Media School students working on IU bicentennial
When Indiana University was established in 1820, it was dedicated to the education and engagement of its students. The university has upheld those values for close to 200 years, and now, as the bicentennial anniversary approaches, the Office of the Bicentennial is hoping to maintain that tradition by bringing students, including six from The Media School, into the revitalization of IU’s history.
Students Ellen Glover, Jessica Ivetich, Katherine Lopez, Gabby McLemore, Ashley Scurlock and Yulin Yu have been working in the office this year, conducting a variety of projects and putting their media skills to work.
Office of the Bicentennial director Kelly Kish said the office relies on student interns like these to comb through archives and present the history of IU in a new and exciting light.
“Without our interns, we would just be administrative,” Kish said. “We’re trying to get them to help with development of the program and really get involved with the school and its history.”
Interns may propose a single research project to work on with the help of IU archivists, historians and faculty, or they can assist on what Kish calls “signature projects” of the office.
“In 2008, we started thinking about what to do for the bicentennial,” Kish said. “We asked historians, ‘What are we missing?’ and they said we had some major gaps.”
Those gaps include topics such as race relations on campus, women and their contributions to the school, international efforts of the university over the years and the histories of the more-recent regional campuses. For each of these broader categories, Kish says there could be as many as 20 individual research and signature projects.
Jessica Ivetich, a senior studying journalism, Spanish and fashion design, is working on one such signature project for the office. Her job is to collect archival information such as meeting minutes and event fliers from student organizations and preserve them for the future.
“The office already had this project in mind when I started interning, and they placed me into it,” Ivetich said.
Ivetich says her work focuses on outreach to organizations currently on campus to see what they have saved up over the years that can be archived. Currently, the project is working with 15 groups on the Bloomington campus, but Ivetich hopes it will grow to include more groups, as well as regional campuses.
“When I met with the IU archivists, I found out they’d worked on a similar project before,” she said. “I’ve been working closely with them to find gaps in the archival information.”
This fall is Ivetich’s first semester with the office, but she plans to stay on for the spring. She says her favorite part of the experience has been the opportunity to meet people at the university and learn about their individual stories.
“I could offer specific tidbits and facts, but there is so much about this university and the people that come here that it can be overwhelming,” she said. “I want to bring everything to light and tell everyone about the wonderful place that we’re in.”
Ivetich will graduate before the bicentennial celebration in 2020. She says working for the office has allowed her to play some part in the event, even if she won’t be a student when it happens.
“I get to give something back and leave a mark on IU,” she said. “It’s an opportunity to make an impact while you’re here. You’re making people aware of the history, and presenting it for the future.”
Student interns are also challenged to try something new in their work with the bicentennial. While signature projects are in the works, students can propose their own topics for research and learn new ways to explore history.
Intern Ellen Glover, a junior journalism student with a minor in music, said learning new skills has been a major component of her internship experience. She joined the office as an intern in May and has continued to work through the fall semester. In that time, she’s learned how to conduct research in the archives in order to create audio podcasts for the bicentennial website.
“The office taught me how to use the IU archives and research my stories,” Glover said, “but they left me to figure out the podcasting part on my own.”
Glover says the process of learning how to use new equipment and produce online podcasts has been good preparation for entering the world of journalism and media after graduation. Working on this project, she has had to remain disciplined and get work done on her own.
“I didn’t initially set out to do podcasts,” she said. “But it’s a cool way to keep IU traditions going, celebrate the uniqueness of our school and air out everything that’s happened here.”
Glover has researched how men at the university used to exercise before the existence of intramural sports, as well as the history behind architecture and art installations at IU. She says that the research has led her to some surprising discoveries, such as the way groups of men used to meet outside of class and physically fight each other to maintain their health.
“Be prepared to find things that don’t match your preconceived notions of IU,” she said. “There are a lot of surprises hidden in the archives.”
Director Kelly Kish says the online content such as podcasts is important for those who are not currently on the Bloomington campus, such as alumni and the families of students. But for those who can visit the campus, three interns spent the summer developing historical walking tours of the campus with the help of IU admissions, athletics and the Themester program.
Ellen Glover was one of the students who developed those walking tours. So was Gabby McLemore, a senior studying journalism with a concentration in education.
McLemore worked with the Office of the Bicentennial from May to August. She spent that time researching and scripting tours for the Old Crescent of campus, where landmarks such as the Sample Gates, Dunn Woods and newly renovated Franklin Hall are located. She also made an integrated map for the website featuring some of the noteworthy tour stops.
“I definitely learned a lot about this campus that I didn’t know before,” McLemore said. “I learned to love IU in a whole new way by researching its history.”
Like Glover, McLemore was challenged to learn new skills during her internship. She had never written a script before, but found that the resources of the office made it easy to learn.
“I worked with other people and had the scripts reviewed by the IU historian,” McLemore said. “It was really helpful to get different views on the project, and I think that it made the scripts better.”
McLemore says she liked the way people could learn about IU through the physical space. Learning to create scripts that worked together with the landscape and historic parts of campus was a fun and interesting challenge.
The 200-year anniversary at Indiana University won’t happen until 2020. Many of the students at IU will have graduated by then, including McLemore, but she says her work with the office has let her join in on the celebration.
“I’m a part of the bicentennial now, and I’ll be a part of it when it comes around even though it’s after I graduate,” she said.
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