Summer Study – Had Me a Blast

Part Two of a Two-Part Series

Hope College History students spent the summer of 2024 doing research on a wide variety of topics.  They worked in museums, archives, and libraries, and they created Web sites, papers, and exhibitions.  Here’s an overview of our summer interns and research assistants, and the work they did in the summer of ‘24.

Daniel Dykstra, History Education Minor

This summer I worked as the Youth and Engagement intern for the Holland Museum. I am very proud of the alphabetical scavenger hunt that I made to allow for more interaction between the museum and guests. I am also incredibly proud of our collective intern project which was a display in the front of the museum for the recently-disbanded LEDA (Lakeshore Ethnic Diversity Alliance) groupI had a ton of fun working with my fellow interns and taking time each week to go out to a local mobile home community to engage with the kids as a part of the “Meet Up and Eat Up” program.  “Meet Up and Eat Up”  is a program associated with West Ottawa schools that delivers free bagged lunches to the kids in the community. My job was to provide the kids with activities to do for an afternoon before or after  lunchtime. I am incredibly fortunate to have been a part of this experience as I loved my supervisors and fellow interns, who made me feel like I was part of a family during my internship.

Ingrid Oslund, History Major

This summer I worked with Dr. Petit on an archival research project dealing with the YMCA’s work as a part of the USO (United Services Organization) during World War II. My personal research centered on a controversy involving “The Races of Mankind,” a YMCA pamphlet which aimed to disprove popular claims of scientific racism. The pamphlet was quickly banned by the leadership of the USO because they believed it to be too controversial to promote. The press and the American public responded in support of the pamphlet, viewing the ban as hypocritical, in light of the United States’ proclaimed war aims. My day-to-day work involved looking through the University of Minnesota’s digitized Kautz Family YMCA collection, and taking notes on relevant documents, including meeting minutes, newspaper articles, personal letters, official statements, and radio transcripts. Overall, this was a great experience as my first substantial archival research project, and I can see myself working in archives in the future.

Wyatt Wilcox, History Major

This summer, I got the opportunity to work in the Hope College Archives. I worked sixteen hours per week. During my summer research, I wrote a scholarly article for publication in the Hope College Archives Quarterly, and also designed an exhibit for the display cases outside of the Rare Books Room in the basement of Van Wylen Library. My article was a history of Van Raalte Hall, one of Hope’s most important buildings; it existed from 1903 to 1980, when it burned down. The exhibit I created is a brief history of every major building at Hope, both buildings that existed in the past, and ones still present today. In addition, I created a map of the main campus showing the approximate locations of every building that has existed on the site, with current building outlines overlaid on the outlines of  buildings that are no longer there. My research involved studying archival materials pertaining to my research topics and reading news articles from the Hope College Anchor and the Holland City News, as well as books written about the subject. I am very thankful to have had this experience, and I learned a lot from my time and research in the archives.