Personality First: Limitations in Nuance for Oregon State University’s Early Home Economics Department

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2025 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women’s impact on our university.

By Eliza Thompson

Black and white portrait of white woman with glasses and a patterned necklace.
“Photograph of Sarah Louise Arnold,” Suffrage at Simmons, accessed December 4, 2025.

It was at the sixth annual meeting of the Home Economics Association in 1913 when Sarah Louise Arnold gave her President’s Address. “Tonight I shall speak particularly to the younger members of our Association—to you who are entering upon your life work,” she began. “You are discovering and weighing the results of your earlier efforts. You, we trust, will succeed where we have failed, will build upon our foundations, will reach the Promised Land which we have dimly seen, afar off.”[1]

And what does she go on to say to these younger members? What does she predict, like an inspired prophet, for the future of home economics? “The time will come and come soon,” she said, near the end of her speech, “when we shall be absolutely sure that the sanity and safety of our state institutions depends upon the sanity and safety of our homes. Then the state will say to all of its girls, ‘Your life does not belong to yourself as an individual; it belongs to all of us, all together. We need you at your best; we need you to be wise and strong and good, for the sake of all of us. You have a great contribution to make to the general welfare and the common good.’”[2]

One hundred and twelve years later, while sorting through the Ava Milam Clark papers at Oregon State University’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center, I stood, staring at a typed copy of this speech, stunned by these words. Your life does not belong to you. It belongs to us all.

When I first dove into research about the early years of home economics at OSU, I expected a very cookie-cutter curriculum, a one-size-fits-all approach. I suppose, deep down, I was expecting classes on how to greet your husband back from work with a martini. How to bend down to vacuum under furniture without messing up your hairdo. How to hold your baby in one hand and apply your lipstick with the other. And, to be clear, the home economics department was homogenous in many ways. For one, the student body was racially uniform, almost entirely white (the first known African American graduate of OSU, Carrie Halsell, didn’t graduate until 1926).[3] Still, I was humbled by just how much thought and discussion was put into acknowledging all the different variables that would go into the study of home economics.

Home Economics as a field is closely linked to the land grant system in American higher education. Oregon State University is a land grant college. As explained by William Robbins in The People’ School: A History of Oregon State University, “[g]rants of land to support education date to the colonial period, and the practice transferred seamlessly after the American Revolution to the new United States …. For state support for higher education, however, the Morrill Act offered a different approach, providing grants of land to promote the education of the individual classes.”[4] According to a Middlebury college blog post analyzing a project binder of 1918 graduate, Bessie C. Jennings: “[a]lthough principles of domesticity were being taught as early as the mid 19th century, the term ‘home economics’ was not applied to this area of study until the early 20th century.”[5] This was because the universities established as a result of the Morrill Act were open to women as well as men and were thus “mandated to foster research and instruction in practical areas of endeavor . . . associated with home economics.”[6] Because home economics was so new, how it was characterized in the late 1800s and early 1900s was extremely significant.

In her Presidents’ Address, Arnold discussed how important it is to know and understand the people to whom you teach home economics and how you need a comprehensive view of the individual to do so. Arnold speaks of meeting a little girl who was often left to her own devices. “I thought as I looked in the child’s face, ‘How little I know of experiences like hers! How much I should have to learn before I could teach her as I ought?”[7]

A white woman sits in a large armchair, smiling, with patterned curtains in the background.
Ava Milam Clark, Dean of the School of Home Economics. OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Oregon State University, Oregon Digital accessed 2023-12-10.

Nuance could also be seen in how much was covered by home education. We see this in the work of Ava Milam Clark (1884 -1976), Dean of Home Economics at OSU from 1917-1950. She traveled abroad where she studied various cultures in order to know how best to teach home economics,[8] and with more unconventional works, such as her Boy Scouts cookbook for camping.[9]

The question now is: just how nuanced did these programs get? How far did this embrace of variety go? In many ways, early home economics, at least at OSU, took diversity and individuality seriously, but there is one crucial aspect where the room for nuance was more limited: Attitude.

As Sarah Louise Arnold explained in her paper, “Concerning Institutional Management,” a home-economics student would have been, at this time, asked to carry out many tasks.[10] At a certain point, then, what became important was less the ability to carry out these tasks and more about the willingness to do so and the way in which to go about it.[11]

It has been evident from the beginning that the institutional worker most in demand is the woman of maturity and experience, who has developed in other fields the qualities which are essential to success in institutional administration. … The demands upon the department go to show a wide variety of opportunities in institutional administration, which no single course of instruction could adequately meet. One might definitely prepare students to administer college dormitories; the same student, however, will be confronted by requests to become a dietitian, in the sense of adviser concerning diets;—or she will be asked to buy, cook, and serve diets and teach classes of nurses at the same time;—or she may be urged to take complete charge of a lunchroom, a tea room, the stewardship of a hospital, or the administration of a children’s home;— she may be asked to mother and manage a Welcome House; she may be called upon to administer the house of residence of the Y. W. C. A., or the small community which is the modern form of the orphan asylum . . . . Letters of inquiry invariably place personality first, experience second, and training third. These three essentials, all right, give us the ideal woman, who shall administer the ideal institution.[12]

This shows us that the trailblazers of home economics were very deliberate about this demand for a certain personality type in their students.

Not only was personality seen as the most important trait in a student of the home economics department, but the fostering of this specific type of woman was, in many ways, the central goal of these programs. In an article about her life, Milam was quoted saying: “While I do not in any way minimize the importance of teaching, food and nutrition, clothing and home management, I do believe a home economist’s greatest service comes in the influencing of attitudes and values. These must supersede all else!”[13]

Arnold says something similar in her 1910 “Certain Phases of Instruction in Institutional Management”:

It is evident that there is an urgent demand for women of native ability, mature experience, social aptitude, good judgement, promptness in meeting emergencies, and sound business sense, to direct institutional housekeeping . . . . It is clear that many of these qualities must be contributed by the individual. They cannot be secured by a fixed course of study in school or college. On the other hand, they may be developed by wise tuition. And, further, opportunities may be provided for such observation, such practice under expert guidance, such interpretation of accumulated experience, as will/fortify the worker and prevent her from making the mistakes of the novice. This, I take it, has been the purpose of the various courses in institutional management which have been hitherto provided.[14]

This obsession with women’s behavior wasn’t limited to the home economics department. According to The Experience of Women’s Higher Education at Oregon Agricultural College 1870-1916 by Katrina Anne Knewtson, in 1910, training at OSU was introduced for women students that “‘included a series of personal interviews with the dean and lectures for the physical, moral, and spiritual development of young women at the university.’ In one example given in the catalog, a lecture focused on the cardinal points of good manners at the table, in school, on telephones, the correct carriage, and the proper position in sitting and standing.”[15]

This need for social uniformity was undoubtedly influenced by the First World War. In a 1918 Report of the Home Economics Department of Education, it is said that

[t]he department of Home Economics Education has not been unmindful of its duty towards winning the war. . . . At the State Teachers meetings, Home Economics Association meetings, and others, and through literature distributed to the Home Economics teachers throughout the state, the department has cooperated with other departments to establish the right ideals and attitudes among the teachers who in turn should work the same spirit among their pupils and in their communities.[16]

According to historian Patricia Albjerg Graham, for many land-grant colleges, creating “character” in students was a particular focus during WWI. These colleges “stressed teaching on the part of the faculty, not research, and envisioned the molding of students’ characters rather than merely transmitting knowledge for knowledge’s sake as a principal and legitimate activity of the college.”[17]

I ask you, now, to think back to Arnold’s words, the idea that women’s lives do not belong to themselvesbut that, instead, women must sacrifice for the collective good. Always having a positive attitude is an example of such a sacrifice. It’s easy to see how this sacrifice would be expected during a world war: to stay chipper and happy for the boys overseas. The truth is, however, that this expectation for a continuous pleasantness that expands to both appearance and attitude is something that women today still face—to never complain, to be sweet and placid and—I’ll say it—maternal in all aspects of life no matter the stress they are under. It is interesting but not surprising, then, that this would be the invariable requirement of home economic students at Oregon State University in the early 1900s.


[1] Sarah Louise Arnold, “President’s Address,” 1913, Ava Milam Clark Papers, box 4, folder 2, Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon (hereafter SCARC).

[2] Arnold, “Address,” 10-11.

[3] “Historic Moments of Black Excellence at Oregon State University,”mSpecial Collections & Archives Research Center website, https://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/historic-moments-of-black-exce/carrie-halsell—osu-s-first-b (accessed December 10, 2025).

[4] William Robbins, The People’s School : A History of Oregon State University (Oregon State University Press, 2017), 14.

[5] “Household Management Project,” Home Economics and Household Management: The American Middle-Class Home, January 26, 2016, https://sites.middlebury.edu/homeec/history-of-home-economics/.

[6] Middlebury student body, Household Management.

[7] Arnold, “Address,” 6.

[8] Milam, Ava, Untitled, 1922, Correspondence 1920-1922, box 1, folder 2, Ava Milam Clark Paper, Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon.

[9] Milam, Ava B., and Ruth McNary Smith. “Camp cookery.” Corvallis, OR: College Bulletin Extended series, 1913.

[10] Arnold, Sarah Louise “Concerning Institutional Management,” 1912, “A Model for Branch Association of Home Economics” Sarah Louise Arnold, 1910-1943, box 4, folder 2,  Ava Milam Clark Papers, SCARC.

[11] Arnold, “Concerning,” 1-5.

[12] Arnold, “Concerning,” 1-5.

[13] Hoyt, Isabell Murray, “DEAN AVA B. MILAM of Corvallis, Oregon,” 1947, MSS- Ava Milam Clark, box 4, folder 7, “Reports, Speeches, and Articles on Home Economics at OSU, 1917, 1969,” SCARC.

[14] Arnold, Sarah Louise “Certain Phases of Instruction in Institutional Management,” 1910,  “A Model for Branch Association of Home Economics” Sarah Louise Arnold, 1910-1943, box 4, folder 2,  Ava Milam Clark Papers, Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon.

[15] Katrina Anne Knewtson. “The Experience of Women’s Higher Education at Oregon Agricultural College 1870-1916,” 1995, Scholars Archive.

[16] Hatty R. D., “Report of the Home Economics Department of Education,” 1918, Correspondence 1903-1919, box 1, folder 1,  Ava Milam Clark Papers, SCARC.

[17] Patricia Albjerg Graham. “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3, no. 4 (July 1978): 762.

Preparing for a Two-Person Career: The Early Years of The Co-Signers Engineering Students’ Wives’ Club at Oregon State

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2025 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women’s impact on our university.

By Finnian Sweeney

Co-Signers Engineering Students’ Wives’ Club 1958-59 School Year Flyer, October 1958, Series 4, Box 2, Folder 2.1, MSS Co-signers Collection, Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon (hereafter SCARC).

The Co-Signers Engineering Students’ Wives’ Club existed at OSU from 1958 to 1977. The members of the club created scrapbooks to document their activities and achievements. This post focuses on the first years of the Co-Signers club, encompassing the period between 1958 and 1963 covered in the club’s first scrapbook. The flyers, newspaper clippings, images, and other objects contained offer a window into the purposes of the organization. Over the course of its existence, the club sought to promote friendships among the wives of engineering students at Oregon State University. The formula pictured above appears at the top of the Co-Signers recruitment flyer for the 1958-59 school year, which is one of the first items encountered in the scrapbook.[1] It is telling in that it is an equation to produce engineering wives. This reveals another purpose of the club: to create ideal engineering wives.

Three white women standing together in an old newspaper clipping.
Image: (L-R) Co-Signers Secretary-Treasurer Jan Richartz, President Myra (sometimes given as Myrn or Myrin) Cox, and Vice President Virginia Griffith pictured with the same scrapbook used as the basis for this piece, 1962 or 1963 (Corvallis Gazette-Times). “New Officers,” Corvallis Gazette-Times clipping, 1962 or 1963, Series 4, Box 2, Folder 2.1, MSS Co-signers Collection, SCARC.

The materials in this scrapbook record a variety of activities the club engaged in, such as teas, social events, and holiday parties. The Co-Signers also engaged in charity work and held a variety of fundraising events for the club itself and for a scholarship they awarded to a married engineering student.

Some of the most interesting materials, however, concern the types of speakers that attended club meetings. Meetings featured talks by an interior decorator and a nursery school representative, as might be expected from a period where middle-class women were mainly expected to be housewives. More surprisingly, Co-Signers meetings regularly featured interviewers from major employers in the engineering field, including representatives from Lockheed Martin, NASA, and even a recruiter for the CIA. College of Engineering Dean George W. Gleeson was also a regular speaker. Dean Gleeson spoke annually at the club’s first meeting of each school year and seems to have been very supportive of the club. In fact, the 1958-59 recruitment flyer suggests that the creation of the club may have been partly inspired by an informal talk from the dean on members’ “role as a future engineer’s wife,” which seems to have been the topic of his annual talks, as well.[2] Gleeson’s wife Barbara also served as one of the club’s two advisors in its early years, alongside Louise Coopey, wife of another engineering faculty member.[3] All this suggests that Dean Gleeson felt it was important to prepare not only his students, but also their wives, for the engineering field, and that this view was shared by major employers in the industry.

Three white people reviewing documents at an office desk.
Image: (L-R) Co-Signers Secretary-Treasurer Norma June Swannack, Dean Gleeson, and Co-Signers President Sharon Morris make arrangements for the Co-Signers scholarship, October 1960. (Corvallis Gazette-Times). “The Social Whirl,” Corvallis Gazette-Times clipping, October 1960, Series 4, Box 2, Folder 2.1, MSS Co-signers Collection, SCARC.

The Co-Signers Club is indicative of larger patterns in the way married middle-class women at the time were expected and encouraged to support their working husbands. It is clear from the activities the Co-Signers engaged in, the way they worded their materials, and of course the name of their club that they saw their support and participation as important to the success of their husbands’ careers. This idea was encouraged and promoted by Dean Gleeson and by industry representatives. The club fits into a pattern identified by the scholar Hanna Papanek in 1973 of what she called “two-person single careers” in the American middle class.

These careers employed only the husband, but made implicit or explicit demands for supporting labor of various kinds from wives. Job interviewers like the ones that regularly addressed the Co-Signers would consider whether applicants’ wives would be “suitable” for the demands of their husbands’ positions. Papanek considered these two-person careers to be a “social control mechanism that serves to derail the occupational aspirations” of women and encourages them to seek “vicarious achievement” through the careers of their husbands. Papanek said that “the wife’s involvement with her husband’s career frequently begins before the career itself, during the stage when he is undergoing the advanced training so typical of these middle-class careers,” and that “the barely latent function of many colleges” was to prepare women to support a two-person career, giving additional context to Dean Gleeson’s support for the Co-Signers Club.[4]

Indeed, many wives in this period abandoned or did not pursue independent careers in favor of becoming housewives and providing direct and indirect support to their husbands’ careers. Researchers have shown that some of these women reported later in life that they would in hindsight have preferred to pursue careers of their own. It is important to note, however, that many of these same women also made their support roles central to their identities and derived satisfaction from supporting their husbands. Like the Co-Signers, many of them also engaged in social or service activities that at first glance appeared unrelated to their husbands’ careers, even to the women themselves, but that nonetheless were part of the work they did to support their husbands and families.[5]

In another article from 1979, Papanek defined the category of “family status production,” arguing that much of the work women did in various societies went unrecognized but produced value for their family units in the form of enhanced social status, often aiding their husbands’ careers. This status production work includes not only career support, but also social activities that enhanced their families standing in their community.[6]The social, fundraising, and charitable work of the Co-Signers can perhaps be viewed through this lens and may have helped to raise the profile of their husbands within the OSU engineering community, especially as the routine local newspaper coverage of the club’s activities referred to members mostly by their husband’s names, as was typical for the time.

Three white women stand in front of a complex array of industrial pipes and machinery.
Image: Co-Signers officers depicted in the Corvallis Gazette-Times, 1961. Note that Norma June Swannack (now club president), Bonnie Sanders, and Nancy Davison are identified by their husband’s names. The officers appear next to unidentified machinery, perhaps on a tour of a university engineering facility. “OSC Engineers’ Wives,” Corvallis Gazette-Times clipping, 1961, Series 4, Box 2, Folder 2.1, MSS Co-signers Collection, SCARC.

Betty Friedan famously complained in her landmark 1963 book The Feminine Mystique that women were defined solely by their relationships to men.[7] In 1964, Friedan wrote that many women had through independent careers unlocked a “fourth dimension” beyond the three dimensions of the traditional female identity as a wife, a mother, and a homemaker. They had begun to see themselves as full people and members of society through independent careers. Even though many women had thought they were happy, there was still a yearning for independent achievement in many of them, and there were real psychological consequences to defining themselves solely in relation to their husbands, for example as “engineering wives.”[8]

The Co-Signers Club provides an excellent real-world example of the way the pattern of two-person single careers played out at Oregon state and show us the ways in which women sought to add meaning to their lives when society defined success for women as being a devoted wife and mother. Women were encouraged to define themselves in relation to their husbands’ careers, and the co-signers sought to find fulfillment in being the wives of engineers. This work focuses on the early years of the club, but it would be interesting to examine some of the later material from the 1970s to see how the rise of second-wave feminism, the entry of more women into the engineering field, and the decline in the number of married engineering students from the 1958 population of 380 (about half of engineering students at the time) changed the nature of the club in its later years.[9]            


[1] Co-Signers Engineering Students’ Wives’ Club 1958-59 School Year Flyer.

[2] Co-Signers Engineering Students’ Wives’ Club 1958-59 School Year Flyer.

[3] Co-Signers Engineering Students’ Wives’ Club, Valentine to Engineers Wives, 1962m Series 4, Box 2, Folder 2.1, MSS Co-signers Collection, SCARC.

[4] Hanna Papanek, “Men, Women, and Work: Reflections on the Two-Person Career,” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 4 (1973): 852–72.

[5] Eliza K. Pavalko and Glen H. Elder, “Women behind the Men: Variations in Wives’ Support of Husbands’ Careers,” Gender and Society 7, no. 4 (1993): 548–67.

[6] Papanek, Hanna. “Family Status Production: The ‘Work’ and ‘Non-Work’ of Women.” Signs 4, no. 4 (1979): 775–81.

[7] Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (W.W. Norton & Company, 1963).

[8] Betty Friedan, “Woman: The Fourth Dimension,” Ladies’ Home Journal (June 1964), 48-55.

[9] Co-Signers Engineering Students’ Wives’ Club 1958-59 School Year Flyer.

No Vacancy: The Gendered History of The Newman Center at Oregon State University

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2025 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women’s impact on our university.

By Connor Grattan

A 1967 edition of the Portland-based Catholic newspaper, The Catholic Sentinel, touted the work being done by the Newman Center at Oregon State University, founded just two years earlier. The author viewed Center’s work, or apostolate, as both a great start for and possibly the beginning of a major conversion effort on campus. Moreover, the article praises, above all else, the Newman Center’s ability to connect with and integrate into the daily life of students; the author expressed hope that these efforts would h promote the values of the Catholic Church and convert non-Catholic students to the faith.[1]

Four white individuals at a table covered with a white tablecloth in a formal setting, with windows and foliage in the background.
Mass being celebrated in the library-chapel at the edge of OSU’s campus, 1967. “Newman Apostolate Grows at Corvallis.”

The founding of the Newman Center at Oregon State University, one arm of a national Catholic apostolate organization, came at a time of immense change within the Catholic Church ushered in by the Second Vatican Council of the early to mid 1960s, in which Pope John XXIII declared that the Church should focus more on apostolicism and spreading the message of Catholicism through means other than specific calls to holiness from clergy. As the Newman Center worked to appeal to a new generation of students, its message nevertheless remained shaped by the Church’s longstanding patriarchal ideologies and practices. At a time when the Catholic Church grappled with evolving ideas about sexuality, marriage, and gender roles, the apostolic efforts by the Newman Center remained shaped by traditional and ideologically conservative gender ideals.

A group of white people gathered in a living room, seated around a coffee table with a newspaper and cup, in a black and white photo.
Meeting of clerical leadership and student officers at Newman Center, 1967. “Newman Apostolate Grows at Corvallis.

The Catholic Sentinel article suggested the hope that the Newman Center would create a new and growing commitment to the Church among OSU students. It discussed Center’s physical footprint on campus by noting the buildings it occupied; touted the priests, nuns, and student leaders who did the Center’s work; and highlighted the Center’s many recent campus events. It reassured readers that the Newman Center was using its budget wisely, particularly on efforts to recruit students to Catholicism. Finally, the article expressed optimism that the Center could launch theology or religion classes to further Catholicize the student body.

One barrier to that goal might be the Newman Center’s gender politics. The Center represented a conservative branch of the Catholic church and structured many of its apostolicisms around strict and discriminatory ideas of gender normativity and the idealization of heterosexual marriage. On example of the Newman apostolate was the rental housing the Center provided for students which gave preference to married couples.[2] In May 1968, the Center imposed a restriction on “girls” renting its properties; alongside the decision was this statement: “Because of problems in the past with girl renters it was again stated that no girls will be rented apartments and/or rooms in the Newman Rentals.”[3] This outright denial to rent to women was surprising to me; I had assumed that the advancements in civil rights in the 1960s would have ended this kind of discrimination. At the same time, the Center sponsored discussions addressing the liberalization of attitudes such as “Is pre-marital sex O.K.?,” “Is legalized abortion right?”, and “Is God dead?”[4] While we don’t know how these discussions turned out, the Newman Center’s commitment to traditional values likely led to conclusions that challenged the growing sexual liberalization in American society.

The 1960s was a time of change for Catholicism, marked by Pope John XXIII’s call for the Church to conform to the ideas of “aggiornamento,” or the bringing-up-to-date of the apostolate.[5] This meant an expansion into more areas outside of parishes and clergy. Many Catholics remained committed to conservative ideologies around sexuality and gender. In 1972, my mother was born into a devout Catholic family, and her childhood and adolescence were rooted in Catholic communities and their common faith. My mom told me about the underlying family pressures that she felt when she was going to college, especially the expectation that she find a husband. Her mother, as well as other women in her life, had met their husbands at college, and in some ways that created a pattern to follow. On top of that, there was a general understanding, as my mom put it, that women of the time knew that their husbands’ studies and career came before their own.[6] Even in the 1970s, these pressures were still around despite broader changes in American society.

Four white people standing under umbrellas in front of a Catholic Student Center sign, 1967.

This context may explain the Newman Center’s policies and projects. Women who wanted to focus on their own career and who showed no interest in finding a husband had no place in the Newman rentals. The historian Philip Gleason notes that the Catholic Church in the United States feared the changing national culture, which was becoming increasingly secular and liberalized.[7] The recurring discussion of using classes to convert non-Catholic students makes much more sense in an era where the future of the Catholic church was uncertain. The Center acted not as an outpost of stability for OSU students who are attempting to answer the pressing questions of that era; instead, it offered guidance to those who had already subscribed to the Church’s ideas of what was morally just and unjust. Single women not being allowed in the rentals would not appeal to liberal students, nor would the glorification of traditional gender roles appeal to LGBTQIA+ students or others who oppose these ideologies.

Perhaps this explains the Newman Center’s many proposals to use classes to connect to the student body and perhaps gain new converts. There are many discussions of this tactic in leadership meeting minutes, an idea first introduced in a 1965 “Ten Year Projection” for the Center, when leaders expressed a belief that lessons in the Catholic faith were needed regardless of whether or not they would be offered through curriculum.[8] In another case, someone suggested using students in an architecture class to design a potential building for the Center while acting as ambassadors of sorts, furthering fellow students’ knowledge of the Center and Catholicism. They viewed this as a way to garner more support on campus.[9] In a way, it seems that the Center’s leaders hoped to create a quasi-Jesuit-style college for OSU students. One of the Center’s main goals in the second half of the 1960s was to create a “Catholic church on campus,” yet another way to spread Catholicism throughout the student body.[10]

My research into the Newman Center at Oregon State University in the 1960s surprised me. The staunch support of marriage, sexual conservatism, and heteronormativity aligned with the ideals of the Catholic Church but seem out of step with the era’s liberalizing culture. In the midst of mass movements for civil rights and women’s rights, the Newman Center denied housing to women; it is difficult to know if this conservatism helped or hindered its efforts to convert more students to the Catholic faith. If I could further this project, I would try to interview students who attended OSU in the late 1960s and ask them how they viewed the Newman Center. Some pieces of history are lost because they are not recorded, and this includes students’ perception of the Newman Center’s early years.


[1]  “Newman Apostolate Grows at Corvallis,” Catholic Sentinel, October 13, 1967, Box 1, Memorabilia Collection, Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon.

[2] Newman Center Minutes of Meetings, December 1968, Box 1, Newman Foundation of Oregon State Records, SCARC.

[3] Newman Center Minutes of Meetings, May 17, 1968, Box 1, Newman Foundation of Oregon State Records, SCARC.

[4] Talk to Be Given…,” 1968, Box 3, Newman Foundation of Oregon State Records, SCARC.

[5] S.J. Achutegrui, “The Second Vatican Council,” Philippine Studies 10, no. 4 (December 1962), 523.

[6] Annie Grattan interview with author, December 4, 2025.

[7] Philip Gleason, “Catholicism and Cultural Change in the 60s,” Review of Politics 34, no. 4 (January 1972): 91-107.

[8] “Ten Year Project” Box 3, Newman Foundation of Oregon State Records, SCARC.

[9] Mrs. Sitton to Newman Foundation, 1965, Box 3, Newman Foundation of Oregon State Records, SCARC.

[10] “Talk to be Given to People Called Together for the Purpose of Starting Some Type of Booster Organization for the O.S.U. Newman Center,” 1968, Box 3, Newman Foundation of Oregon State Records, SCARC.

In Loco Parentis: Controlling College Women’s Behavior in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2025 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women’s impact on our university.

By Dylan Brady

Booklet titled "Save Your Blushes: A Guide to Campus Etiquette" with an illustration of a surprised woman.

In OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center, I was surprised to find a 1939 guide published by the Etiquette Board of Associated Women Students of Oregon State College called “Save Your Blushes,” which details the do’s and don’ts for incoming women students. One one page, for example, the guide instructs women students in how to act in the dining halls, from seating arrangements to conversation topics.[1] The guidebook tells women students what they should wear and how they should act on dates. In a section called “Fruit for the Beach Combers,” it offers advice – for example, “there are very few emergencies that justify breaking a date” – and referring to potential dates as “fruits” or “livestock.”[2]

The guide includes tips on mundane matters that I was surprised a college organization would even care about, such as how women are supposed to walk with men. A section called “Round Bout” advises, “if a girl and boy are walking together, the girl should always be on the man’s right.”[3] Many of the pieces of advice offered in the guide seem, to the modern eye, like an odd effort to dictate the daily actions of women students.

Associated Women Students (AWS) was a national organization with chapters at universities across the country. Each chapter shared a set of goals: to “regulate all matters pertaining to the welfare of women students, to further the spirit of unity and service, to increase a sense of individual responsibility, and to create and maintain high standards and ideals for the women students of the university.”[4] AWS served as a campus umbrella organization for all women’s groups, societies, and clubs, sponsoring events such as nickel hops, carnivals, and women’s weekends.[5] The constitution of OSC’s AWS noted that every woman on campus was allowed to become a member and participate creating cooperation among women across campus and the AWS.[6]

Group of nine white women around a table in a room with a large window and spiral staircase.
Associated Women Students officers from nine different colleges gather at a workshop in the Memorial Union found in Oregon Digital in the Historical Images of Oregon State University. Historical Images of OSU, “AWS Officers Workshop,” Oregon Digital, accessed Nov. 22, 2025.

AWS worked closely with OSC’s administration to promote what its members viewed as the safety and well-being of women students and the campus community. A 1959 AWS pamphlet declared, “In the college community, closing hours and other regulations are made and observed in the best interests of the health and welfare of the women students and to meet expressed wishes of parents for social supervision.”[7] Here, the AWS promotes a common approach at the time in which college and university leadership acted in loco parentis, or “in the place of the parent.” As a legal scholar described it, “in its fullest form the doctrine of in loco parentis permits colleges to devise, implement and administer student discipline and to foster the physical and moral welfare of students.”[8] It was a primary focus for many of these organizations to regulate the behavior of the female students on campus because these regulations are were what they believed were necessary to succeed not just in college, but their future life. These regulations were harmonious to the roles women were expected to play in the family and community in the mid-twentieth century.

Throughout the AWS’s existence, they produced many coed codes to serve as guides for women on campus, designed to shape their behavior. This coincides with their belief that, “In every phase of life the individual lives within certain regulations, which are necessary for the welfare and harmony of the group.”[9] They emphasized the college rule that women students secure permission from a parent or guardian, filed with the Dean of Women, before leaving campus.[10] They also promoted the rule that women were barred from entering men’s dormitories.[11] AWS and the administration worked to impose a broad range of rules on women student behavior.  

The fact that it was women students themselves, through AWS, that advocated and publicized these rules and regulations suggests an emphasis on peer pressure as one key enforcement mechanism. The historian Babette Faehmel argues that if women on college campuses did not follow the behavior rules set out for them, they would be socially ostracized.[12] AWS guides emphasize that students must follow certain social conduct to remain “in accordance with standards of decency.”[13] Even as these guides sought to restrict women’s freedom, they insisted that conformity was “a sure recipe of happiness at college.”[14] These guides promoted a vision of womanhood rooted in acceptable social behavior, preparing women students to become good hostesses, conversationalists, and wives.

A chart listing attire suggestions for various social occasions.
A page inside the coed code for the 1944-45 school year explaining what women should and should not wear for certain school events. OSU SCARC, “Coed Code, 1944–1945,” Oregon Digital, accessed Dec. 10, 2025.

Similar handbooks and guides circulated on college campuses in the 1920s and 1930s and continued to shape college life during and after World War II. Historian Donna J. Drucker, who researched similar women’s organizations at Purdue University in the 1939-1940 academic year, found that they “aimed to prepare young women to face whatever experiences lay ahead—whether that meant eating oysters or preparing for war—with grace.”[15] In the postwar period, as more women could afford higher education, American culture both praised women’s college attendance and promoted domesticity.[16] Even as more women attended college, the expectation was that they would devote their adult lives to managing children and a home and supporting their husbands’ careers. AWS leaders, then, tried to prepare college women for this future role. As Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz wrote about Scripps College’s expectations of its students (all women) in this period, “graduates might combine work (‘contribution’) with marriage and children (‘fullest and richest life’).”[17]

Of course, on college campuses nowadays there are still rules and regulations that many must follow, but nothing that compares to the ones female students had to follow before the 1960s. College organizations do have a job in some ways to help foster student growth, not just for career goals but also for living a. healthy and contributing life. However, there is a limit to how far these restrictions should go in order serve the best interests of the students. These handbooks and organizations, even with their best interests in mind, served to control women students’ behavior and mold them for a limited future after college – marriage and motherhood. Regulations imposed by administrators and the promotion and enforcement of these regulations by fellow students limited the freedom of women students to be who they wanted to be and to express themselves. This small look at college life in mid-twentieth-century cannot capture the complexities of women students’ perspectives and lives living within this system. But it suggests that in this period, colleges sought to mold women students to fit a very narrow role in society rather than to develop and pursue their own, individual goals and aspirations.


[1] “Save Your Blushes, 1939,” Oregon Digital, 9, Accessed 2025-12-04. https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71cn310.

[2] “Save Your Blushes, 1939.”

[3] “Save Your Blushes, 1939.”

[4] Betsey Creekmore, “Associated Women Students – Volopedia,” Volopedia, September 24, 2018, https://volopedia.lib.utk.edu/entries/associated-women-students/.

[5] Historical Publications of Oregon State University, Oregon State University. “The Beaver 1948” Oregon Digital. Accessed 2025-11-22. https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/0g354f54.

[6] Associated Women Students, A.W.S. Handbook, 1930-31, Series 1, Box 1, Folder 2, Associated Women Students Handbooks, Special Collection and Archives Research Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon.

[7] OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center, Oregon State University. “AWS and Administrative Regulations for Women, 1959” Oregon Digital. Accessed 2025-12-10, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71cn38x.

[8] Theodore C. Stamatakos, “The Doctrine of In Loco Parentis, Tort Liability and the Student-College Relationship,” Indiana Law Journal 65, no. 2 (1990): 474.

[9] OSU SCARC, “AWS and Administrative Regulations for Women, 1959,” Oregon Digital.

[10] Ibid.

[11] OSU SCARC, “AWS and Administrative Regulations for Women, 1959,” Oregon Digital.

[12] Babette Faehmel, College Women in the Nuclear Age: Cultural Literacy and Female Identity, 1940–1960 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 31.

[13] Historical Publications of Oregon State University, “AWS and Administrative Regulations for Women, 1960,” Oregon Digital, accessed December 10, 2025, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71cn396.

[14] Historical Publications of Oregon State University, “Coed Code, 1946–1947,” Oregon Digital, accessed December 11, 2025, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71cn353.

[15] Donna J. Drucker, “‘In a Sense, It Is a Game’: Women’s Dormitory Life at Purdue University, 1939–1940,” Indiana Magazine of History 113, no. 1 (2017): 15, https://doi.org/10.5378/indimagahist.113.1.0001.

[16] Lynn D. Gordon, “The Gibson Girl Goes to College: Popular Culture and Women’s Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920,” American Quarterly 39, no. 2 (1987): 211–30, https://doi.org/10.2307/2712910.

[17] Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “Designing for the Genders: Curricula and Architecture at Scripps College and the California Institute of Technology,” Pacific Historical Review 54, no. 4 (1985): 439–61, https://doi.org/10.2307/3639569.

Buena Maris, the Hanford Nuclear Site, and Women’s Wartime Labor

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2025 in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women’s impact on our university.

By Kylie Abbey-Zanni

Black and white portrait of a white woman with styled hair and a slight smile.
Buena Maris, 1945

In the Buena Maris Mockmore Papers held in OSU’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center I found a fourteen-page report from 1960 titled “Hanford – In Retrospect.” In the report, Maris wrote about her time as Director of Women’s Activities at the Hanford Nuclear site, a Manhattan Project complex located along the Columbia River in southern Washington, during World War II. As Hanford recruited and employed thousands of women workers, its managers recognized what Maris called “the need for someone who could care for the welfare of several thousand women workers.”[1]

They turned to Maris, who took a year-long leave from her position as Dean of Women at Oregon State College, from September 1943 to September 1924, to serve as Director of Women’s Activities at Hanford. The report shows how she professionalized women’s welfare work and labor during wartime. Using her position at Hanford, Maris worked to set women workers up for success not only during the war but also afterwards, challenging the widespread assumption that women were temporary workers who would return home once the wartime emergency ended.

People playing basketball indoors under low lighting.
Women at Hanford playing in a basketball morale tournament as part of the site’s recreation program; “The Hanford Site: An Anthology of Early Histories”

Maris came into her position as Director of Women’s Activities at Hanford due to the unprecedented number of women entering the workforce, including newly available jobs in the defense industry, during World War II. A production site for plutonium needed for American atomic bombs, Hanford was a massive enterprise. At its peak in 1944, Hanford employed more than 51,000 workers, including four thousand women. With. large numbers of men serving in the military, defense plants sought out women to serve in a variety of roles including equipment inspectors, construction and general staff positions.

Maris’ report offers much more than just administrative notes. Instead, it reads very like to the diary of a woman managing a workplace in a new environment. She describes the living conditions Hanford’s women employees endured, such as overcrowded dormitories, the desert climate, and feelings of isolation. Maris’s solution for these struggles was something she called “purposeful engagement,” making available opportunities for women workers to get involved in recreational activities that served the community. She brought in Red Cross volunteer programs and church services and activities, for example, to help “curb boredom.”[2] These efforts were touted in promotional coverage in various newspapers. An article titled “New Deans a Queen!,” for example, portrayed Maris as a very warm woman who was heavily committed and involved in women’s development. “To satisfy needs of such a large group of employees… church facilities had to be provided. This wasn’t the specific responsibility of the supervisor of women’s activities… However, the tent for Catholic services was no longer adequate – some of the parishioners sitting on benches well out beyond the open end of the tent in the sagebrush.”[3] Providing adequate facilities for church services was not in Maris’s job description, but she was committed to the welfare Hanford’s women and took up the issue anyway. In a newspaper tribute decades later, reporter Laurie Williams referred to Maris as “Hanford’s mom for a year” and highlighted how women at Hanford thrived under her supervision, many of them going on to have careers after the war.[4]

Another later treatment discussed Maris’s promotion of volunteer activities. In “The Hanford Site: an Anthology of Early Histories,” M.S. Gerber wrote that “Mrs. Maris also organized a library, started a Red Cross chapter that still functions in Richland today, and scheduled a special daily bus with a late return to and from Pasco so that women could break the monotony of camp life.”[5] In addition to these organized programs, Maris worked endlessly to ensure these women kept their morale up and their lives as normally as possible. Maris was well suited to this role. After earning her undergraduate degree in Home Economics and Child Development, she earned a Master’s in Science at OSC in 1939 and went on to teach and serve as Dean of Women at OSC from 1941 to 1948 (excepting her year at Hanford).

Maris’s approach echoed similar work by middle-class women reformers in the first half of the twentieth century. During the Progressive era, reformers feared that young, unmarried women’s entry into urbanized labor markets and access to commercialized leisure put them at moral risk. Reformers from groups such as the Young Women’s Christian Association and the Travelers Aid Society believed these women needed supervised, structured recreation, from chess clubs and church services and supervised outings and supervised boarding houses.[6] Maris was able to reproduce this at Hanford, carrying on traditional ways of bringing leisure to working women. These sources show how Maris not only monitored Hanford’s workplace and leisure culture but also heavily shaped and contributed to it.

White women sorting newsletters.
Women at Hanford distributing employee newsletters by and for the workers; nps.gov website article “(H)our History Lesson: Hanford Site Workers in Tri-Cities, Washington.”

Some histories of women’s labor in World War II emphasized its temporary nature. They argue that while the wartime emergency opened up new kinds of jobs to women, these opportunities were largely foreclosed when servicemen returned after the war.[7] Other scholarship paints a more complicated picture. Claudia Goldin argued that women’s labor during World War II sparked a long-term shift in societal norms and expectations.[8]Several contributors to Joanne Meyerowitz’s reassessment of postwar gender roles argued that women continued to advance, particularly in feminized professions such as nursing, teaching, and social work.[9]

Maris’s impact on Hanford’s women workers seems to have played a small role in this larger phenomenon. Laurie Williams’s article “Women Came to Hanford to Make a Difference detailed how women continued to grow in their career fields following their time at Hanford and credits Maris for building their confidence and capacities.[10] Maris modeled women’s leadership, showing that women could manage and direct the workforce, not just join it. Her work at Hanford not only illustrates wartime necessity but also shows how war-time need opened paths towards long-term employment for women. She proved herself as a wartime professional who demonstrated that women managers were not temporary but rather individuals who could carry their skills outside of the war. Maris’ story and impact fits into the broader transformation of women in the United States at the time. WWII made women’s labor more visible and necessary while women like Maris worked to make it more sustainable. Her role in Hanford serves as a reminder that the war created both women workers and women leaders.

“Hanford – in Retrospect” captured the story of a woman who reshaped wartime labor at a singular site. By establishing a variety of programs, a sense of community, and professional pathways, Buena Maris helped to normalize women in long-term paid labor, not just during the war but after it, as well. Her story invites further questions and research about Oregon State College and the larger history of women, war, and labor. Did federal agencies recognize, or even use Maris’s model? What role did race, class, and religion play in shaping women’s lives and labor at Hanford? How did OSC benefit from Maris’s Hanford experience after she returned? Maris opened the door for women to continue growing in the professional workplace and her papers ensure we can look back on and evaluate her impact.


[1] Buena Maris, “Hanford – In Retrospect,” December 8, 1960, series 3, box 2, folder “Manhattan Project: Hanford, 1960-1962,” Buena Maris Mockmore Papers (hereafter Mockmore Papers), Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.

[2] Maris, “Hanford – In Retrospect.”

[3] “New Deans a Queen! New Dean Promises OSC Friendliness,” undated newspaper clipping, series 2, box 1, folder “Newsclippings re: Speeches and Presentations Given by Mockmore [Iowa and Oregon] circa 1940-1965,” Mockmore Papers.

[4] Laurie Williams, “Hanford’s Mom for a Year, Buena Maris Made Desert a Home for Women Workers,” newspaper clipping, October 31, 1993, series 3, box 2, folder “Manhattan Project: Hanford 1945,” Mockmore Papers.

[5] M.S. Gerber, “The Hanford Site: An Anthology of Early Histories,” October 1993, series 3, box 2, folder “Manhattan Project 1998-2010,” Mockmore Papers.

[6] Joanne Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1930 (University of Chicago Press, 1988).

[7] Ruth Milkman, “Gender, Consciousness, and Social Change: Rethinking Women’s World War II Experience,” Labor History 28, no. 1 (1987): 3–18; Marjorie Miller, “Working Women and World War II,” Journal of American Studies 14, no. 2 (1980): 123–141.

[8] Claudia Goldin, “The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women’s Employment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, no. 4 (1991): 1497-1542.

[9] Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (Temple University Press, 1994).

[10] Laurie Williams, “Women Came to Hanford to Make a Difference,” newspaper clipping, October 31, 1993, series 3, box 2, folder “Manhattan Project: Hanford 1945,” Mockmore Papers.

Farm Worker Solidarity Summit: Colegio César Chávez Exhibit, Film Screening, and Panel Discussion

Farm Worker Solidarity Summit Flyer

The Colegio César Chávez exhibit was featured at part of the March 2, 2026, Farm Worker Solidarity Summit hosted by the University of Oregon’s Multicultural Center. The event was a celebration of historical and current day contributions that farm workers make to not only Oregon’s economy but our culture as Oregonians. The stories shared through this celebration are more important than ever to understanding and depicting the challenges that domestic and immigrant farm workers face today. Students, faculty/staff, and community members were invited to engage in these conversations.

Farm Worker Solidarity Summit Story Sharing Sessions

  • Workshop Session 1 (Film and Discussion and Exhibit): Colegio César Chávez — Moderator Natalia Fernández with panelists José Romero, Anthony Veliz, & Alicia Avila 
  • Session 2 (Presentation & Exhibit): “Stories from the Farm Workers’ Rights Movement” with focus on UFW, EFFW in the community and on campus — speaker Nancy Bray, Eugene Friends of the Farm Workers
  • Workshop Session 3 (Presentation): “The Power of the Boycott: Windmill Mushroom Boycott” — speaker Collin Heatley, UO PhD Student, History  
  • Springfield High School Mariachi del Sol Performance 
  • Keynote by PCUN President Reyna Lopez  

To begin the event, summit organizer Dinorah Ortiz-Carté, Program Director, University of Oregon Multicultural and SSWANA Centers, shared the UO’s land acknowledgement as well as a labor acknowledgement:

University of Oregon Labor Acknowledgement

 Colegio César Chávez: Film Screening, Panel Discussion, and Exhibit

The session “The Living Legacy of Colegio César Chávez” included a screening of OPB’s Oregon Experience documentary “The Living Legacy of Colegio César Chávez” and was followed by a panel discussion with documentary producer Alicia Avila, Colegio César Chávez co-founder José Romero, and PODER: Oregon’s Latino Leadership Network President Anthony Veliz. “Colegio César Chávez: The Legacy Lives On / El legado sigue vivo” exhibition curator, Natalia Fernández moderated the panel discussion. The speakers shared their thoughts on the history and legacy of the Colegio César Chávez and the need for continued advocacy for educational opportunities for the Latino/a/é community. About 30 people were in attendance for the session.

The questions posed to the panelists included: What are some lessons learned from Colegio’s community organizing experiences that continue to be applicable today? Can you share the importance of mentors and how your mentors helped shape you and your advocacy work? How can we continue to center the need for educational opportunities for the Latiné community?

Photo of the Panelists, photo by Arya Surowidjojo / OPB 

Colegio César Chávez: The Legacy Lives On / El legado sigue vivo — Exhibit Photos!

Colegio César Chávez Resources Table
Colegio César Chávez Resources Table
Colegio César Chávez Exhibit
Colegio César Chávez Exhibit

Springfield High School Mariachi del Sol Performance 

Springfield High School Mariachi del Sol 
Springfield High School Mariachi del Sol 

Keynote Speech by PCUN President Reyna Lopez

Flyer to promote the keynote speech by PCUN President Reyna Lopez

The Summit concluded with a keynote speech by PCUN President Reyna Lopez. PCUN is the largest Latinx organization in Oregon and has been on the forefront of fighting detention and deportation of immigrants and farm workers across the state.

Lopez spoke about the work PCUN is engaging in to support immigrant communities and the fight against ICE. She shared information about the history of May Day and PCUN’s plans for Day without an Immigrant events as well as May Day 2026 and how folks can get involved!

Dates for the Day without an Immigrant and May Day events in 2026

Solidarity in Action: Boycott Windmill Mushroom products!

Current and former workers from the Windmill Mushroom Farms in Sunnyside, WA rallied to formally announce a UFW boycott of Windmill Mushroom products. One of the three sessions shared information about the boycott and how community members can support the farm workers involved and impacted:

Information about the boycott of Windmill Mushroom products

Boycott Windmill Mushroom Farms: Ways to Support

For over three years, workers at a mushroom facility in Sunnyside, WA, run by Windmill
Mushroom Farms and owned by private equity firm Instar, have been fighting for union
recognition. Under Washington State Law, agricultural workers are excluded from the right to organize and there is no legal mechanism to force companies to recognize labor unions
regardless of the wishes of a majority of the workforce. Many pro-union workers at
Windmill Mushrooms have faced adverse actions, including terminations and conditions that have pressured them to leave their jobs. After repeated demonstrations, petitions, and other demands for union recognition, the United Farm Workers in December, 2024 announced its first official boycott of the decade against Windmill Mushrooms, until the company agrees to recognize the union.

On Aug. 15, 2025, the UFW and PCUN announced the expansion of the boycott into Oregon. Windmill mushrooms are sold at Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyer, WinCo and Market of Choice in Eugene/Springfield. They are often sold bulk and include organic varieties so check the box label before buying. If the box has no label, ask the produce manager what brand they are. Organically Grown doesn’t buy from Windmill Farms so any mushrooms sold in natural food stores in Eugene are OK to buy.

Actions for individuals and organizations:

1) Don’t buy Windmill mushrooms or any mushrooms grown in Sunnyside, WA
2) Sign the petition to Instar: https://act.seiu.org/a/windmill_instar and ask your friends to sign as well
3) Tell your friends about the boycott and ask them to sign the petition
4) Ask organizations in which you are a member to endorse the boycott – contact Eugene Friends of the Farm Workers for information and sample endorsement statements
5) Check if Windmill mushrooms are sold at other grocery stores in the area and let us know
6) If you would like to get more involved in Farm Worker Rights and the Windmill mushroom boycott, contact Eugene Friends of the Farm Workers: braynj@gmail.com

Eugene Friends of the Farm Workers

For more information about the Windmill mushroom boycott: https://www.fwm-nw.org/ and https://ufw.org/windmillboycott/

The Impact of SCARC Instruction Sessions: ED 219 Social Justice, Civil Rights, & Multiculturalism in Education

During fall term 2025, College of Education instructor Carrie Pilmer reached out to Natalia Fernández to develop an activity using archival materials for her ED219: Social Justice, Civil Rights, & Multiculturalism in Education course. In winter term 2026, SCARC hosted a total of 170 ED 219 students (2 sections of the course) in the SCARC Reading Room to engage with materials from the OSU Difference, Power, and Discrimination Program Records (note: the program is now called Difference, Power, and Oppression).

The purpose of ED 219 is to examine equity and injustice based on socially constructed groupings such as race, gender, language, religion, class and ability through history and current times. The course explores asset-based approaches and power in systems and institutions of society (e.g., schooling, curriculum, educational policy) and how to actively make change. The course emphasizes self-inquiry and contemplation of multiculturalism and personal experiences through a resilience-focused wholeness approach.

ED 219 is a Difference, Power, and Oppression (DPO) designated course. It fulfills the requirement to engage students in the critical reflection on the complexity of the structures, institutions, and ideologies that sustain systemic oppression, discrimination, and the inequitable distribution of systemic power and resources within and across communities. Such examinations enhance and promote responsible, ethical, and anti-racist engagement by preparing students to understand and disrupt these systems as they manifest in their field.

Because of the DPO requirement fulfillment and the course’s subject matter – the history of education – Carrie and Natalia decided to use the history of the DPO program as a local history case study for the students to analyze. Even better, because the spark for establishment of the DPO was BIPOC student activism, Natalia and Carrie wanted to emphasize the power of student voices to create change at OSU.

In addition to Carrie’s course, we invited Ana Ramírez’s course section as well, and during week four of the winter term, SCARC hosted four sessions (the two classes were split into two groups) of ED 219 students.

The College of Education wrote a piece about the collaboration; that article and accompanying photos are included below!

Ana M. Ramírez, M.Ed. (she/her/ella), Education Instructor, College of Education  
Natalia Fernández, SCARC and Ana Ramírez, College of Education
DPD Records, archival collection boxes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Trip to the Archives: An Education Class Explores the Impact of Student Activism at Oregon State 

Published February 27, 2026

Do you know how the Difference, Power, and Oppression program was created at Oregon State? In Ana Ramírez’s ED 219 class, students explored the rich history of student organizing that led to the DPO program and other institutional changes.  

Instructors Ana Ramírez and Carrie Pilmer collaborated with Natalia Fernández, Curator of the Oregon Multicultural Archives and the OSU Queer Archives, to bring students to the Special Collections and Archives Research Center. The class worked with primary source documents to learn about the history of the DPO Program and participated in group discussions, sharing their thoughts on the role of student voices in shaping coursework and their campus.

The class found the archive activity to be engaging and came to a strong consensus that it should be included in the course going forward. Student Waleed shares, “The archival materials made these experiences feel real, not just theoretical. It helped me understand that the struggles were ongoing and that change only happened when students spoke up and organized together.”

Several students noted that it was powerful to hear student voices directly from the source. When asked about the most impactful part of the activity, Molly says, “the proposal from the students felt the most impactful to me because I can only imagine the amount of courage and strength it took for these students to speak up. It also shows how something such as a letter or proposal can snowball into a whole new program that creates change for generations.”

Many also remarked that it was interesting to examine history and civil rights from a local perspective—that it was especially engaging to learn about this history of their university in particular. Student Aubrey says, “The large group discussion we had at the end of today’s class in the Archives really helped me tie in how we can learn from past OSU student activism and use it in a real, modern day context. Hearing my peers explain in their own words how we need to take ownership over issues at OSU helped me grasp the concept of real student activism, and in some ways even inspired me.” The class drew connections between the primary source accounts and current political and social issues.

The trip to the Special Collections and Archives Research Center proved to be a success and fulfilled Ramírez’s goals for the activity. She tells us, “We wanted our students to be engaging directly with the archival materials on the history of the DPO Program at OSU. We facilitated helping them see student activism, institutional change, and historical memory as central to their academic journey—not abstract concepts, but lived and ongoing commitments. 

Special thanks to Natalia Fernández and the OSU Libraries Special Collections for this opportunity. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, the article was shared across multiple outreach platforms!

Facebook

LinkedIn

Instagram

From the Page: Transcribe-a-Thon Event, Underground Newspapers at OSU Collection

Photo of the archival materials table with the event presentation in the background

The OSU Libraries, in collaboration with SCARC, hosted its first Transcribe-a-Thon Event via the From the Page platform!

What is a Transcribe-a-Thon Event? An opportunity to engage in transcription work, together and in-person!

What is From the Page? From The Page is a crowdsourcing transcription platform that allows archival institutions to post documents for transcription. While AI tools can be used for transcription purposes, some documents require human review to meet best practices for transcription for remediation purposes.

OSU’s SCARC has a number of projects available via From The Page: OSU SCARC for anyone to work on online from the ease and comfort of their own computers. In January 2026, we decided to host an event to engage in this work in-person with some selected materials for a special Transcribe the Archives milestone project.

What is the Transcribe the Archives milestone project? We want our archives to be open to all, which means we need help from our community members! We have been transcribing our archival materials so that the documents are searchable and screen reader-accessible. As a special pilot project for hosting in-person events, we selected materials from our Underground Newspapers collection that needed human transcribers (and at the time of the event, was almost completely transcribed) and planned an in-person event to see how many pages we could transcribe and review in a couple hours to get us that much closer to completing the project.

About the Underground Newspapers collection: The Underground Newspapers collection consist of publications, primarily written and produced by Oregon State University students, that were intended as alternatives to the mainstream press. Most of the publications were issued during the period of student unrest in the 1960s and early 1970s. The predominant topics are civil rights, specifically racial incidents at Oregon State University, and the war in Vietnam. All of the items in this collection are available online in the Oregon State University Student Protest and Underground Publications digital collection.

From the Page Collection: OSU Student Protest and Underground Publications

About the Transcribe-a-Thon Event: The event took place noon to 2 p.m., Monday Jan. 20th in the Valley Library’s Autzen classroom. All were welcome and we provided all the training needed as part of the event.

Over the course of the 2 hours we had 8 people (1 community member, 1 student, and 5 faculty/staff) join us. Participants were encouraged to work on documents within the OSU Student Protest and Underground Publications, but were able to work on any OSU materials in need of transcription, and over the course of the two hours, 91 pages were transcribed!

Transcription by Humans vs AI Tools

Original Document: image of The Scab Sheet
AI Output: image of The Scab Sheet
Human-Transcribed Output: image of The Scab Sheet

Do you want to work on this project with us? Please do!

Instructions for engaging in a From the Page project

Photos from the Event

Event welcome table and whiteboard to tally participants
Pins! The “I can read cursive” pins were especially cute!
Archival materials table: items from the Underground Newspapers collection
Selection of materials from the Underground Newspapers collection: The Scab Sheet
Transcribers hard at work!

OUR NEXT TRANSCRIBE-A-THON EVENT!

Transcribe the Archives: Happy Birthday, Linus Pauling!
Feb 27, Friday 1 – 3 p.m. @ Autzen Classroom

Happy birthday, Linus Pauling! Help make our archives accessible by transcribing his notes and journals. All are welcome!

OSU Faculty and Administrators Oral History Interviews, SOC 318 Assignment

During fall term 2025, SCARC collaborated with Dr. Dwaine Plaza’s course SOC 318 Qualitative Research Methods on an assignment for students to conduct oral history interviews with Oregon State University Faculty and administrators. Early in the term, the students came for an instruction session held in the SCARC Reading Room and we shared the SCARC resource Oral History Interviewing Methods & Project Management. We now have 6 new oral history interviews available for public access!

Additions to the Voices of Oregon State University Oral History Collection

  • Alix Gitelman – Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
  • Andrew Valls – Professor, Political Science, School of Public Policy
  • Anne Gillies – Director, OSU Search Advocate Program
  • Joan Gross – Professor Emeritus, School of Language, Culture and Society
  • Kevin Dougherty – Dean of Students & Senior Associate Vice President for Student Affairs
  • Larry Rodgers – Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor of English, School of Writing, Literature & Film

Be sure to check out the interviews the 2024 students conducted: OSU Faculty Oral History Interviews, SOC 318 Assignment, Fall Term 2024

Teaching Hands to War: How Oregon State College Supported the War Effort Through Education

During winter term 2025 Dr. Kara Ritzheimer’s History 310 (Historian’s Craft) students researched and wrote blog posts about OSU during WWII. The sources they consulted are listed at the end of each post. Students wrote on a variety of topics and we hope you appreciate their contributions as much as the staff at SCARC does!

Blog post written by Tanner Maynard.

Portrait of Dr. F. A. Gilfillan, acting president of Oregon State College during America's entry into World War II, from The Oregon Stater, March 1942.

The December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy forced the American people to recognize that the war raging across the globe was coming to them, whether they wanted it or not. Men stood in recruitment lines, women signed up for the Red Cross, and assembly lines transitioned from producing cars to producing tanks. The attacks galvanized the nation’s fighting spirt and Americans were once again willing to enter the fray. However, the war overseas would not be won through spirit alone. It had been more than two decades since the United States’ foray into World War One and Americans were not accustomed to, nor prepared for, the rigors of war. Technicians needed training, communities needed organizing, and those on the home front needed more practical knowledge to support the war abroad. Land-grant universities like Oregon State College (OSC) answered the nation’s call to arms by addressing the country’s educational needs.

America faced a critical shortage of engineers, doctors, and scientists for wartime needs at the onset of the United States’ entry into World War Two. In recognition of this shortage, the OSC campus almost immediately began to transition from traditional campus life towards a wartime curriculum. A headline from the March 1942 issue of The Oregon Stater, the campus’s monthly magazine, reads: “Wartime Demands Anticipated…Defense Activities at Oregon State College Meet and Exceed Suggestions of Wartime Commission.”[1]  The article states that, earlier that month, under the direction of acting president Dr. F.A. Gilfillan, OSC had committed to accelerate academic schedules. College administrators planned summer classes for the upcoming term that would offer up to a maximum of 18 credits for the session and allow undergraduates in critical sectors, such as engineering and physics, to graduate earlier. OSC also contributed to the war effort by creating nutritional programs, pre-nursing courses, first aid, fire prevention training, and additional ROTC work.[2] While many of these courses were educational, the newly established physical program, for example, offered dancing classes, field games, and swimming courses, all under the supervision of OSC physical education staff.[3]

OSC was one of the first campuses in the nation to offer physical conditioning courses aimed at national defense for women.[4]  While these courses were not designed to prepare women for physical combat, they were intended to condition who would go on to work in canneries, field labor, or at aid stations through the course of the war, as the Oregon State Barometer explains.[5]

By 1943, the accelerated wartime curriculum began to accommodate incoming undergraduates who participated in the similar high school Victory Corps program. The program was designed to provide some basic military training to male and female high school students. Undergraduates would be eligible to transfer their Victory Corps experience over in the form of degree credits to further accelerate their graduation date and meet the expertise required of the war.[6] Summer classes and Victory Corps workshops could give freshmen a head start on their graduation date. The wartime curriculum prepared students for their future trials. However, OSC did not just offer curriculum for its own students.

The military quickly realized its direct need for technical expertise beyond the home front. In 1943, the Army and Navy collaborated to create the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) under the Ninth Service Command. The Service Command’s intent was to train officers in subjects such as advanced engineering and other sciences. Qualified civilians, such as campus faculty, would conduct this training on a contract basis. OSC was the first institution on the West Coast to secure one of these contracts.[7] Oregon newspapers quickly praised OSC for accepting 500 soldiers in the coming spring term of 1943.[8] The ASTP required the soldier students to adhere to rigorous military and professional standards. An ASTP manual sent to the OSC President details the contracted curriculum the campus would provide, as well as the advanced expectations of those who participate in the program.[9] The program would not survive the end of the war due to more pressing manpower requirements, such a need for riflemen in late 1943 and early 1944. However, OSC continued to support the program, with contracts extending as far as July 1945.[10] Wartime curricula and the ASTP, while significant presences on the campus, were not the only educational programs offered by OSC in support of the war.

President Roosevelt’s administration confronted a monumental task in mobilizing the American people and the economy for war. In his historical analysis Wartime America, historian Dr. John Jeffries describes the complexities of mobilization and how the executive branch created various organizations to assist in that endeavor. “America’s entry into the war in December 1941 galvanized mobilization agencies, the production of war goods, and the management of the economy, but largely along lines already established. In January 1942, FDR created the War Production Board (WPB)…Designed to exercise general responsibility over the economy in order to effect conversion to war production, restrict nonessential economic activity, and coordinate materials and production priorities.”[11] By themselves, these programs would mean relatively little if the public did not know how to help support them in their day-to-day lives. You may ask an individual to do their part to control inflation, but it will not amount to much if people don’t know what that is or how they can make an impact. Luckily, OSC was well-equipped for educational outreach.

A page from an OSC Extension Services handbook detailing strategies for neighborhood leaders to combat inflation during wartime, including economic measures like tax regulation and price stabilization.

Extension Services offered by land-grant universities and colleges like OSC had a long tradition of educational outreach long before, and long after, the entry to the war. Dr. Wayne Rasmussen, former chief historian for the United States Department of Agriculture, remarked in his historical account Taking the University to the People, “Extension has been a force for sustained, rational change that improves the quality of American life. It has taken the university to the people. Indeed, it is the university of the people.”[12] He adds, “the Extension Services played pivotal roles in the nation’s survival through three major emergencies – World War I, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and World War II.”[13]

While OSC’s wartime curriculum met the educational needs of the nation on campus, its Extension Service stood ready to address them off grounds. Extension Services outreach ranged from providing practical information to local communities in support of national programs, such as the effort to control inflation, to indirect support through comprehensive diet plans and fire prevention training.

Handbooks were particularly useful to this end. One such example is the Victory Begins at Home program booklet in which OSC’s Extension Services developed a guide to assist local leaders in supporting national goals.[14] The manual emphasized the need for community leaders to keep their neighborhood informed about wartime problems as well as activities that local communities could engage in, such as the collection of scrap iron and rubber or the establishment of Victory Gardens. Nutrition became a major focus of the war effort during 1942 and 1943. Establishing home food supplies and maintaining proper nutrition would allow families to be more resilient in the face of wartime shortages. In response, Extension Services distributed material to assist families in developing easy to follow diet plans.[15] Families received detailed instructions via guidebooks and workshops on how to keep and properly manage livestock, even in confined environments.[16] The potential threat of fire sabotage by enemy forces spurred the creation of the Emergency Farm Fire Protection program in support of the national Victory Garden initiative.[17] OSC’s Extension Services not only developed these types of programs, but ensured community access via the distribution of handbooks to local communities through meetings, workshops, or mailing lists.[18] OSC’s fire prevention and training programs were so successful that in 1942, the state organized the Keeping Oregon Green association. A 1942 thesis presented to the School of Forestry noted that the recent expansion of fire patrols in rural Oregon were directly attributable to the Oregon State College Extension Service.[19] These extra patrols would surely come in handy later that year when Japan attempted to drop incendiary bombs on the Oregon coast. However, not all programs were as tangible. In 1942, the President of the United States offered a plan to control inflation. Through workshops and booklets, Extension Services offered rural communities a comprehensive understanding of the causes of inflation, as well as tips for how individuals could assist their government in their attempts to control it.[20]

Cover of a wartime handbook titled 'Planning Your Family's Food Supply,' prepared by Mable C. Mack, designed to assist families in maintaining healthy diets during wartime scarcity, featuring patriotic imagery and a decorative border.

Educational institutions did not stand idly by while the rest of the nation went to war. Distributing a handbook or taking a course is not as flashy as raising a flag on a foreign island. However, that does not mean that the services offered by institutions were not valuable. Institutions like Oregon State College worked tirelessly to address the educational needs of a nation at war. Through wartime curriculum and the outreach of Extension Service, land-grant colleges directly supported the national efforts by ensuring America had the technical and practical knowledge to win the war.


[1] “Wartime Demands Anticipated…Defense Activities at Oregon State College meet and Exceed Suggestions of Wartime Commission,” The Oregon Stater, March 1942, 2, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71bk75g

[2] “Wartime Demands Anticipated,” The Oregon Stater, March 1942, 3,16, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71bk75g

[3] “Physical program Open to All OSC Women,” Oregon State Barometer, March 24, 1942: 1, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/8k71p720p#metadata

[4] “OSC Health Program Among Nation’s First,” Oregon State Barometer, March 24, 1942: 1, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/8k71p720p#metadata

[5] Eva Seen, “Physical education Department Offers Conditioning Activities,” Oregon State Barometer, March 24,1942: 1, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/8k71p720p#metadata

[6] “Fourth Quarter Summer Session Plans at OSC Announced by Dean Smith,” The Oregon Stater, February-March, 1943, 5, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71bk89t?locale=en

[7] John Burtner, “Army Specialized training Program Set Up on Oregon State Campus,” The Oregon Stater,” (February-March, 1943), 3, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/fx71bk89t?locale=en

[8] “Oregon State Is Ready to Proceed on War Basis,” The Springfield News, March 11, 1943: 3, Historic Oregon Newspapers, https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071003/1943-03-11/ed-1/seq-3/#words=college+Oregon+Oregon%27s+State+war

[9]“Army Specialized Training Program,” April 3, 1944, Oregon State University’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center (hereafter SCARC), President’s Office General Subject File, Army Specialized Training Program – Curricula, Contract manuals and curriculum material, 1943-1945,” Subgroup 6, Series 8, Sub-Series 41, Reel-Folder 34.79a, 215-238. Also available through, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/4m90dw941

[10] “Army Specialized Training Program” (April 1944), 7, Oregon Digital, https://oregondigital.org/concern/documents/4m90dw941

[11] John Jeffries. Wartime America: The World War II Home Front (Rowman & Littlefield,  2018), 17.

[12] Wayne Rasmussen, Taking the University to the People: Seventy-Five Years of Cooperative Extension (Iowa State University Press, 1989), 14.

[13] Rasmussen, Taking the University to the People, viii.

[14] Voluntary Community and Neighborhood Leadership in Oregon (Corvallis, Or. Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College, 1942), 1-4, ScholarsArchive@OSU, https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/administrative_report_or_publications/41687k07k

[15] Mable Mack. Planning Your Family’s Food Supply (Corvallis, Or. Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College, 1943), 1-5, ScholarsArchive@OSU, https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/administrative_report_or_publications/0g354k11p?locale=en

[16] James A. Harper and Clyde Walker, The Home Unit Poultry House. (Corvallis, Or. Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College, 1943), 1-12, ScholarsArchive@OSU, https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/administrative_report_or_publications/5712mb02r

[17] A. S King, and R. H Sterling, Organizing for Farm Fire Protection in Oregon (Corvallis, Or. Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College, 1942), 2. https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/administrative_report_or_publications/jd473122h

[18] A. S King, and R. H Sterling, Organizing for Farm Fire Protection in Oregon (April 1942), 3, ScholarsArchive@OSU, https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/administrative_report_or_publications/jd473122h?locale=en

[19] Eugene McNulty, Keeping Oregon Green: Handbook for Field Men of the Keep Oregon Green Association (June 1942), 5, ScholarsArchive@OSU, https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/undergraduate_thesis_or_projects/hq37vt27x?locale=en

[20] The Nation’s Program to Control Inflation (Corvallis, Or. Federal Cooperative Extension Service, Oregon State College,  July 1942), 3-8, ScholarsArchive@OSU, https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/administrative_report_or_publications/fx719r33t