Daily Archives: January 21, 2015

Why we love student collections — Alice Fisher’s school work, c. 1930

Another fabulous addition to the “student experience” collections we have in the archives at SCARC. A small group of things from Alice Fisher came in a couple of weeks ago, and though it is small it is mighty!

Alice Mary Fisher was born in April of 1911 and graduated from high school in Albany, Oregon, in 1928. She enrolled at Oregon Agricultural College for the spring term in 1928 and completed her BS in Vocational Education in June 1932. While at OSC she was active in campus theater productions, including The Three Musketeers and Lady Windermere’s Fan, and completed several theater courses during her student years. Beyond drama, she was involved in many other student activities, including the Memorial Union Board of Directors, Beaver yearbook, Barometer campus newspaper, and the Associated Students of OSC. She was also a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority at OSC and established the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter at Colorado College, where she pursued graduate studies in English. Alice Fisher Summers Roberts returned to Albany, Oregon, with her husband John Summers during World War II. She lived in Albany for the rest of her life, where she was an active community volunteer and was named the Linn County Woman of the Year; she passed away in 2014.

Fisher’s time at OSC is already represented in the small “Alice Fisher Community Drama Class Scrapbook” collection, which was donated by Fisher. The book consists of materials assembled by Fisher for the Community Drama class she took spring term of 1931, full of images clipped from magazines and newspapers illustrating clothing and furniture styles from various historical eras. You’ll also find class notes, a copy of her final examination, and a program for a production of My Fair Lady performed in Portland.

This new addition also contains items that she compiled while in school, included are notes from a French class, a Zoology test, a theater prompt book with all her lines, and a paper with the title “Polygamy and its subdivisions.” She also has items saved from a household management class, which is really interesting when you look at budgeting in 1931.

But the thing that brought Collections Archivist into my office to show off what he’d found was a bundle of papers tucked into a file with a label “The Parent/Child Relationship.”

It includes her notes from class, her research, and a “Study of a child at a nursery school.” It’s a personality study and psychological assessment of a 3 ½ year old named Robbie (who is totally adorable).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She’s included physiognomy, psychology, and (as an added bonus) some of his art.