Volume 13, Number 1, 2004
Kathleen Kvortek, who as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University studied the history of technology and medicine, says she was looking for a graduate program in which she could continue her scholarly focus on technology while preparing for a career in the museum field.
"One of my undergraduate advisers had been a fellow in the University of Delaware-Hagley Program, and he suggested I look into it," Kvortek, who became one of the program's three new fellows in 2003-04, says. "I was impressed with the duality of the program--the way it offers both academics and museum training--and with the networking opportunities."
The UD-Hagley Program, now marking its 50th anniversary, focuses on the history of industrialization, broadly defined to include such topics as gender and technology, work and society, industrial architecture and design, and culture and political economy. Fellows develop flexible programs of study, which might include the history of work, consumption, technology, material culture and social and economic history. They have access to the Hagley Museum and Library near Wilmington, Del., where they can conduct research and work as interns.
Although it has grown and changed over the years, the program always has attracted top students for the same reasons Kvortek cited, according to Arwen Mohun, associate professor of history and coordinator of the program.
"The Hagley Program is distinctive to the University of Delaware; there's nothing else like it," she says. "One key feature of the program is that it offers a combination of training, for people who want to be academic historians and for those who want to be museum professionals and public historians. Most other programs offer one or the other, not both."
The result, Mohun says, is that some fellows enter the UD-Hagley Program with a definite career goal of either academics or museum work and continue that focus. Others, she says, start out interested in one field and shift their specialty to another area, while still others may combine the two types of work throughout their careers.
As for networking opportunities, former Hagley Fellows seem ubiquitous in the field of industrial history, Mohun says. The widespread influence of its alumni was evident at a May reunion celebrating the program's half-century mark, when some of the nation's best-known authorities in the history of industrialization gathered at the museum.
Among the program's 160-plus active alumni are faculty members at such institutions as Case Western Reserve, Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon universities and professionals at a variety of organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution, American Helicopter Museum, National Science Foundation, Wisconsin Maritime Museum and the Museum of the City of New York.
Darwin Stapleton, who is the executive director and an adjunct professor at the Rockefeller Archive Center in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., says the UD-Hagley Program always has attracted a diverse group of students.
"People were interested in many different areas of study, and they had various careers in mind," he says of his years as a fellow from 1969-75. "What held us together was a strong interest in material culture and a desire to bring history to a broader audience."
UD-Hagley was a master's degree program when it began in 1954 as a joint venture with Hagley Museum. The museum had opened the previous year on the site of the gunpowder works founded by E.I. du Pont in 1802, which became the DuPont Co. Today, the program offers two- and four-year fellowships, leading to master's and doctoral degrees in history, as well as a certificate in museum studies. Eight fellows are funded at a time.
In the early years of the program, fellows spent virtually all their time at the museum performing an assortment of tasks that one alumnus compares to "an ongoing seminar." Today's fellows still work as interns at the museum and use the library's extensive resources for research, but they also spend much time on the UD campus in academic courses.
Carroll Pursell, who recently retired from the faculty of Case Western Reserve University, recalls helping to make exhibits for Hagley Museum and driving the open-air jitney for visitors touring the grounds during his time as a fellow from 1956-58.
"When I was here, they were still finishing work on the museum," he says. "My timing was extremely lucky because I got to be in on it practically from the beginning."
He and other former fellows say the program has continued to offer outstanding opportunities in scholarship, museum experience and networking.
Andrew Bozanic, a fellow who joined the program in 2003-04, agrees. As an undergraduate at Georgia Institute of Technology, he says, he had two history professors who had been Hagley Fellows and recommended that he consider applying.
"I came from a very specialized department at Georgia Tech, so I wanted a graduate school with a broader focus," Bozanic, whose research interest is music and technology and who hopes to teach, says. "As soon as I visited the UD-Hagley Program, I was very impressed with the collaborative atmosphere and the diversity of interests. Now that I've been here for a year, I know my first impression was correct."
Ann Manser, AS '73, CHEP '73