A welcome and introduction of sorts…
Thanks for stopping by. I thought it might be helpful for you to have at least a bit of information about me before delving into the blog posts and – eventually – the podcast episodes that will be curated here.
Who am I?
- For these purposes, I’m a historian and sustainability professional reading and writing about the ways community history, campus archives, and equitable communities overlap.
- I’ll be writing – mostly – about finds in the archives, community and campus events related to sustainability and sustainability programming.
- Ideally, this information will be useful to teachers, researchers, and residents in the Kansas City Metro area.
My academic background is varied: I have an AA in music, and all I wanted to do as a teen was play in the Coral Reefer Band and live on a sailboat.
My BA is in US history from the University of Southern Mississippi, and I have over 30 graduate hours in a mixture of US and European history from several institutions. When I was planning on becoming a historian, my research focused mostly on the convict lease system in Mississippi, the integration battles surrounding Mississippi higher education institutions, and – eventually – the work of Kentucky journalist Ted Poston.
Once I started working in higher education, I realized I have an interest in and facility with teaching for sustainability, and helping faculty colleagues do so as well. So, I completed an MA in Social Responsibility and Sustainable Communities at Western Kentucky University, where my research focused mostly on how to help humanities faculty develop curriculum around sustainability, broadly defined. Seeking out and clarifying this link between sustainability and the humanities – especially history – became one of my favorite explorations.
I’ve recently completed my EdD in community college leadership from Northern Illinois University. While there, I worked closely with Dean of the Graduate School Dr. Bradley G. Bond, whose research is probably best described as focusing on the intellectual history of the South in the long nineteenth century. Under Brad, my dissertation at Northern was a comparative historical case study examining the establishment of open-access community colleges in White-flight communities in the Midwest.
Community colleges and their archives, I think, provide historians an unplumbed depth of tools for exploring history. Together, we’ll take a few dives into my favorite glimpses at campus and community history, how community histories play roles in institutional sustainability efforts, and more.
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Kristy Wittman Howell 