Freshman Week began at the University of Minnesota in 1926. As a way to welcome everyone to campus for the start of the academic year, University Archives would like to share glimpses of Freshman Week and Welcome Week from our collections.

Four months after the 1984 presidential election, Geraldine Ferraro visited Minnesota where she was greeted by a large and receptive audience as the guest speaker for the Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series, sponsored by the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.  Interest was so great that after full capacity was reached in Northrop Auditorium, accommodations were made for a screening at Williams Arena on campus. The speech was also broadcast live on KUOM radio stations throughout the Twin Cities.

Machines and people have been working together for decades, perhaps more than you had thought, to keep University information technology systems running. The people operating punch card and tabulating machines, the majority of whom were women, most likely did not see their role as one of managing information technology.

The program series People Worth Hearing About originated with The Minnesota School of the Air director, Betty Girling. The series first aired in 1969. In this episode, a feature on Maria Sanford is highlighted along with the behind-the-scenes decisions on how to produce the script.

On the afternoon of October 12, 1918 in northeastern Minnesota, several forest fires killed over 450 people and decimated 2,000 square miles of forests, homesteads, and townships. The University of Minnesota Forest Experiment Station, known today as the Cloquet Forestry Center, survived the fire. The Center’s archival collection contains photographs that document the aftermath of the fires in the region.