Can you tell us about the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) grant?
The Council of Independent Colleges gives this grant to help institutions tell their stories, with a particular emphasis on diversity and telling the history that maybe hasn't been told before. It's supposed to be an aid in getting schools to invest in research about their history.
What kind of research methods will you be using?
I particularly love archival research. And so I spend time reading old "Student Movement" issues and going through faculty minutes and board minutes. I look at all kinds of other documents that are in the archives and I also talk to people, take oral histories and record them–mostly former students or former faculty members–and ask them about their experiences here at Andrews University. So those are two of my primary methods of collecting information.
What kind of research will you be doing about Andrews and its history?
I already wrote one volume of the Andrews history; it came out in 2002, which is now 20 years ago. So I've been working on volume two, but when I was chairing the [English] department, I didn't have a lot of extra time for this kind of project. Additionally, the full-time teaching load makes it very difficult as well. I'm working on volume two now, and this grant is going to help me complete the second volume of this history.
Do you have any particular underrepresented populations that you'll be looking at?
I'm working particularly on the decades of the 60s and 70s now, and one of the most interesting things about that time period is that it's an international explosion. This is when the international student population increases exponentially at Andrews. There have always been students from other countries at Andrews, even when it was Battle Creek College. There were always international students here, but once it became Andrews University in 1960, it attracted a lot of people from all over the world. And so that will be the main focus of this section of the story.
Is there anything that you are personally excited to look into?
I lived here when I was a kid because my dad was a faculty member. And so I was excited to go back and see some of the things that I remember from an adult perspective. For example, in the 60s, I would have still been a kid, a teenager, a young teen, and an adolescent. And so I'm particularly interested in talking about that. And it's also interesting because that's the first decade that Andrews is a university. And so there is all kinds of growth and maturation happening during that period. It's going to be a really important time period. And I'm both excited about it and a little bit apprehensive that I can do a good job of telling that part of the history.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.