A STEP AT A TIME
Combining teaching with research and collection development at the Regional Oral History Office
I believe that no activity in the university should be divorced from teaching. When I accepted my appointment at Berkeley as Professor of History and Director of the Regional Oral History Office in The Bancroft Library, I wanted to develop a teaching program to bring students into ROHO and the Bancroft as active collaborators. I offered my first class in the spring 2002 term, History 103R, “American Lives, American History: Oral History and the Understanding of Social Change.” Students were asked to conduct a short interview and then write an analysis of how the interview added something new to understanding an aspect of US history.
Two things made the class a special learning opportunity. First, professional ROHO staff worked with me to help train students. Alyce Kalmar, a senior majoring in history, conducted interviews with punk musicians active in San Francisco in the 1970s. Caroline Crawford, ROHO’s veteran music interviewer, mentored Alyce, sharing practical tips Caroline has learned over the years of interviewing dozens of classical, jazz, and blues musicians. Caroline is one of many talented staff on campus with deep knowledge of subjects of value for students. We can augment the value of a Berkeley education if students were to interact more with the many professionals like Caroline on campus who can contribute to teaching.
Secondly, interviews from the class have led to new additions to the Bancroft’s oral history collections. Punk music was a topic that ROHO has never touched. Alyce’s transcripts will be bound together into a volume and added to ROHO’s music history collection. Alyce’s senior thesis will be an appendix to the volume, her analysis and insights aiding future students of this topic. Another history senior David Washburn conducted interviews for my class with migrant workers from Mexico, providing insight on the Latino experience in this state. His interviews complement ROHO’s Mexican American Leadership in California project, funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation.
When students know that their work can become part of the Bancroft collections, their attitude transforms. The assignment is no longer done simply to complete requirements. They produce work that future students and scholars will turn to for information for years to come. Knowing this, students prepare their work with greater care, and their writing takes on greater confidence.
History 103R was the first step in a program to bring students into ROHO. The ten students enrolled in the class worked hard, most on projects of their own design. Sarah Woodcock interviewed fire fighters. Her work for my class won her a highly competitive Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship that allowed her to continue working with me. She completed a senior thesis examining the integration of the Oakland Fire Department in the 1950s, based on professional-level oral history interviews. Her interviews will form a series on fire fighting in California. Several students contributed to ongoing ROHO projects. Ben Bicais interviewed a retired day care teacher on child development programs developed during World War II for the children of women employed in defense industry, an interview that fits into ROHO’s Rosie the Riveter/ World War II Homefront project undertaken in collaboration with the National Park Service and the City of Richmond.
David Washburn joined the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Homefront project team. He focused first on the history of Mexican Americans in Richmond before and after the war, a subject for which there was little documentation. David interviewed eleven people on their war and postwar experiences. His interviews join the Bancroft collections and they will be on display at the National Park Service’s visitor information center for the national historic park in Richmond. He wrote a senior thesis based on his interviews, and he is now writing an honors thesis on country music in wartime Richmond.
ROHO is a special place on campus where research, education, and collection development form a seamless web. In addition to course offerings, I am offering undergraduates research apprenticeship opportunities through the URAP program. Seven students have interviewed for a project studying Portuguese and Brazilian migration to California.
This spring, I am teaching a freshman seminar on the history of UC. Students study ROHO’s many interviews conducted with faculty and administrators, talk to interviewers and interviewees, and then conduct a brief interview on an aspect of campus history. Professor Len Duhl and I are offering a course cross-listed between the Department of History and the School of Public Health to introduce students to the use of oral history for the study of health and health care in California. I will offer a humanities research class in the Townsend Center next academic year, as we continue to expand our outreach on campus.
Working closely with students benefits oral history research because their interests open up new research areas, while providing students with practical research experience that will be valuable to them after they graduate. Successful education always involves mutual learning. A class is going well when I am learning something from the students, when they respond to what they are learning from me with perspectives that open up new ways of looking at the world for me. Creative interaction between students and staff at ROHO brings in new research materials permanently enriching the collections of The Bancroft Library.
—Richard Cándina Smith
Professor of History
Director, Regional Oral History Office
Volume 122
Spring 2003
Table of Contents
Reading Papyri, Writing History
From the Director: A Bancroft Library for the 21st Century
California Children's Books at the Bancroft Library
Hazards of the Forests fo Watsonville-- as reported by Regent Arthur Rodgers
Bear in Mind: The Many Lives of a Library Exhibit
The Last Portrait of Mark Twain
