UW-Oshkosh Magazine, Spring - Liberal Education Initiative

Community impact
Beyond educating students, a recent marketing
opportunities study detailed the university’s
wide-ranging impact (learn more www.uwosh.edu/
marketingprofile/2006/).
“UW Oshkosh is, in fact, an economic engine and
an educational, social and cultural anchor for the
region,” said the study’s author Dennis K. Winters,
vice president and research director of NorthStar
Economics Inc.
Area business leaders agree.
“Located in the middle of the city,
UW Oshkosh is what makes this
community come alive,” said
Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce
President John Casper. “When
the students arrive each fall, you can
feel the energy as they reinvigorate
the community. I don’t think I’d ever
want to live in a community without John Casper
a university. And, that quality of life
is what companies want for
their employees, too.”
Continuing Education instructor
Julia Flanagan teaches mosaic
design to Jennifer Markuam in Omro.
String Camp
Historically Connected
In one quiet office on the
third floor of Polk Library, the
doors open to the past and make
meaningful connections with history.
University Archivist Joshua
Ranger leads the way to making
the past accessible to all.
Ranger (far right, with secondary
education major Johnathon
Patzwald) is in charge of proper
preservation of university materials,
but his job also entails overseeing
the region’s records located here
from the Wisconsin Historical
Society (WHS). UW Oshkosh acts
as host for WHS, one of 14 such
centers in the state.
Hosting the historical docu-
ments in an area research center
(ARC) means community members,
faculty and students can
conduct historical research with
original manuscripts. Learning
takes on new meaning when one
can hold actual artifacts.
That’s what led assistant professor
of history Michelle Kuhl
to bring her students into the
archives to conduct research on
the civil rights movement for her
African American history class.
“Joshua put together an amazing
research experience for the
students,” Kuhl said. “He found
roughly a dozen collections pertaining
to civil rights activism from
the 1950s and 1960s. My students
were able to study first-hand
documents of people working in
the Deep South to register voters,
organize laborers and engage
in other risky endeavors to help
smash Jim Crow.”
The research project gave
students a connection to the past.
They were deeply moved by the
experience and wrote thoughtful
papers about the civil rights era,
Kuhl said.
“There is nothing that compares
to the gee whiz reaction a
student has when handling historical
documents—it’s amazing,”
Ranger said. “A typical student reaction
is, ‘Why didn’t I know about
this before my senior year’”
Holding an actual letter written
by another college student
who traveled south to register
people to vote is entirely different
from reading about it in a
book. College students typically
would not have access to these
kinds of historical documents.
“What makes the ARC network
so unique is that materials
can be transferred from any of
the ARCs,” Ranger said. “If you
are a student at UW Oshkosh
but you want to research your
home community in Onalaska,
we can have your hometown
records brought to us here for
you. The only other state that
will do that is Missouri.”
These records include
numerous local government
records that are so useful
to family and local history
research. Though most of the
100,000 cubic feet of system-wide
collection available
through UW Oshkosh is local
government documents, a bit
more than 10 percent are
considered “manuscripts”—
including letters, diaries and
business records.
“We’re here to help the
community preserve
its memory,”
Ranger said.
“Everyone has a right to their
history.”
The prospect of working with
original documents is further
sweetened when examining the
collection’s scope. Those who
wish to research materials at an
ARC also may tap into WHS
resources in Madison, a collection
that includes many national
—even international—documents.
Students may research areas
that include labor histories,
mass communication, film and
theatre history—or, as Kuhl’s
class did—social action movements.
Ranger encourages people
to explore the archives, which
are open to everybody in the
community. All one has to do
is fill out an annual registration
form to browse the computerized
catalogs of collections.
“History humanizes us—it
helps us see ourselves as part
of a great chain of being,” he
said. “To understand that, you
need these leavings of those
who came before us.”
— by Heidi Heidenreich Nowicki
page 13