It’s almost holiday time at Loyola, which means finals week, cold winds off the lake, and dreaming of holiday food! For someone who loves food and history, I am always looking for ways to use food to better understand the past. So when I learned that the WLA holds papers from Mundelein College’s* Home Economics department, I had a feeling there might be some gems hiding in the files.
A Visit Turned Crusade: A Struggle to End the Death Penalty
Dr. Irene Meyer was a Mundelein College* professor from 1957 to 1992. In that time, Dr. Meyer earned her PhD, became a fervent civil rights activist, and fought for the abolition of capital punishment in Illinois. I first came across Dr. Irene Meyer earlier this year for a reference request. In her file, there were several articles, which marked her involvement with a man on death row. Reading these sparked my curiosity, and I had to see what else we had in our collections on Dr. Meyer. What I learned was that Dr. Meyer has led an amazing life, built an incredible career, and her story is one that needs to be told. Continue reading
Dancing at Mundelein
Dance has a large impact on my life. I grew up dancing, starting at the age of three. I went through my life, even graduating with a Dance Complementary major. When I stumbled onto dance records working at the Women and Leadership Archives, I became very excited.
I began research on dance at Mundelein College*, combing through files and student newspapers. I came across several photos of co-ed dances as well as finding some photos and articles of Mundelein dance performances. Overall, I noticed three main genres of dances at Mundelein: company dance performances, students in dance, and social dances.
Start of a New School Year
This blog was originally posted on September 9, 2016. As we welcome new students and share in old traditions, we hope you enjoy reading about the new school year activities at Mundelein College!
Universities around the country are now in full swing. Returning students fall into a familiar routine while incoming freshman spend their first days figuring out class schedules and getting the lay of the land. Articles and photographs in the Skyscraper give some idea as to how Mundelein College* students rang in the new school year. Freshman and upperclassmen alike participated in socials, dances, and a Big Sister program.
Students advertising Freshman Day, 1936
Much information about the new students can be found in the Skyscraper. Yearly, the front page of the newspaper featured a photo of the “First Ladies.” The women featured in the photos were students from the incoming freshman class that were the top students in their high school class. The newspaper recognizes all incoming students with articles containing demographics and statistics of the incoming freshman class. These include what schools, states, and countries the students came from as well as if there was an increase in enrollment. Staff and faculty are also recognized, including one article highlighting that the new faculty studies in seven countries. Continue reading
Graduation Reflections: Mundelein Commencement Through the Years
WLA graduate assistants and Master’s in Public History Angela and Emily, pose with fellow graduate Matt before their Commencement ceremony on May 7, 2019. Angela and Emily each earned a Master’s in Public History and Matt earned a Master’s in United States History.
It’s graduation time at Loyola University Chicago, and I’ve enjoyed looking back at commencement photographs from the collection of Mundelein College. Mundelein College, founded and operated by the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM), provided education to women from 1930 until 1991 when it affiliated with Loyola University Chicago.
I helped reprocess the Mundelein College Paper Records and wrote the collection finding aid alongside Project Archivist Caroline. We arranged, described, and housed archival objects for patron use. The Women and Leadership Archives, in Piper Hall on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus, holds the many, many boxes of processed materials from the Catholic women’s college. Today, Mundelein’s skyscraper building is known as the Mundelein Center for Fine and Performing Arts. The Women and Leadership Archives preserves the college’s memory through a variety of records.
Collection Sneak Peek: The Ambassador to Paradise
The staff at the WLA has been hard at work this year processing new collections to make them available to researchers. You can read about some of these collections that will be available soon in our previous blog post. In this post, I am going to share a sneak peek of an upcoming collection that I feel honored to be working on: The Carol Moseley Braun Papers!
Coming Soon To The WLA
When a collection comes into the WLA, a staff member looks at all of the records and comes up with a processing plan to organize the collection and make it accessible for users. Depending on the amount of material, type of material, and how much the donor originally organized it, some collections can be processed quickly and others take months. The goal of processing is to make all of the material easy to find for the user.
Here are some of the collections you can expect to see at the WLA soon! Continue reading
Mary P. Haney and the Decade for Women
The beginning of April means that Women’s History Month has come to a close and International Women’s Day has passed, but the WLA works all year round to bring to light the contributions of women that help their communities and impact the world!
In today’s blog post, I am excited to highlight a collection that shows how one woman’s unique experiences led to a career advocating for women through international collaboration. The materials donated by Mary P. Haney document the roles she played in different stages of her life, including her participation in the international women’s movements taking place during what the United Nations called the “Decade for Women.”
Digitizing Mundelein
Our unassuming file cabinets
There is a lot of history stored here in the Women and Leadership Archives, so it would be easy to overlook the three black filing cabinets tucked away in a corner of our reading room. That would be a mistake, though, since those drawers contain the Mundelein College Photograph Collection.* In other words, they hold an estimated 40,000 photographs and slides (yes, you read that correctly) captured during Mundelein College’s more than sixty-year history.
Saving Sister Jean
The amazing run of the Loyola Men’s Basketball team in the 2018 March Madness made national news. The Ramblers’ last-second upsets over Miami in the first round and Tennessee in round two brought the team to its first Sweet Sixteen since 1985. All of the success brought new attention, not only to the team, but to the adorable 98-year-old team chaplain, Sr. Jean Dolores Schimdt, BVM (Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary) who quickly became a national star. Continue reading