Background on Oral History at UMass
George Beatty Jr., Vice Chancellor of
Administration and Finance, being interviewed
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of Massachusetts Agricultural College in 2013, UMass Amherst authorized an oral history project to record and preserve its recent history. Documentary projects tied to previous anniversaries had yielded a relatively robust understanding of how a small agricultural college had been transformed into a modern research university; however memories of the period since the university's centennial were captured only sparingly. During that half century, the university had witnessed the explosive growth in size and in its built environment; a radical expansion of its curriculum; extraordinary academic achievement; economic, academic, and social ferment; and an ongoing evolution in both student expectations and in the ideals on which public higher education is founded.
Coordinated by the Libraries' Department of Special Collections and University Archives and guided by a committee including Nancy Buffone, Carol Connare, Robert Cox, David Glassberg, Joel Martin, W. Brian O'Connor, Bruce Wilcox, and Ruth Yanka, the Sesquicentennial Oral history project planned to conduct 150 interviews beginning in July 2012, with the goal of sampling a broad cross-section of the campus community, taking advantage of important anniversaries for the Department of Music and Dance and the College of Nursing to explore those units in particular detail.
Among the guiding principles of the project was the desire to create a balanced portrait of the experiences of a diverse community. In addition to recording the history of the university as seen from the highest echelons -- the central administration and faculty -- the project hoped to include voices representing the fuller depth and breadth of our community, including alumni, students, and people employed in non-academic positions throughout the university.
