Gregory H. Williams became the University of Cincinnati’s 27th president when he took office in September 2009.  Among more than 100 applicants for the position, he was selected in part because of his outstanding work in transforming the City College of New York, where he served as president before joining the UC.  Williams received national acclaim for his book, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black (New York, NY: Dutton, 1995).   Over a decade later, he still received feedback from his readers while serving as the president here at UC. The memoir was his way of telling the world about struggling with poverty and acceptance during his youth and dealing with his biracial identity in Muncie, Indiana at a time when segregation was still highly overt in the United States.   The book also brought to life other family issues such as alcoholism and abandonment.  Throughout his account, he told the story of a normal childhood that spiraled into one of torment, welfare, and segregation, and then how he made the best of it.  Williams became the star quarterback of his high school’s football team, excelled in college to earn four degrees, and worked his way up in higher education system until he became president of College City of New York from 2001-2009 and then president of the University of Cincinnati from 2009 to 2012.

The Archives and Rare Books Library recently added all of Gregory William’s speeches from his UC presidential tenure (Accession Number UA-13-10).  This collection, dating from September 2009 to August 2012, includes quite a variety of speeches.  As is the case with many leaders of high-profile universities, Williams rarely had a day when he did not give one or more speeches (he also rarely had to eat alone, as there are over a hundred events he hosted or partook in that were held over brunch and dinners!).

The speeches include faculty senate meetings, award ceremonies for different faculty and departments here at the University of Cincinnati, interviews with the Cincinnati Enquirer, visits to high schools in Cincinnati, community and business groups, educational organizations, and even occasional luncheons with the students.  For example, included is the first page of his keynote speech at a fundraising event called the “Night on the Serengeti” that helps support Village Life, a program supported by UC faculty and students that assists Tanzania in developing its healthcare, education, and housing systems:

This Williams collection complements the holdings found in the Archives & Rare Books Library that documents the tenures of all UC presidents.  A finding aid for the collection is available on the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository.  To learn more about the University Archives, please visit ARB in 808 Carl Blegen Library, email us at archives@ucmail.uc.edu, telephone us at 513.556.1959, or visit us on the web at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/index.html.

Oh, the things you can find when you go to an auction.  Even the typical items that you find for sale, such as books, sometimes contain a surprise for the unsuspecting buyer.  That’s exactly what happened to Linda Sheets of Jonesboro, Indiana when she bought a box lot of books and discovered a University of Cincinnati tuition receipt dated October 1, 1917.  The strip of paper has yellowed with age, and fortunately Ms. Sheets realized it might have historical value for UC, and was kind enough to share her discovery with the Archives and Rare Books Library.

Jordon Alcott, the student from the 1917-1918 academic year, probably thought that $63.50 in tuition for one semester here at the university was expensive.  That total comes from a $5 library fee, $50 for tuition to the College of Liberal Arts, a $ 1 registration fee, $2.50 fine to use the gymnasium, and a $5 contingency fee.

To put that into perspective, let’s look at tuition from the 2012-2013 school year.  One term at UC’s uptown campus was $5,392, and that is not including resident hall costs, program fees, or mandatory health insurance if you don’t carry your own.

What a difference 96 years make in the cost of attending college.  Then again, the majority of working- class America in 1917 only made between $1,000 and $2,000 each year, so $63.50 every term would not be very cheap to the students of that time.  That amount would be about 19% of their annual income  and that is only if they were working full time during autumn and spring semesters of school.

In 2012, the working individual in Ohio made an average of $40,471 for the year.  With modern day school costs, about 27% of a full-time, average wage earner’s income would be going towards tuition.  Even taking inflation into consideration, school fees have still increased.

Another very interesting part of this receipt is the statement at the top: “Do not lose this receipt.  It must be shown to Instructor when requested.”    No lecture freeloaders allowed here!  For a broader view of what UC campus life was like during that year, have a look at the 1918 Cincinnatian, one of the digitized University of Cincinnati yearbooks available from the Libraries.

Next time you go to an auction and buy a book that catches your eye, make sure to take a look inside to see if you find a surprise, too!

Sources:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/17soirepar.pdf

http://www.justice.gov/ust/eo/bapcpa/20111101/bci_data/median_income_table.htm

Instruction in the College of Nursing and Health, 1978

The Archives and Rare Books Library has completed processing an 81 box collection of College of Nursing Records from 1940-2004, and it is now available for research. The highlight of this collection is a large number of curriculum records dating from 1980-2003, documenting the development of the program and the changing face of nursing education during a 20+ year period. These curriculum records include syllabi, course outlines, handouts, presentations, and textbook lists. Development of the PhD program during the 1980s and 1990s is also documented. The Archives and Rare Books Library encourages all academic departments to transfer historic curriculum for inclusion in the University Archives Collection.

William Cooper Procter Hall – photo from the building dedication program, 1968

The Nursing collection also contains administrative records from 1940-2004, primarily department and committee records, but also including building records, policies and procedures, annual reports, and accreditation records.  Also included are class records from 1946-1987 with student rosters, schedules, correspondence, and ephemera.  A complete inventory is available on the OhioLink Finding Aid Repository at http://rave. ohiolink.edu/archives/ead/OhCiUAR0361 or on the ARB website at http://libraries.uc.edu/documents/UA-13-02_College_of_Nursing.pdf.

Other Nursing collections are available at ARB, including Alumni Files from 1891-1940 (http://libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/archives/collections/documents/UA-12-08CollegeofNursing.pdf) and the publication College of Nursing and Health News Sheet from 1967-1973 (http://rave.ohiolink.edu/archives/ead/OhCiUAR0205). A collection from the Raymond Walters College Department of Nursing with records from 1969-2005 (http://rave.ohiolink.edu/archives/ead/OhCiUAR0266) is also available for research.

With the first major storm of the winter about to hit us in the next couple of days, it seems appropriate for a campus trip down memory lane.  And, it should be a quintessential Cincinnati weather experience of warm temperatures, rain, driving rain, gale-force winds, sleet, and snow all in the same 24-hour period.  If any ghosts of ancient Mayans visit the Queen City tomorrow or Friday, in all likelihood they will say, “See! Told you so!”

Be that as it may, here are some photographs of bygone winter days on the Clifton campus.  The first image is of Beecher Hall, now replaced on that spot by University Pavilion.  Beecher Hall was designed by A. Lincoln Fecheimer and constructed in 1915.  Originally called “The Women’s Building” because it housed classes and services for coeds, by 1920 it had been renamed in honor of Catherine Beecher, though the name would not become official until 1960.  Catherine Esther Beecher was the sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a notable advocate for the education of women.   In addition to her own writings on “domestic economy,”  Beecher was also involved in assisting William Holmes McGuffey in the publication of his eponymous readers, the widest selling textbooks of the 19^th century.  We’re not sure if the horse and buggy shown in the photo carried a parking decal, but you can bet we wouldn’t tolerate its absence today.

The second image is taken from Cunningham Hall with a view of Van Wormer in the foreground and Hughes High School in the distance to the right.  Yes, Cunningham Hall as part of the original McMicken Hall complex on the Academic Ridge.  Before the current McMicken Hall was dedicated in 1950, there were three separate buildings instead of the “wings.”  Hanna Hall stood to the north, with McMicken in the middle.  And, as you can see, Van Wormer boasts its original dome.  You know, the one that was architecturally proportional to the building.   Designed by Samuel Hannaford and Sons and constructed in 1899, Van Wormer is now the oldest building on campus. That dome was removed in 1930 when Van Wormer underwent remodeling.  The other Van Wormer photograph shows the drive in front of the building during the 1950s.

Our fourth view of Bearcat winters is a photograph of Memorial Hall, now part of the CCM Village.  Memorial is one of several beautiful buildings at UC designed by the architectural firm headed by Harry Hake.  Constructed in the early 1920s, it was named in honor of the UC students who died while fighting in World War I, and for its first few decades, it served as a men’s dormitory.  The fifth image is the front of Tangeman University Center, another Hake structure that was built in 1937, with an addition to it built in 1965.  In 2005, TUC underwent a dramatic transformation as part of the Main Street campus plan.

Finally, we have a photograph of the TUC Bridge, for five decades the focal point of students gathering between McMicken and TUC, though there is obviously no lingering in this snowy shot.  Gone from the bridge are the preachers, the credit card vendors, the Greek rush tables, the protesters, and that weird guy who sold alpaca serapes.  Chances are, though, after the snow stopped, a snowman would appear.

And so, enjoy tomorrow and Friday to the fullest, taking shelter from the storm and knowing full well that it can just as easily be sunny and in the 60s for Christmas Day.  After all, we live in Cincinnati.

Edited by Laura Laugle

Until now, the Daniel Drake Archival Collection at the Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions had been partially inventoried but all of our “Drakiana” had never been brought together in a cohesive collection. Since beginning my internship at the Winkler Center in October, I have been working on the compilation and organization of the materials and documents and I am coming to a close on the project. By the beginning of next year a finding aid will be made available through OhioLINK so that this collection will be searchable on the web.

Daniel Drake’s importance to the University of Cincinnati is of course due to his founding of the Medical College of Ohio in the early nineteenth century which, together with the McMicken University and the Cincinnati Law School, would become the basis for the establishment of the University itself. Dr. Drake spent most of his time teaching at the Medical College of Ohio.  Many of his lectures, addresses, and correspondence are currently being processed with other important articles on Drake’s life and his contribution to the medical field.

During Dr. Daniel Drake’s active teaching career he established the Western Journal of Medical and Physical Science (1828 – 1840), which was later known as the Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery (1840 – 1855).  At the Winkler Center we have the periodical’s run in entirety.  Subjects  range from treating Milk Sickness, a common illness at the time resulting from ingesting the milk of a cow that had fed on white snakeroot, to a case from a man that murdered his whole family claiming insanity – though as the article suggests, it was only feigned insanity. These periodicals illuminate the common diseases of the nineteenth century and give very explicit details on how these diseases and illnesses were treated and practical observations.

Going into this project I knew very little about nineteenth century medicine and will be leaving with a greater understanding. I have also learned a great deal about Daniel Drake’s contribution to the University of Cincinnati and his importance to medicine in our region.