teller's blog

Although Wayne State University archivist Alison Stankrauff loved history, she wasn't quite sure what to do with her history degree as an undergraduate student at Antioch College in Ohio. That changed when she landed an internship at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. There, she was tasked with researching the oldest house in the city, built by the city's founders and rumored to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad.  read more »

While the number of women in engineering increased dramatically between 1900 and 1950, the actual number of women in engineering was still quite small: approximately 3,000 women, or just two-tenths of one percent of working engineers in the United States. Detroit's automobile industry presented a growing number of opportunities for women in engineering, however, and local papers in the 1950s and 1960s frequently published articles about these female curiosities in what was still very much considered "a man's world." The stories of Society of Women Engineers Detroit Section members provide a fascinating look at the opportunities and challenges faced by midcentury women engineers as they thrived–or not–in the Motor City.  read more »

Reuther archivists are always looking for new ways to publicize the collections under their care and share the stories hidden within. Recently, Society of Women Engineers archivist Troy Eller English embarked on a new project to share stories from SWE's history and archival collections. Along with co-host Anne Perusek, SWE's director of editorial and publications, in September Eller English launched SWE Stories: Tales from the Archives, part of SWE's larger podcast series, Advance.  read more »

The Reuther Library is pleased to announce Stefanie Caloia as our new AFSCME archivist. Caloia recently completed an 18-month position as the Reuther's AFT project archivist, during which she processed and opened for research 13 collections totaling over 1335 linear feet of records. Her earlier experience includes working at a private archive and processing records for the National Parks Service in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns. She completed her graduate work at Wayne State, and first came to the Reuther as a practicum student in the spring of 2011.  read more »