History

“In November, our first-year seminar, A Sense of Place: Albion & the American Dream, traveled to Washington, D.C. to discover America’s history,” writes professor Wesley Arden Dick. “On November 5, our students were exploring the national ‘World War II Memorial’ when we encountered a gentleman who was wearing a hat with the insignia USS West Virginia. Hoping to talk with a World War II veteran, we introduced ourselves and he identified himself as Adone ‘Cal’ Calderone from Canton, Ohio.”

“In teaching history at Albion College, one of my goals is to bring national and international historical issues home to Albion: to the community and the campus,” writes history professor Wes Dick, who this fall is teaching a First-Year Seminar titled Sense of Place: Albion and the American Dream. “In exploring Albion College during the Vietnam War … I have discovered only one Albion College alumnus who died in Vietnam. That individual is Donald Bruce Adamson (pictured at left) and 2016 marks the 50th anniversary year of his death.”

The discovery of the story of African American Paul Cuffee, and the unfolding of others like his, was a revelation to Albion students Corey Wheeler, ’18, and Elijah Bean, ’19, and made the recent three-week Boston Summer Seminar, sponsored by the Great Lakes Colleges Association and hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society, an experience they’ll never forget.

Albion College and five other Great Lakes Colleges Association institutions are coming together to design and teach hybrid courses, with an emphasis on digital teaching, thanks to last year’s $335,000 grant from the New York-based Teagle Foundation. This semester, history professor Marcy Sacks (left) is collaborating with a counterpart from Hope College; in the fall, exercise science professor Heather Betz will team up with a faculty peer from DePauw University.

The recipient of a highly competitive Andrew W. Mellon Foundation internship in conservation, Mallory Fellows Bower, ’10, spent much of this past fall in Washington, D.C. at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture as it prepares to open its doors later this year.