Newsletter of the Department of History

VOLUME 28, NUMBER 2SPRING 2004

ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY

By Amy Wood

Three more veterans of the depart-ment have begun their retirements thissummer: Charles Ross, Mark Wyman,and Don Davis.

For Charles Ross, our academic advi-sor for history education majors, thistransition marks his second retirement.After ending a 27-year career as a highschool history teacher, Ross began work-

ing for the history education program in1996. He has worked as a supervisor ofstudent teachers, an intern coordinator,and as the academic advisor for historyeducation students. He quickly becamecelebrated for this knowledge of the insand outs of the catalog and registrationprocess. His dedication to his work andto his students has been invaluable to thedepartment.

Ross began his adulthood with aspi-rations to the ministry. After graduatingfrom Southern Illinois University (SIU)with a degree in history, he studied theol-ogy at Colgate-Rochester Divinity Schoolin New York for a year. Realizing that theministry was not for him, but knowingthat he enjoyed working with young peo-ple, he returned to SIU for his M.A. andteacher certification in history. He began

Two long-time faculty members diedat the end of spring semester. DavidChesebrough 72, died on April 29, andLawrence McBride, 58, died four dayslater on May 3.

Chesebrough had retired in May2002, and battled cancer in his finalmonths. McBride fell ill in early spring of 2003 when he was diagnosed with abrain tumor that finally took his life.

Chesebrough came to the departmentin 1988 after completing his Doctor ofArts degreehere, filling thelead under-graduate advi-sor positionand increasing-ly teaching—history surveys,world religions,20th centuryU.S. history,great figures,Civil War, andLincoln. In1995 he was picked to receive the HerbSanders Award for outstanding advising,given by the University.

Chesebrough came to history afterserving as a Baptist minister in variouschurches across the Midwest from 1958

to 1988. Hedrew on hisinterest in reli-gion in turningout seven booksin his years inthe department,as well asnumerous arti-cles. His favoritebook remained‘No Sorrow likeOur Sorrow’:Northern Protestant Ministers and theAssassination of Lincoln, published in1994.

Chesebrough’s funeral was May 5 atthe First Baptist Church of Bloomington.He is survived by one daughter, Brenda(Mike) Boscarino; one son, TimothyChesebrough; a brother and one grandson.

McBride received his Ph.D. from theUniversity of Chicago in 1978, and cameto the department in 1986.

Department Chairperson John Freedpraised McBride’s leadership in the pro-grams and scholarship. “He was both ahighly regarded scholar of Irish historyand an internationally recognized expertin the field of history education,” Freedsaid. “Under his leadership our history

education program became the largest in the country and a model for others to emulate.”

The Four-Courts Press in Dublin, Ire-land, immediately posted a notice ontheir Web site that noted “Dr. McBride’slove of Ireland and Irish history, particu-larly 19th-century Ireland, was shown inhis numerous visits to the island and themany friendships he established.” He co-edited two books for the Four-CourtsPress, but was best known for his 1991work, The Greening of Dublin Castle: The

Transformation of Bureaucratic and JudicialPersonnel in Ireland, 1892-1922.

McBride is survived by his wife, San-dra; his father, Lawrence; two children,Lawrence B. McBride and Brigid R.McBride; four sisters, and one brother. A funeral Mass was celebrated May 7 at Holy Trinity Church in Bloomington.

The Lawrence McBride Scholarship is being established to provide awards tohistory education and social science edu-cation students. Donations for the schol-arship endowment may be sent to theIllinois State University Foundation, witha memo note for “Lawrence McBride Stu-dent Education Award, account #442-5788.”

Department mourns two colleagues

David Chesebrough

Lawrence McBride

Ross, Wyman, and Davis retire

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his teaching career in Shelbyville beforemoving to Monticello, where he taughtfor 20 years.

Ross and his wife, Lana, a readingrecovery teacher, will continue to live inMonticello. He is looking forward tospending his days working on his fami-ly’s genealogy and cataloging family heir-looms. Retirement also will allow him tospend more time with his two children,Jennifer and Jonathon, and his six grand-children.

Continuing his commitment to thehistory department, Ross has generously

donated hisunused vaca-tion days to thestudent hon-orary, PhiAlpha Theta, aswell as to theLarry McBrideStudent Educa-tion Awardscholarshipfund. In thislight, thedepartment is

asking that gifts in his honor be made toPhi Alpha Theta or the McBride scholar-ship fund.

Teaching history also was a careerchange for Mark Wyman, who hastaught U.S. labor and immigration histo-ry at Illinois State University since 1971.He is a Distinguished Professor, the high-est honor the university can bestow upona faculty member. Wyman actually beganhis career in newspaper work, ending upon the Minneapolis Tribune, before goingon to the University of Washington andobtaining a Ph.D. in History

His dissertation eventually becameHard-Rock Epic: Western Miners and theIndustrial Revolution: 1860-1910, whichwas published in 1979 by the Universityof California Press. He eventually pub-lished six more books.

In addition to his scholarship,

Wyman became known for his courseson “The Gilded Age” and “The Immigrantin American History.” His services to the

departmentover the past33 years havebeen ines-timable,including hiswork as grad-uate advisorand as editorof thisnewsletter.

In additionto his wife,Eva, Wyman’s

family consists of three children and twingranddaughters. His son, Dan, after sev-eral years working as a labor organizer inSouthern New England, is now a usedbook dealer in Springfield, Massachu-setts. His daughter Ruth is attending lawschool at the University of Illinois, whileher twin sister, Miriam, is studying forher doctorate in ecotourism at the Uni-versity of Florida in Gainesville.

Donations can be made to a scholar-ship fund for freshmen of non-traditionalage majoring in history. One of Wyman’sformer students, Stephanie Booth, a his-tory professor and associate provost atKent State University in Ohio, establishedthis fund in his honor.

Don Davis, who has taught coursesin Russian and Soviet history for 40years, is perhaps the department’s

longest-servingmember ever.Teaching histo-ry at the uni-versity levelalso was a career changefor Davis, who,after attendingSan FranciscoState Universi-ty, planned tobecome a highschool history

teacher. Instead, he entered graduateschool at Indiana University, where hefocused on Russian history, writing a dissertation on Lenin and theories ofwarfare.

A committed and challenging teacher,he was most renowned for his graduateseminar in modern Russian history. Healso played an instrumental role in per-suading Professor Helen Cavanagh toestablish a scholarship fund for graduate

students. And extending his academicinterests in Cold War relations beyondthe University, Davis promoted sister cityexchanges between Bloomington-Normaland Vladimir, Russia.

Davis has written numerous articleson topics ranging from Lenin to Russianémigrés after the Bolshevik Revolution.More recently, he teamed up with GeneTrani, an American diplomatic historianand an old friend from graduate school,to author The First Cold War: The Legacyof Woodrow Wilson in U.S. Soviet Relations(Columbia and London: University ofMissouri Press, 2002), which was well-received. The book was translated andpublished in Russia, with Olma Press, thesecond largest publishing company inRussia, and sold out its first printingthere.

He is continuing to work with Tranion another monograph: Perception andPolicy: American’s Sino-Soviet Relations,also with the University of MissouriPress.

His retirement will be spent continu-ing work on that project, mostly in thearchives at Stanford University, whichwill allow him to visit with family andfriends in the San Francisco area. Davis ismarried to Mary Davis, also retired froma career as an elementary school teacherand as the director of SHOWBUS, a ruraltransportation program serving five Illi-nois counties.

They have two children, a son,Charles, a graphic artist in Chicago, and a daughter, Peggy, an aspiring actress inNew York, who also works as the directorof physical fitness at the 92nd St. “Y”.

Davis has requested that gifts in hishonor be made to the Helen CavanaghScholarship Fund for graduate students.

Today & YesterdaySUMMER 2004 • VOLUME 28, NUMBER 2PUBLISHED PERIODICALLY

Illinois State UniversityDepartment of HistoryCampus Box 4420Normal, IL 61790-4420

Coeditors: Amy Wood and Mark Wyman

Charles Ross

Mark Wyman

Don Davis

Internship on ScoutsNathan Anastas, a history

major, is sorting and catalogingmaterial on the Boy Scouts inMcLean County as part of hisinternship with the McLean Coun-ty Historical Society. An EagleScout himself, Anastas will write a history of the scouts and theiractivities in McLean County.school.

3

Six students walked off with topawards and scholarships April 1st at the department’s annual Spring AwardsProgram.

James Amemasor and Van Furrheach took home a $1,375 check for theHelen M. Cavanagh Award for Best Master’s Degree Student. The award was instituted by the late Helen M.Cavanagh, emerita, who taught in thedepartment for nearly 30 years. Amema-sor also was named winner of the 50th Anniversary Charter Department Graduate Student Excellence Award for History.

Laura Nycz won the Ray Scholarshipfor a student in teacher education for$100, and the James Todd WilbornScholarships for Sophomores, of $125each, went to Alex Boynton and DanielGreer. Jessica Richards won the Kyleand Jean Sessions Honors Scholarship,for $500.

William Philpott, chair of theAwards Committee, was master of cere-monies. Other Awards Committee mem-bers who participated in the selectionprocess were Susan Westbury, SharonMacDonald, and Mark Wyman

Award winners, from left: Daniel Greer, Alex Boynton, James Amemasor, Mrs. Van Furrh (filling in for her husband, Van Furrh), and Jessica Richards. Laura Nycz could not attend.

Two win honors at NIU

Two students from the departmentwalked off with top honors April 17 atthe regional Phi Alpha Theta conferenceat Northern Illinois University.

Harley Jones received the Best Grad-uate Paper Award for “The General Will:The Philosophical Debate in the 17th and18th Century,” and Susan Crowe tooktop honors in the undergraduate paperdivision for “Beyond Their Sphere: North-ern Women and Their Involvement inthe Civil War.”

Other students participating, andtheir papers, were: Mark Frederiksen,“The Republic of Letters and AmericanAcademia: Following the Disseminationof Enlightenment Thought;” Robert Mor-gan, “The Devastating Effects of the Sec-ond Punic War From Spain and intoItaly;” Stephen Parkinson, “U.S. CivilWar Historiography and the PomeroyCircular;” Mark Roeder, “Prescriptiveand Descriptive Texts: Female Represen-tation during the Early Modern Period;”Kelly Tregler, “Next to Godliness: Offi-cial Development of Home Economics.”

Chun travels to Korea

Master’s student Charles Chun is tak-ing some time off from his studies toteach English in Seoul, South Korea. Heis the first Korean-American to teach inthe Boston Campus Foreign LanguageInstitute.

He teaches eight classes a day to stu-dents drawn from ages 6 to 14. Older students are preparing for the Koreanequivalent of the Test of English as a Foreign Language exam, on which theymust receive a high score for admittanceinto a top university or to work with amajor firm. Teachers are from SouthAfrica, Australia, England, and Canada, in addition to the United States.

Chun wrote that while the work is“draining and the subject matter is notthe most stimulating,” he enjoys it“immensely.” He enjoys living in Koreaand—having found a “wonderful book-store”—he intends to accumulate a library“to rival Dr. Tavakoli’s.”

Student awards presented

The politics of Indian jute workers inthe Calcutta area are at the focus on anew book by Subho Basu. Entitled DoesClass Matter? Colonial Capital and Work-ers’ Resistance in Bengal, 1890-1937, thebook is published by Oxford UniversityPress.

In the study, Basu challenges tradi-tional interpretations of the jute workersas migrant peasants, instead findingthem industrial workers who organizedover specific issues. They actively definedtheir own politics, leading to a radicaliza-tion of workers’ issues that broadenedBengal’s anti-colonial struggles.

Basu was coeditor of two previousbooks, and author or coauthor of fourarticles. He joined the department in

August 2002 after receiving his Ph.D.from England’s Cambridge University.He later taught at Cambridge, at the Uni-versity of London, and at the College ofSt. Mark and St. John, which is affiliated

with the Uni-versity ofExeter.

He teachesnon-Westernhistory, SouthAsia, peace his-tory, globalstudies, andhistoriographyfor the depart-ment.

Basu celebrates book publication

Subho Basu

4

Dvorak winsThe prestigious Clarence W. Sorensen

Distinguished Dissertation award wasgranted to Andrew L. Dvorak, D.A. ’03.The $500 check and plaque were pre-sented during a noon hour ceremony on April 5.

Dvorak’s dissertation is entitled “Ren-dezvous with Death: The Assassinationof President Kennedy and the Questionof Conspiracy.” In writing the depart-ment’s final D.A. dissertation, becausethe program was discontinued, Dvorakchose to examine all known conspiracytheories and trace their origins, use ofevidence, and results. He concludes thatthe single-assassin theory focused onLee Harvey Oswald appears most sup-ported by evidence.

Dvorak teaches at Highland Commu-nity College in Freeport. His originaladvisers were Ed Schapsmeier and L.Moody Simms, now both retired.

Annual institute draws 125

The 20th annual Institute on History& Social Sciences drew 125 participantsto the University on March 15 fromnearby high schools and community col-leges and from Illinois State’s historyeducation program. One participantdrove from Ohio, but others representeddistant areas of Illinois—Edwardsville,Macomb, Danville, Chicago, and pointsin between.

The theme was “Immigrants: Danger-ous Aliens or New Americans?” Twodepartment faculty, Mark Wyman andKyle Ciani, opened the morning:Wyman spoke on “Historians and Immi-grants: The Melting Pot, the Salad Bowl,and Beyond,” and Ciani followed with“Integrating Immigrant History into the Classroom.”

The classroom application sectionfollowed with a session led by KellyKeogh, Gretchen Snow, and LatishiaBaker of Normal Community HighSchool.

The new Encyclopedia of Russian His-tory (ed. James Miller) has four articlesby William Reger: “The Peace ofAndrusovo,” “The New Formation Regiments,” “The Thirteen Years’ War,”and “Strel’tsy.”

“‘We were Green as Grass’: Learningabout Sex and Reproduction in ThreeWorking-class Lancashire Communities,1900-1970,” by Lucinda Beier, appearedin Social History of Medicine, 16:3, 461-480. Beier talked May 1st on “The Trans-formation of Popular Health Culture in a Midwestern Community, 1910-1960”,before the American Association of the History of Medicine, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Issam Nassar was guest editor of a special issue of Comparative Studies ofSouth Asia, Africa and the Middle East on Palestinian historiography, recentlyreleased. History of Photography for winter2003 published his essay, “Early Photog-raphy in Jerusalem: From the Imaginaryto the Social Landscape.”

Erfurt University in Germany heardNassar’s paper on “Writing the Historyof Palestinian Nationalism: Problemsfacing the Historian,” as part of a seminaron historical anthropology in January. Healso talked that month on “War Photog-raphy: Reflections on the Photography of the War of 1948” at the TownhouseGallery in Cairo, Egypt. Two other recentpapers were “al-Nakba as National Trau-ma: The Place of the Events of 1948 inPalestinian Historiography” presented atthe Trauma and Memory Conference inDecember at Bar Ilan University, and “IsBi-nationalism a Solution for the Pales-tine/Israel Conflict?”, presented inNovember at the ninth Karl Poleyni

Conference at Concordia University in Canada.

New director of History GraduateStudies is Patrice Olsen. She replacedMark Wyman, who retired.

Fred Drake presented a paper at a12-nation international civic educationconference, New Challenges in Democra-cy Education in the New Europe: GlobalPerspectives, in March in Vilnius, Lithua-nia. His paper was “Civic EducationModels: Historical Thinking and CivicEducation.” Later in March, Drakepresided and provided comment at theBoston meeting of the Organization ofAmerican Historians, on “History Depart-ments and Teacher Education: Past, Present, and Future.”

A $14,000 Japan Foundation grantwent to Louis J. Perez recently to helpsupport the Midwest Japan Seminar. Healso was appointed by the Japanese Con-sulate in Chicago to serve on the execu-tive committee of Japanese EnglishTeachers (JET). In that role, Perez helpedselect 250 U.S. post-graduate students to teach in Japan from 2,132 candidates.Also, Perez has been renamed to theNational Endowment for the Humanitiesselection committee on summer pro-grams and institutes. On the speakers’circuit, Perez was an invited speaker atKnox College in Galesburg on February14, presenting “A Celebration of theScholarship of Mikiso Hane.” On March17 he spoke at the Indiana UniversitySeminar for Secondary School Teachers,run by colleague Richard Pearce, pre-senting “Teaching Japanese HistoryThrough Ukiyo-e.”

Alan Lessoff spoke on “The GildedAge: Provenance of a Usable Past,” at theOrganization of American HistoriansConference in Boston on March 26.

Agbenyega (Tony) Adedze is the new director of the University’s Unit for African Studies.

William Philpott won the 2003-2004Hilliard Fellowship for research in theDenver Public Library’s ConservationCollection. Philpott’s current book proj-ect looks at the mass tourist develop-ment in Colorado after World War II.

Amy Wood presented “‘A GenuineLynching Scene’: Moving Pictures andSouthern Crowds” at the American Studies Association Meeting in Hartford,Connecticut, last October.

Faculty achievements grow

Grants awardedFour historians have been

granted unrestricted researchgrants by the University. They areKyle Ciani, Summer Faculty Fel-lowship; Ray Clemens, FacultyResearch Award; Ross Kennedy,Pre-Tenure Faculty Initiative Grant;and Amy Wood, New Faculty Initiative.

5

John Thomas Williamson ’02 is aland management specialist with theAlaskan Department of NaturalResources in Anchorage. He and his wife, Tammy, live in Anchorage.

A full-time job with the State of Neva-da as a family services specialist will soonbe sharing time with law school classesfor Tammy Counts ’95. She has beenaccepted by the William S. Boyd Schoolof Law at the University of Nevada at LasVegas, to start in the fall. IntellectualProperty is her major interest.

After conducting some 25 oral historyinterviews with the oldest families inBloomington’s Holy Trinity Parish, EileenM. Kanzler, D.A. ’82, is revising theinterviews for publication in a book on the church’s sesquicentennial.

After moving back to her native Ire-land, Gillian O’Shea ’00 completed hermaster’s degree in early modern historyin April 2003 at the National Universityof Ireland, and is planning to eventuallygo on for a Ph.D. Her thesis was on Irishconvict transportation to the colonies inthe 17th and 18th centuries. She is work-ing at the National Print Museum inDublin, teaching adult trainees in historyand heritage courses, while developingthe museum’s education program and a new interpretation plan.

Retirement for Jack B. Nicholson,D.A. ’80, will mean six months in Hawaiievery year, as well as continued work onhistorical records with local organizationsin Anderson, Indiana. He closed out histhird term as Madison County historian

and president of the county’s historicalsociety in 2001. Earlier, in 1998, Nichol-son was granted the Elwood H. PhillipsAward in History, as well as the PurdueUniversity Crystal Apple Award as anoutstanding teacher and local civicsleader (the only non-Purdue alumnus toreceive the award). In 1999, he served asgrand marshal of Anderson’s 27th annu-al Victorian Gaslight Festival.

Steve Shute ’74, of Oswego, Illinois,reports he is “doing well with the Gener-al Services Administration”—and that heis “very glad to see that Professor EarlReitan is alive and well and enjoyingretirement!”

Opportunities to teach abroad havehelped Matt Popovich ’98 see severalnew regions of the world. However, afterteaching for two years at the AmericanSchool of Alexandria, Egypt, he is consid-ering returning to school himself toobtain a history master’s degree.

Joseph Smith Academy in Nauvooheard David Harbin M.S. ’02 speak on“Brigham and the Brigadeer: MormonInvolvement in the War Between theStates,” on April 13. Harbin teaches at John Wood Community College inQuincy.

Thirty-three years of teaching Ameri-can history and sociology at ThornridgeHigh School closed out last year for JohnA. Mikemas ’70. He lives in Brookfield,Illinois.

Living at 7,000 feet in the Himalayas,Marcus Johnson ’98 writes that he isteaching—“actually in my subject area,

what a shock!”—at the WoodstockSchool, a Christian International Schoolin Mussoorie (UA), India.

In his eighth year as academic deanand teacher at Judah Christian HighSchool in Champaign, Rick D. Williams’91, M.S. ’94, also is active in IllinoisCapitol Forum, which prepares studentsto participate in a statewide forum on international affairs. A resident of Mahomet, Williams teaches worldaffairs, civics, and classics.

Scholarship fundsGifts in honor of Charles Ross can

be made to Phi Alpha Theta through theHistory office; and gifts can be made tothe Larry McBride Scholarship Fundthrough the Illinois State UniversityFoundation.

Gifts in honor of Mark Wyman can be made to: Mark Wyman Scholarshipthrough the Illinois State UniversityFoundation.

Gifts in honor of Don Davis can bemade to the Helen Cavanagh ScholarshipFund through the Illinois State Universi-ty Foundation.

The foundation’s address is: IllinoisState University Foundation, CampusBox 8000, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-8000.

The alumni record: activities and honors

Please send your e-mail address

Illinois State University, seeking newways to communicate with its more than150,000 alumni, is asking graduates toreport their e-mail addresses if they havethem.

Please update your information online, with e-mail or other new information, at:www.illinoisstate.onlinecommunity.com/updateuserinfo.htm.

Olsen project selected

A $2,000 grant for the Cuba beyondBorders project was announced at theend of the semester for Patrice Olsen.The grant, from the Center for theAdvancement of Teaching (CAT), will be used for preparing both Olsen’s newcourse on Cuba and her projected stu-dent trip to Cuba. She also was honoredby the Student Education Association,which, after soliciting student nomina-tions and comments, recognized her as“one of the best” in history teaching.

Reitan book published“My book is a book of passion,

and I hope it arouses a similar pas-sion in others, because withoutpassion there will be no action.”With these words retired ProfessorEarl Reitan described his latestbook, Liberalism: Time-Tested Prin-ciples for the Twenty-First Century.

The book, published by iUni-verse, Inc., in New York, goes intothe development and interplay of liberalism, liberal nationalism,economic liberalism, and conser-vatism, and examines controver-sies over foreign policy and warand liberals’ goals and activities in these.

Two years ago he publishedThe Thatcher Revolution: MargaretThatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and the Transformation of ModernBritain, 1979-2001. An earlier bookwas Rifleman: on the Cutting Edge ofWorld War I, based on his WorldWar II experiences.

Liberalism is available at Barnes& Noble bookstores as well asonline at Amazon.com and iUni-verse.com.

An urgent call in September 2001pulled James Shea out of class, out of hisjob at the Peoria Children’s Home, andinto homeland security duty with the182nd Air National Guard SecurityForces Squadron — just as classes hadbegun. A year later, the history graduatestudent was in Uzbekistan, where heserved for three months, returning inDecember 2002.

Shea’s job was to provide security forU.S. air bases in both the United Statesand central Asia. From the base inUzbekistan Shea’s unit also flew “FAST”(fly away security team) missions intoAfghanistan. Primarily a Combat ArmsInstructor with the 182nd, in Uzbekistanhe stood guard, searched people enteringthe base, provided protection to digni-taries including Health and Human Ser-vices Secretary Tommy Thompson, andencountered “very friendly” people whowere veterans of different Soviet cam-paigns during the Cold War. Old Sovietairplanes parked at the base still showed

evidence where the local citizenry hadrubbed out the Communist nation’s redstar insignia on each. Shea said he met“tons” of different people — locals as wellas aircrews from Holland, Spain, and

Norway. A star performer who visitedthe base was Robin Williams, who auto-graphed Shea’s bagpipes with instruc-tions on how to use them.

Student takes break—in Uzbekistan

Six historians led book discussionswith 45 high school history teachers dur-ing the past school year under a programlaunched by Fred Drake and the lateLawrence McBride. This is the third year for the project.

Under the program, up to 20 highschool teachers from across the statewent to the McLean County Museum ofHistory on specific dates to spend theday discussing an important book select-ed earlier. On May 1 all participants metat Pekin High School to go over their useof the books in classes.

The department’s participants, andthe books used, were: Linda Clemmons,

Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic;Anthony Crubaugh, Madison SmarttBell’s All Souls’ Rising; Lucinda Beier,Nancy Tomes’ The Gospel of Germs: Men,Women, and the Microbe in American Life;Mark Wyman, Kenneth Barnes’s WhoKilled John Clayton: Political Violence andthe Emergence of the New South, 1861-1893; Ross Kennedy, William Stueck’sRethinking the Korean War; Greg Koos,adjunct member of the department whois director of the McLean County Histori-cal Society, Roy Rosenzweig and DavidThelan’s The Presence of the Past: PopularUse of History in American Life.

Colloquium draws teachers

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The ninth annual Women’s StudiesSymposium on March 26 featured stu-dent and faculty papers and panels and a talk by New York University ProfessorBerenice Malka Fisher.

The symposium marked the finalmajor event carried out with SandraHarmon as interim director of Women’sStudies. She retired from the position inMay, a year after retiring from the Histo-ry Department.

History student Marc Helgesonand recent graduate Beth Stevens readpapers. Helgeson talked on “PhyllisSchlafly and the ERA: The EmpoweredAnti-Feminist Conservative,” andStevens’s paper was “R.A.W.A..: TheStruggle for Women’s Rights inAfghanistan.”

Women’s Studies Symposium held

James Shea, right, bagpipes for the troops.

A master’s graduate who rose tobecome an historian with the U.S.Department of State, serving as an editorof the prestigious Foreign Relations series,is preparing for retirement and the chance to write histories drawn fromthe information he compiled.

Louis J. Smith, M.A. ’67, was editoror coeditor of 19 volumes of the ForeignRelations of the United States series, rang-ing from the first on Africa and SouthAsia for 1952-54, to Cuba and the CubanMissile Crisis in 1961-64, and concludingwith the volume on South Asia 1969-72,in progress.

Along the way Smith wrote two booksand a major article for the State Depart-ment: United States Policy toward the Pana-ma Canal (1976); Yorktown: Cornerstone ofIndependence (1981); and “The UnitedStates and Afghanistan,” Department of

State Bulletin (March 1982).Smith taught at the University from

1969-70 as an instructor of modernEuropean history before going on toreceive his Ph.D. from Michigan State in 1977.

In a recent letter to his Illinois StateUniversity mentor Earl Reitan, Smithpraised the University for preparing himfor his future career as well as noting thathe formed “a number of enduring friend-ships” here.

Smith also praised Reitan, calling him“the best of all of the professors withwhom I studied during my graduatecareer,” who “had the most influence on my professional development.” Thisincluded an interest in British history and learning “the historian’s craft,” Smith added.

State Department alumnus to retire Mentoring fetedA program to assist incoming non-tra-

ditional women students, founded andled by several History Department staff,faculty, and recent graduates, has wonthe 2004 Team Excellence Award of$3,000 from the University.

Known as the Illinois State UniversityWomen’s Mentoring Network, the pro-gram was set up last fall by Julie Ruby,office staff head for the department; TeriFarr ’92, M.S. ’95, academic advisor forthe Department of Sociology & Anthro-pology; Sandra Harmon, retired depart-ment professor serving as acting head ofWomen’s Studies, and Patrice Olsen,professor. Molly Munson-Dryer, anadministrative professional who worksin teacher education, also is a mentor, asis Terri Ryburn-LaMonte ’85, M.S. ’88,D.A. ’99, assistant director of the Univer-sity’s School of Kinesiology and Recre-ation, and Anita Revelle ’95, M.S. ’97,coordinator of public service programs.

Ruby explained that the program pro-vides one-on-one mentoring to non-tradi-tional women students along with avariety of academic and social program-ming during the semester. The programfurnishes an information network tohelp students cut through any red tapethey are experiencing. Some 45 mentorswork in the program, which waslaunched after a questionnaire showed aneed for such services. The group plansto use the award to offer an all-day con-ference in the fall, and to prepare aresource booklet for entering students.

Phi Alpha Theta taps six

Six students were initiated intothe University’s Phi Alpha Thetachapter at the start of the April 1Spring Awards Program. SharonMacDonald, chief adviser, led theprogram. The initiates were: MarkBrandstetter, Amanda Jayne Pol-ley, Heather Friedman, MichaelJ. Hanley, Robert W. Morgan, andDaniel B. Stecken.

Frederick Drake won the 2003-2004Outstanding University Teacher Award,which was presented at the annualFounders’ Day Convocation on February 19.

Drake’s award led a list of depart-ment members who walked off with top honors in university competitions.Anthony Crubaugh received theResearch Initiative Award, and RayClemens was named College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher in the Social Sciences. Crubaugh had earlierwon the Arts and Sciences Teaching Initiative Award.

In naming Drake as one of the twoOutstanding University Teachers this

year, the selection committee noted thathe has gained national attention both inbuilding the history education programand in teaching and writing abouthuman rights. He has won large grants in support of the history education pro-gram, including last year’s grant fromState Farm Insurance for the IllinoisInstitute for Civic Education. Earliergrants to Drake and his colleagueLawrence McBride were from the U.S.Department of Education, the NationalCouncil for Education and the Disci-plines, and the National Council for History.

Faculty honored on Founders’ Day

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