Reunion
Weekend and Conference
"Educated at Winterthur: A Half Century of Achievement"
September 21-22, 2001
Keynote Address
The Winterthur Programs,
'51 to '01: Are We There Yet?
by
Charles F. Hummel (WPEAC '55)
(as
presented on September 21, 2001)
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(page 9) VI.
Needs In 1957 and 1961, in outlines to Henry Francis du Pont referring to WPEAC, Charles Montgomery reiterated that "this program, which may seem costly to us in terms of the many hours of staff time spent on it, is not as yet being done nearly well enough by the museum. . . . the Winterthur Program is, without question, the key to our long-range as well as our immediate development." In the fall of 1981, twenty years later, Scott Swank, Deputy Director for Interpretation at Winterthur, noted in his report on the WPEAC, that a dramatic improvement in University/Museum relations occurred from 1977 on and University support for WPEAC continued to grow, "but after some years of neglect by the University and aggressiveness on the part of the Museum, the improved situation may have lulled the Museum into a degree of complacency." I would add that the University's support for not only WPEAC, but especially WUDPAC and the Ph.D. program in the History of American Civilization, has increased significantly. Its effort has not been matched by Winterthur. The generous bequests of Henry and Lois McNeil may have lulled this institution into a false sense of security to needs of the programs that should be addressed if the high standards of excellence and quality set by Henry Francis du Pont are to be upheld and the programs are to maintain a position of being on the cutting edge of professional training. It must be recognized, of course, that cooperative undertakings for two strong, autonomous institutions providing training for fifty-plus graduate students each year, who come from varied backgrounds, and have varied professional goals, could make for extreme schizophrenia. It is a credit to both the University and to Winterthur that only mild symptoms of that mental illness are evident. The description of needs that follows are personal observations, but some have also been identified by Jim Curtis, Gary Kulik, and Debbie Norris. Many are recurring problems over the history of the graduate programs that are usually given a temporary resolution. First and foremost is the fact that this speaker looks out on a sea of graduates with white or "colorless" faces. Some preliminary attempts have been made to attract minority applicants to the Programs. WUDPAC has recently formulated a written plan to actively recruit minority candidates. To the best of my knowledge, WPEAC and the Ph.D. program have no such plan. In 2001, and for the next fifty years, lip service and hand wringing is not good enough. Fifty years ago, twenty-five years ago, a sizeable minority middle class did not exist. That is no longer the case, and concrete action must be undertaken to recruit minority applicants to the graduate programs. The nature
of WPEAC and the Ph.D. programs must be more precisely
defined. Literature describes the programs as
"interdisciplinary" but the reality has always been that the
Fellows experience multidisciplinary curricula with little
attempt to provide the integration that an interdisciplinary
experience requires. "Multidisciplinary" may, in fact, be
the best that one could hope for. But since this question
and the related issue of a core vs. flexible curriculum
still occurs, it would seem time for fifty years of
experience to settle these issues. A recent retreat of
faculty of WPEAC discussed broadening of the tracks or paths
to satisfy WPEAC requirements. All well and good, but we
must be certain that the message received by potential
applicants and employers of our graduates is accurate and
precise. |
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