Letters Home
Supported by a grant from the Cater Society of Junior Fellows, history major Sarah Graff 鈥18 has digitized a collection of letters from World War II soldiers 鈥 all former students at 缅北强奸.
In 2016, Graff was awarded a Douglass Cater Society grant to digitize the collection, research the writers at the Library of Congress, and participate in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, MARAC. She also won a Comegys Bight internship to work at the National Archives and Records Administration. Graff spent the summer in 缅北强奸, D.C., elbow deep in archival work. In November, she went to Annapolis to present her findings at MARAC. She says she babbled for 20 minutes. Witnesses report otherwise.
Arian Ravanbakhsh 鈥89 was the chair of Graff鈥檚 panel, 鈥淲ar on the Shore: Preserving the History of Maryland鈥檚 Eastern Shore.鈥 They shared the dais with Calloway and with Leslie VanVeen McRoberts and Artura Jackson of Salisbury University. Calloway and McRoberts were to discuss how they engage students in their archives, and their students were to provide their perspective, highlighting their own projects.
Currently serving as the College鈥檚 Alumni Board Chair, Ravanbakhsh works as a supervisory records management policy analyst (鈥渇our adjectives and a noun in true federal bureaucratic fashion鈥 he points out) at the National Archives. 鈥淢y 缅北强奸 friends think I talk archives way too much and my archives friends think I talk about 缅北强奸 College way too much,鈥 he says. For the MARAC panel, Ravanbakhsh could do both. Jettisoning a coat and tie for his WC polo, he opened with a couple of War on the Shore jokes.
鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 necessarily say WC beat Salisbury on that Saturday morning,鈥 he reports. 鈥淎s an archivist, it was just fabulous to hear about efforts in both institutions to bring students and the wider community into the archives and inspire people to learn about the history of great institutions.鈥
The panel was one of 20 sessions at the multi-day conference. Graff was the only undergraduate presenter among a pack of archivists from eight states. 鈥淲hile students represent a large portion of MARAC presenters and attendees,鈥 Ravanbakhsh explains, 鈥渢hey all tend to be from library and archives graduate programs in the area. This is just another example of how 缅北强奸 students have opportunities to thrive in their chosen field to the point where they are doing graduate-level work at an undergraduate institution.鈥
It was a Cater grant that funded Graff鈥檚 work, and she鈥檚 fulfilled its intent by sharing her knowledge to build a 鈥渃ompanionship of learning limited only by the imagination鈥 on campus.
鈥淚 do think Sarah鈥檚 Cater-funded work has raised the profile of the Archives in the college community,鈥 says Ravanbakhsh. 鈥淲hen you hear her speak about her work in the Archives, you can鈥檛 help but share in her excitement. And that鈥檚 contagious.鈥