This website is the creation of a semester’s worth of work from four students in Dr. McClurken’s HIST 428 – Adventures in Digital History course. In this course we have learned about website design and accessibility (as you can see), how to maintain a formal digital identity, as well as other professional skills involved in the organization of this project. Our project’s prompt was to create a digital history site about “place based history on campus.”
We want to extend our thanks to a few key contributors for this project. Firstly, our professor Dr. Jeffrey McClurken for providing us with this learning opportunity, structuring this class and keeping us on track. We want to extend a deep appreciation towards the faculty at the Simpson Library for their incredible advice and recommendations; most specifically Angie Kemp, Sarah Appleby and Peter Catlin in no particular order. We also would like to extend our gratitude towards the incredible team at the Digital Knowledge Center, including but not limited to Cartland Berge, Shannon Hauser and all of the DKC employees that assisted us in this effort.
We would also like to shout out the other websites that our peers worked on alongside us in this course. The scrapbooks group digitized two scrapbooks created by students who attended MWC in the early twentieth century and the WWII group created a page all about life at MWC during the war years. Both of these sites are a fascinating look at specific student life during two eras of our institution’s history.
Leah Perdue
Leah is a sophomore at UMW, majoring in History and Historic Preservation. Outside of academics, they are a musician and a martial artist, and participate in living history activities through UMW’s Renaissance Club and the Society for Creative Anachronism. Despite being mainly interested in Medieval European history, she’s found the chance to learn about the history of campus and Fredericksburg interesting and valuable. They were on the oral histories team for this project, conducting interviews with current members of the UMW community. The digital aspect of this project was a steep learning curve, but she’s enjoying the chance to expand her skills and knowledge related to website building and digital tools.
Lexi Jackson
Lexi is a junior who is majoring in History and minoring in Business Administration. She grew up in the Stafford/Fredericksburg area and has enjoyed visiting and learning about the history of UMW and the city. This is her first class that is digital intensive but HIST 428 (Digital History) has helped her expand her knowledge of digital studies and work towards establishing a professional digital presence. For this project, her main contribution was conducting oral histories of current UMW students and professors to learn more about campus today and how it has changed since they have been working or attending here, as well as assisting with the website design.
Maggie Copeland
Maggie is a senior at UMW, and is majoring in Historic Preservation and minoring in museum studies. With a love of research and looking at preserving the past, HIST 428: Digital History is one of the first digital history classes taken. She has contributed her help on the digital map of the UMW campus.
Max Steinbaum
Ever since Max was first welcomed onto campus in the Summer of 2021, he wondered about the history of how it came to be, and even bothered Dr. McClurken to fix up the basketball court freshman year (he was unsuccessful). Since then, he has declared himself as a Historic Preservation major and an Environmental Sustainability minor. He also works withal Fredericksburg Trails Alliance and coaching with Fredericksburg Composite. This project in Digital History allowed Max to take his fascination with campus development to the next level as he researched the many iterations of campus and the legacy of the MWC Frisbee Club as well as designing the website that you are on right now!
