Post About “Inter-College Faculty Exchange Program”
This text is part of a collection of student work from the Fall 2017 class HIST 294-04/AMST 294-01, Public History: African American Life — Past, Present and Future. Students selected, described, and analyzed items from the Macalester Archives pertaining to Black history. The entire class collection can be found here.
These two documents together illustrate the goals and the reality of an “Inter-College Faculty Exchange Program” between small liberal arts colleges in Minnesota and Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the South. They are found in the Negro College Exchange folder in the Provost’s Office Collection at the Macalester Archives. Both are typewritten on relatively thick paper. The first document, from 1966 contains a memorandum from May 23, 1996 sent by Geraldine Braden, Coordinator-Secretary of the program, to Summer Hayward in the Office of the Dean of Macalester College, stating that the enclosed materials have been sent to Deans, Presidents and Participants in the program and then a reprint of a presentation about the program given by Harvey Rice, president of Macalester, at the National Conference of the American College Public Relations Association in July 1965, originally published in a book titled Campus America – 1965-1975. The presentation describes the details of the exchange program, its inception and its goals. The program started in 1965 with through a grant from the Hill Family Foundation and sought to work towards more equal educational opportunities between the North and the South by having professors exchange between the schools for a year at a time. Furthermore, Southern faculty were invited to participate in graduate studies at the University of Minnesota while they were in the North and Northern faculty members were intended to serve as consultants to the Southern schools. The document also includes the program budget which totaled $74,000 a year and included tuition at the University of Minnesota, faculty replacements if necessary, travel costs, and salary differential reimbursements. Finally, the end of the document lists the specific exchanges that will occur and the goals of the program, particularly enrichment of both communities.
The second document consists of typed notes from a “Meeting of various members of the Negro College Exchange Program held during the AHE Meeting in Chicago, 6 February 1967, at 4:00pm” with handwritten edits. The meeting was attended by members of both Northern and Southern schools. The notes cover the actual implementation and experiences of the program. The beginning highlights all the good done by Northern faculty in the South, but there is less enthusiasm from those who went North and felt that they did not have enough time for their own studies. In terms of improvements to the program, suggestions included more frequent or longer visits from Southern faculty to the North in order to complete doctorate programs, two-semester visits to the South by Northern faculty, and the need to have people swap to fill specific roles. There is also an interesting emphasis on library support in the South which speaks to the different levels of resources at these two sets of colleges. These notes help to create a full picture of the program and highlight both its successes and difficulties in terms of actual implementation. Both documents are critical to presenting a full picture of the program’s intentions and results, however, it should be noted that they only contain the perspectives of professors and administrators and do not speak to the thoughts of the entire campus communities.
These documents broaden the conversation about action during the Civil Rights Era on college campuses. Most of the artifacts that relate to this time period and subject center the actions of students, but to ignore the work of faculty is to tell an incomplete story. This program existed in a unique spot where it sought to open both faculty and students up to diverse experiences and viewpoints through work with different individuals. The program also attempted to improve education in the South, at a time when Historically Black Colleges and Universities were under-resourced. In particular, these documents bring up interesting questions about motives, especially among the partners in the North. There is somewhat of a ‘white savior’ sense to the language of the meeting, for example a Macalester professor describing the benefit of the exchange for a Southern professor as “going to a school which has, as he put it, made it, a school which has achieved a high level of education eminence” (3). There is a clear hierarchy of education implied throughout the notes, with the Northern schools seeking to help the Southern rise to their level. This raises the question of whether actions of this sort can be both beneficial and also have questionable motives or whether the outcome places it all to one side or the other. We think of activism around race on college campuses in the ‘60s as purely revolving around student action pushing for the better (or worse depending on the region) of race relations, however, when looking at documents such as these, the faculty initiatives become clear and their impact becomes murkier.
–Mara Steinitz
Citations
“Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Higher Ed Desegregation.” US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. March 1991. https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq9511.html
Rice, Harvey. 1965. “How Small Liberal Arts Colleges Can Join In the Movement Towards Equal Educational Opportunities.” Negro College Exchange Folder. Provost’s Office Collection. Macalester College Archives.
1967. Meeting Notes. Negro College Exchange Folder. Provost’s Office Collection. Macalester College Archives.
MetadataTitle: Post About 'Inter-College Faculty Exchange Program'
Creator: Steinitz, Mara
Description: This text is part of a collection of student work from the Fall 2017 class HIST 294-04/AMST 294-01, Public History: African American Life — Past, Present and Future. Students selected, described, and analyzed items from the Macalester Archives pertaining to Black history. The entire class collection can be found in the Fall 2017 Public History Class tag.
Date Created:
Dates of Content: 1965-1967
Type of Content: Text
Source: Rice, Harvey. 1965. “How Small Liberal Arts Colleges Can Join In the Movement Towards Equal Educational Opportunities.” Negro College Exchange Folder. Provost’s Office Collection. Macalester College Archives. 1967, and Meeting Notes. Negro College Exchange Folder. Provost’s Office Collection. Macalester College Archives.
URL: https://dwlibrary.macalester.edu/counterbalance/student-projects/inter-college-faculty-exchange-program/
Suggested Citation: Steinitz, Mara. "Post About 'Inter-College Faculty Exchange Program'." Counterbalance, Macalester College Archives. . Text. https://dwlibrary.macalester.edu/counterbalance/student-projects/inter-college-faculty-exchange-program/.