From the Archivist

With the beginning of September, the start of the fall semester at the University of Minnesota brings the campus to life. This fall should be especially lively on the Twin Cities campus with the University welcoming its largest freshman class since 1970, celebrating the re-opening of the Tate Laboratory of Physics, and seeing the final stages of construction for the new Bell Museum of Natural History. In this post, we’re sharing a few of our historic campus photos and wishing everyone at the University of Minnesota a successful and engaging fall semester!

In the September/October (2017) issue of the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, the young naturalists' article on "weird and wonderful" plants provides an array of fantastic images of lesser known native plant species. What follows are several images held in the University of Minnesota Archives that depict the "weird and wonderful" plants featured in this issue. Some of these photographs may be the oldest known images of these plants in Minnesota.

This installment U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial features Margeret Hasse on the KUOM program Minnesota Issues in her role as Executive Director for the Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education. The year was 1984 and plans were underway for the establishment of an arts high school in Minnesota. Governor Rudy Perpich had implemented a task force to conduct a feasibility study for the establishment of the school. Can you guess what school this would become? That’s right, Minnesota was already laying the groundwork for the Perpich Center for Arts Education that operates today in Golden Valley. Not everyone was in favor of establishing a school that would centralize funding for arts education in the state. Margaret Hasse and the Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education had concerns about the establishment of the school.

In this episode of U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial, you’re going to hear about an explosive week on the University of Minnesota campus, which occurred during an era of global tension, when the political felt intensely personal, especially to students and other young people. Forty-five years ago this month, anti-war protests in and around the University of Minnesota boiled over as angry demonstrators and police clashed in the streets.

May 7 marked the anniversary of the Guthrie Theater’s first ever performance in 1963, a production of Hamlet starring George Grizzard and Jessica Tandy. In this episode of "U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial," we’ll hear Sir Tyrone Guthrie explain his vision of the future of American theater in his own words, followed by interviews with the Guthrie staff from ten years later.

Science is at the forefront of this episode of U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial. In the late 1980s, there was a growing consensus that within 20 years, we would see a dearth of graduates in science-based fields, an issue that spurred the creation of today’s featured program, "Science Lives: Women and Minorities in the Sciences."

It’s starting to feel like spring, or what this Minnesota transplant refers to as “outside time.” With so much natural recreation to offer, it’s no surprise that Minnesota has a strong culture of conservation that goes back decades. Earth Day isn’t until April 22, but on this week’s program, Down the Conservation Trail, we’re getting a head start.

Welcome back to U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial! The podcast has returned in time for Women’s History Month. The KUOM archive is full of interviews, lectures, and stories featuring dynamic, history-making women. Today, we will focus on a program featuring Minnesota Legislature Representative Helen McMillan, on the state of women’s rights in 1971.

  The University of Minnesota Archives is celebrating Women's History Month with a series of social media posts on Twitter. The University of Minnesota has been...

Hedley Donovan is the subject of this installment of "From the Archivist." Donovan, University of Minnesota alumnus, '34, was a prominent and successful journalist. While attending the University, Donovan was editorial chairman of the student newspaper, the Minnesota Daily. His journalism career spanned four decades, beginning as a reporter with the Washington Post and ending as Editor-in-Chief for Time Inc., where he oversaw Time, Fortune, Money, Life, Sports Illustrated, and People magazines.

To start the new year, this month we are focusing on the Minnesota School of the Air programming. Our episode today — from from Old Tales and New — achieved a national award for Education by Radio and for its timeless lesson. Betty T. Girling wrote the stories as well as a few adaptations heard on this program for approximately 38 of the 41 years this program aired, 1938 until 1979. This particular episode

In this episode of "U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial," we feature an episode from 1979 of the discussion program, Minnesota Issues. The host for the show, Arthur Naftalin, introduces the pessimistic atmosphere of the country but finds that the younger generation still has hope looking ahead to the 1980s.

Wednesday marks 75 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii — an event familiar to anyone who has had a U.S. History class. But today our podcast focuses on the events on the homefront following the Battle of Pearl Harbor. Specifically, we will listen in on a discussion from 1946 on the discriminatory removal and, then, resettlement of persons of Japanese ancestry with Frank M. Rarig, Lauren Stiefel, and Reverend Daisuke Kitagawa.

University Archives continues the theme of Native American Heritage on our podcast this week, wrapping up November with a bit of documentary from 67 years ago. This KUOM-produced program "Tales of Minnesota" covered the Sioux Treaty of 1851 and the frustrations that lead to the Dakota War, or the Sioux Uprising, of 1862.

November is Native American Heritage Month so for our second episode of the new podcast, U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial, we have selected an interview from the 1970s with Ada Deer, American Indian and Civil Rights Activist.