Saturday, February 9, 2013

A Foot in the Door: Dissertations and An General Narrative

Dear followers,

This past week has been rather productive. My primary mission was to use the Proquest database to find as many useful dissertations as possible. While hunting for these dissertations, I tried to zone in on the titles of which seemed to be most relevant to the topic of Dr. Shermer's book "Biz Ed". I came across roughly 20 or so dissertations that pertained to each of the five universities that the book will be focusing on as well as research universities as a whole. These sources focused on the development of libraries and curriculum, financial flexibility, physical expansion, administration, and student movements.
One thing that I should note is that I did experience a rather large amount of frustration (once again) with ProQuest while searching for relevant dissertations. The most frustrating would be searching for articles relevant to the State University of New York. This frustration eased once I started using the shorthand names for the schools- such as SUNY (State University of New York) and ASU (Arizona State University). This yielded more relevant sources.
Another thing that brought some frustration was the Zotero website of which Dr. Shermer and I will be building the library with. Due to this frustration, I printed out the bibliographic information of the dissertations I found and brought in the hard copy to her office. After a simple walk-through of how to use Zotero, this problem has now been resolved.
I also gained a basic understanding of the origins of philanthropy in regard to its relationship to research universities.
Philanthropy also proved to be instrumental to the development of institutions of higher education during the Early National Period (1776-1865). Certain gifts appear to be rather daring during this time  period as well. For example- Oberlin College was given a philanthropic gift directed towards fellowships under the condition that African-Americans and whites were to given equal treatment at the university. This happened in 1837- which is remarkable. It illustrates the influence of philanthropy due to the fact that it defied such a significant social norm of the time. It was also during this time that philanthropic gifts became far more significant (monetarily speaking) because donors began giving upwards to six or seven figures. These enormous gifts were capable of establishing entire institutions from the ground up. In essence- the goal of these donors was to make a difference to society.
The Late National Period (1865-1917) is widely known as "The Progressive Era". The core belief of the time period was that the human condition can be improved and society can be improved through the actions of those with the power to do. This is highly important due to the fact that it ties in with another significant notion of the time, which was that higher education institutions should not only advance knowledge but should also preserve it to the next generation. This era is recognized by historians as the birth of modern American philanthropy due a highly significant development: the involvement of the state with higher education institutions. Research universities were born during the late 1800s both due to the development of science and business in curriculum of universities as well as industrialization.





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