Eisenman discusses the differences in campus culture between the University of Illinois and Harvard. He also describes the academic environment at UIUC, with a particular focus on faculty in the sciences.
Alumn and library staff member Gregg Homerding reflects on the eighties at the University of Illinois. He discusses university athletics, parties, and housing (specifically the Hendrick House). This oral history was recorded as part of the ongoing Oral History project and conducted in partnership with the University of Illinois Library Archives.
Howie Schein took a circuitous path to the University of Illinois, first studying at Grinnell College, then the University of California, Berkeley, and then arriving in Champaign to pursue his PhD. After graduation, he led Unit One as associate director and director from 1976 to 2008. In this interview, he discusses his early life and education, graduate studies, and how he guided Unit One as it evolved through the decades.
Alum Judy Coonce discusses her experiences as the first white woman to have a Black roommate at the university. Coonce also helped refound the Sigma Kappa sorority on campus, which she details here. This oral history was recorded as part of the ongoing Oral History project and conducted in partnership with the University of Illinois Library Archives.
To access this interview, please contact the Student Life and Culture Archives at illiarch@illinois.edu
Chicago native Laura Haber spent more than 40 years in Champaign-Urbana. She first arrived as a political science undergraduate in 1985, continued through graduate school, and later worked with the Unit One program at Allen Hall for more than two decades. Known on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus as a “queer dorm” and important hub for the campus queer culture, Allen Hall has long supported LGBTQ students and progressive activism through its distinctive living learning community, Unit One. This oral history interview explores how queer culture and student activism became intertwined in the development of Allen Hall’s unique community. Haber reflects on her student life in the 1980s, her role in building programs such as the Guest-in-Residence initiative, the expansion of all-gender housing, and her memories of working with students over many years.
Recollections by Mary Rolfe include Illinois Field, faculty life, student housing, trees on campus, Charles W. Rolfe, alumni reunions, 1902 commencement, Thomas J. Burrill, Thomas A. Clark and student life.
Wendy Mathewson and Beth Watkins (both BA '96) met in an avant-garde honors seminar, "The History that Music Made." They became roommates and lifelong friends. Both graduates of the Department of History, both women are employed by the university today. Mathewson is the undergraduate advisor for the Department of History, and Watkins is the Education and Publications Coordinator at the Spurlock Museum. In this interview, they describe campus life in the 1990s and the gradual shifts in their political, religious, and worldview perspectives that they attribute to a liberal arts education. They reflect on enduring friendship across deep differences, the value of finding smaller communities within a large university, exposure to diversity, and the importance of resilience.
