looking through more of the articles, by the 1918 school year, the school was in dire need of overflow housing with close to 200 students. Furthermore, the 1914 Moccasin, which I did look through early on in my research, had relatively small class sizes with nowhere near 500 students in the whole school. I should have been skeptical of the 500 number from the start.

I’m so glad I was able to look through these articles and catch this mistake. I haven’t changed it on the website yet, but I will soon.

I’m taking this as a lesson–to be more careful with my source information in the future and to question information that doesn’t seem right from the beginning. After all, this is a learning experience. Although I’ve done historical research before, I’m still learning. We all make mistakes and this is one I’m definitely going to keep in mind for the future.

 

 

Business as Usual

Century America, Digital History, Hist 1914, local history, minnesota, Minnesota History, Morris Minnesota, research, Stevens County, the great war, West Central School of Agriculture, World War I

Well, yeah, I guess.

Today I went to the museum in town to watch the World War I documentary that they made last year. Colm told me about it ages ago, though I forgot about it; he reminded me that it existed when we were both doing research over there on Friday.

I decided I might as well get around to watching it. Even though I’m focusing on the WCSA specifically, I figured it was a good idea to know what was going on in the county during the Great War period. I mean, the WCSA is apart of Stevens County…also, I figured I might find some useful information.

A lot of the information presented in the documentary was as I expected, just from my general knowledge of Minnesota history during the war and what I’ve been hearing from Colm about his research. I did find out a few useful things to add to my portion of the site. For one, the WCSA hosted a HUGE patriotic rally in August 1917 after the U.S. joined the war. There was a huge push for patriotism through Minnesota specifically with the Commission of Public safety, and a few local names associated with the Commission also had connections at the school. People from all over the county came and it was a big deal. Furthermore, I was made aware of Florence Hulett, the registered nurse at the WCSA before the war. A graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, she enlisted to serve overseas as a nurse once the U.S. joined the war. I’m going to get in touch with museum to see if they have a picture I could use for her on the site, since I would like to insert a little bit about her into the War narrative since she was a WCSA staff member.

Generally speaking, I’m glad I went to watch the documentary today. It gave me a bit more confidence as I dive into more writing tonight and I did discover some useful information. Really, I should have gone to watch it ages ago!

Now, on to more writing…

Responding to Some Readings and Stuff

composition studies, digital learning, Hist 1914, pedagogy, Reading Responses, research, West Central School of Agriculture

For our class readings tomorrow, I was drawn into a piece on Writing History in the Digital Age that was similar in content to research I had done last semester in a composition studies course, research that I will be presenting in April at our Undergraduate Research Symposium on campus. Composition studies is fantastic, for the record, and everyone should take a comp studies class at some point. That’s just my two cents, though it’s beside the point. Anyways, what’s important is the research I completed in my class. My topic? To create a new, writing based pedagogy for lower-level history courses that focuses on developing critical thinking skills. The traditional introductory survey course in history is lecture based with little chance for writing or critical thinking and my proposed pedagogy incorporates both, utilizing writing as a tool to develop critical thinking skills, specifically those skills that are necessary for learning to think like a historian.

Naturally, with this in mind, I was drawn to the piece in Part 3 entitled, “Towards Teaching the Introductory History Course, Digitally.”

I read the first paragraph and immediately and excitedly thought, THAT SOUNDS LIKE MY UNDERSTANDING WRITING PROJECT PART II!!!!!!!! (I may have gotten a little too excited, there). But truthfully, just from the first paragraph, it did. I didn’t focus at all on incorporating digital learning into my new pedagogy, which makes sense as I was focusing more so on writing; with this essay, I was thrilled to start thinking about my own research a little differently, with the digital-based pedagogy presented here.

I was initially really intrigued by this essay because of the very obvious connections between it and my comp studies research. However, it more importantly got me thinking about the Century America class in a new way. I always knew what I was doing for this class was a wholly unique experience. Although I’ve done archival research before, I have zero experience with creating a website, besides the extremely user friendly wordpress.com, where my personal blog is located. But seriously, you don’t even need to worry about HTML over at wordpress.com, though you can if you want. So, though I’m thankful to have basic WordPress knowledge because of my personal blog, this whole building a website business is pretty daunting.

Generally speaking, I feel that we here in Hist 1914 are being exposed to the same pedagogical opportunities presented in Harbison and Waltzer’s essay, albeit a little differently: we are certainly being active as we write on our own blogs and prepare to create our own website. Bringing the ideas we discover in the processes of blogging and website planning to our virtual classroom adds for a much more enriching experience. In blogging, we are being social. We are encouraged to comment on each other’s blogs and we are engaging with the rest of the interweb on these public blogs. Because our blogs, and eventually websites, are public, we are being open with who we interact with and how we interact with them. We have learned about copyright and are aware of the procedures we must go through to abide copyright laws, in order to maintain successful public sites. Our sites will, undoubtedly, be media rich, as we incorporate and embed pictures, maps, and timelines into our project. There is certainly a lot of metacognition going on, as we actively consider the way are websites will be planned out and how we will arrange the layout and the pages to best convey our messages. Lastly, this is certainly one of the most immersive experiences I’ve personally had at the college level. As Harbison and Waltzer state, “The publishing environment enriches the class as a laboratory does in the hard sciences. It gives students hands-on experience with the skills of the historical trade, especially analyzing primary documents.” Not only are we learning how to become better historians in this class, but we are also learning a wide variety of technological skills that will undoubtedly help us later on in life, regardless of where our paths take us after college, in this world of increasingly technology that we are living in.

So, not only does “Towards Teaching the Introductory History Course, Digitally,” have a lot in common with my comp studies research, but it also reinforces a lot of what we are learning in Hist 1914. Though I wouldn’t consider Hist 1914 to be an introductory course, these skills are invaluable to practice throughout the college experience. I’m thankful I’ve had the opportunity to learn from this course in that respect. I guess my extensive ramble about comp studies is my yay for liberal arts moment? I mean, I love making connections between classes! Okay, anyway, onward to the next point…

The other article I looked at was The Future of American History from Perspectives on History. Hochstadt focuses in on some really important aspects of the teaching of American History, how focusing in on historically underrepresented groups is imperative for fully understanding history as a whole. History cannot and should not be told from one perspective (i.e. the white, upper class male perspective). While not specifically related to digital history, I did appreciate this essay for reinforcing a lot of what I have been exposed to throughout my college education in history. The new pedagogies that are including the histories of this underrepresented groups are invaluable for the future of historical education. I thought a bit about how this article could help me in my own research for this class and thought about how, though the story of the WCSA during the World War I era isn’t necessarily the story of underrepresented individuals–unless you count the women students there–it is a story that is invaluable for further understanding the time period in its own right; in focusing my part of the website in on the WCSA, I am adding to an American History that is continually expanding as more information is being discovered and more perspectives are being shared and analyzed with the historical community.

And so ends my offering of reading response insights for the day.

Chugging Along

admissions materials, Century America, exciting, Hist 1914, mn, morris, museum, new findings, research, the great war, West Central School of Agriculture, World War I,

Research is rollling along. I meant to call the museum on Friday, but ended up getting busy with something else and completely forgot. I finally remembered to call them yesterday and ended up having to leave a message for them. I’m going to try again tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to get in touch with someone. Last spring when I was doing my honors capstone project, which focused on the early day of Morris in the 1880s, I got in touch with a woman who knew an extensive amount about Morris’ history. She moved to Morris in the 1950’s and has been involved with the museum for quite some time. I’m thinking she might be a good resource to talk about the war with. If not her, I’m sure there are other older folks in the area who would love to share their knowledge; the museum will be a great resource for that, since there seems to be a pretty tight community of older folks there who are passionate about local history.

At the archives, I keep finding more and more useful information in the ledger book from the West Central School of Agriculture.

Yesterday, I was looking through pamphlets that were sent out to prospective students during the summer and fall of 1918. The term didn’t start until October, so these pamphlets range from July to September. Just as college admissions teams do today, these pamphlets were meant to persuade prospective students and parents of all the benefits of the West Central School of Agriculture, what makes it better than other colleges. An emphasis was placed on the modernity of the campus–new facilities that made learning the most enriching experience possible–and the excellent faculty and staff.

More importantly for my interests, there was a huge focus placed on the importance of agriculture in a war-torn world that needed food, and an emphasis on the benefits of education to support the war effort. I am so excited about these, since much of what I had been finding so far in relationship to the WCSA has been about the Spanish Influenza. The Influenza sources are great materials and I’m looking forward to using them, but I was really looking forward to finding information regarding how the war affected the WCSA. Now I am, and that’s great!

That’s research news for me so far. Heading back into the archives tomorrow and I NEED to call the museum. I’ve been so excited about my archives findings that the museum kind of slipped my mind after I wasn’t able to get through to them yesterday. Note to self: c’mon Britta, get your act together and call that museum!

In other news, I continue to be highly amused by all the spam I’ve been getting for this site. My most favorite one of late? Yes! Finally someone writes about best dating sites. Oh, man they hit it right on the nail. That’s exactly the purpose of this blog…

Because all Research Begins Somewhere…

Century America, Hist 1914, local history, Minnesota History, Morris Minnesota, research, Stevens County, UMM, University of Minnesota-Morris, West Central School of Agriculture

I admit that I feel a little behind in my research.

As I was browsing through some of my fellow classmates’ blogs, I was astounded by how much some of them have already done. I was getting a little down on myself for not having done even have of that research.

Truthfully, I’ve been quite busy. I work for the Office of Residential Life as a student hall director here at Morris and in the week before classes started, I was busy with winter training. Since classes started, I’ve been trying to figure out my schedule and how to make everything work this semester. I haven’t had the opportunity to spend an extensive
amount of time researching as I would have liked.

That being said, I do consider myself quite fortunate. I am a student worker at my campus archives so I already have quite a bit of knowledge of what is available there. I have had the opportunity to talk to the archivist–who also happens to be my boss–about what’s available and he has given me some tips in moving forward with my research. I intend to really dive into some research at the archives later this week, and when I do, I’ll know where to look.

I also know that I have easy access to pretty much everything in the archives. Generally speaking, our campus archives doesn’t have a whole lot of constrictions in gaining access to the archival materials; as a student worker, I also have an upper hand in knowing the archives and having connections to the archivist. I just received permission
from my boss to go in there after hours when other researchers wouldn’t be allowed, since I work there…so thankful I am able to do that!

I am eager to get my hands on the WCSA yearbooks from the World War I era. Our archives have a plethora of old yearbooks, particularly from the WCSA era, and I want to see if there is any commentary on the war from the student perspectives inside the yearbooks. I also have some fantastic resources on the Non Partisan League–an active political organization in the upper Midwest that exhibited anti-war sentiments during the period–that I am excited to look further into. I know the archives has materials. It’s just a question of getting in there and really looking.

The Stevens County Museum in town also has a lot of information. The employees there already know me from a local research project I did last spring in my completion of the honors program here at Morris. I know they have newspapers dating back to the early years of Morris and I know they allow researchers to look at them–because I utilized them from my honors project. I also know they have a lot of materials relating to World War I.

Unfortunately, the museum isn’t open during the weekends, so Colm and I must juggle our schedules during the week with getting over there to research. In an ideal world, it would have weekend hours and I would have spent half of this last weekend getting acquainted with all the materials.

Thank goodness Colm was able to get in there today. I couldn’t join him because I have class for the majority of the afternoon.  When I got done with class, we were Facebook messaging for a little bit while he was still there, and he told me was looking through so much stuff and that he’s been photocopying a lot of documents. Look for more information on that in his own post.

I need to get into the Museum at some point soon, but first I want to tackle to archives on campus.

Colm and I have so many resources at our fingertips. We are lucky to have such a plethora of resources in town.

I still feel a little behind right now, but I’m not going to worry too much.

Together, we have a lot to look at and we will certainly be able to put together a well-thought out and well-constructed project with everything we’ll find.

It’s still the early days of the semester and we have so many materials to look through.

We’ve got this. It’ll just take some time.