Culture and Sustainability Task Force
11/21/13
Summary
Summary of Conversation Topics
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Discussion and brainstorm with UNH Archivist Elizabeth Slomba
o University Archives has a wealth of information and resources on UNH. Would love
additional materials to add to collection. Happy to assist with oral history or other
research associated with Cultural Heritage Management Plan development.
Cultural Heritage Management Plan
o Meghan attended Lands Committee meeting; members are open and interested in
possibility of CHMP.
o Need to draft something for people to respond to. Subcommittee will do this next.
Ambassador Updates from Ann Steeves
o Task force ambassadors will be convening a Sustainability Summit in the spring.
Updates from task force members
Next Steps
The group identified the following next steps (or commitments) during the meeting:
What
Who
Megan
 Meghan will find some examples of campus cultural
heritage plans.
Robert, Jess, Doug
 Robert, Doug, Jess and Meghan help develop
and Meghan
architecture of plan, and then send out to CAST.
By When
Next meeting
Next meeting
Culture & Sustainability Task Force
11/21/13
Detailed Notes
Participants
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Ruth Abelman, Residential Life
Nelson Barber, Paul College
Jackie Cullen Sustainability Institute at
UNH
El Farrell Sustainability Institute at
UNH
Jessica Fish, Center for Humanities
Meghan Howey, Anthropology
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Tom Kelly, Sustainability Institute at
UNH
Robert Macieski, UNH Manchester,
History
Sheila MacNamee, Communications
Faculty
Steven Trzaskoma, Languages,
Literature and Culture
Elizabeth Slomba, UNH Archives
Facilitator: Jessica Fish and Meghan Howey
Content Manager: Jackie Cullen
Announcements
Waysmeet
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Donations to Waysmeet Center in form of food baskets or monetary donations are very much
welcome
SNAP benefit cuts have created higher need this year
UNH Archivist Elizabeth Slomba
Discussion and Brainstorm on how to partner
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We’ve started looking at GIS maps of UNH, how to work with facilities on assessing a spot on
campus before digging or development begins, what is there
Began talking about the heritage of our buildings on campus, how do we bridge these together
and think about a really comprehensive heritage management plan that will look at a couple
different areas on campus?
Started then thinking about how great it would be to collect histories from people who have
worked in different buildings, sites that no longer exists, staff/faculty that have an affinity for a
spot on campus. Can we capture histories of those who have worked here or studied here?
Archives have been around for about 20 years. Purpose is to collect documents and preserve
materials related to the institutional history intellectual legacies and community life of UNH. We
would like to collect anything at UNH.
o Have materials from administration, president’s office, student affairs, athletics, facilities,
VP of finance etc. collect materials related to student work, writing center archives,
electronic files, oral histories have been collected over the years through similar projects
to this one.
o Always willing to take them as long as the legal stuff is settled. Trying to develop ways
to have less mediated access
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Looking at stuff online is far away now. Right now, digitizing yearbooks and
student newspaper.
o Collect materials from alumni, most up to the 1950’s now, just getting to more recent
decades as those faculty retire
o Try to collect faculty materials
o Collection of photographs, some given, some from early days of UNH
 Have some starting in 1891/92, a lot of work done to deal with water delivery on
campus,
 Archives of photographers, film side,
 Have some holes because people threw a lot out in the 60’s, trying to fill in holes.
How are oral histories?
o Some students have worked on transcriptions.
o They are on cassette players
o If we did this we would be collecting orally and have students transcribe them.
o If you started an oral history project, talk to the IRB (Institutional Review Board) and the
communications office to capture it digitally, easier to work with digital recorders than
cassettes
Anyone can come in, majority are those at UNH, have worked with Student Senate
o Main users are alumni office, generating articles about alumni
o Getting more interest in people doing anniversaries, have hit some key UNH histories,
Cooperative Extension is working on 150yr anniversary
 Coop founded really in 1866 –
o Increased use from students through coursework.
o Historical tourism, trying to find information in their property
Always somebody on campus that tends to take photographs of everything. Lots from 1910-1940,
Have a collection called the Bremer Pond collection, landscape architect hired on campus to
develop landscape plan for campus in prep to become university (1923)
o Scrapbook of photos 1925-28 highlighting areas that would be later built over/changed as
part of it
Eric Huddleston influenced the look of campus from 1910-1940 when building phase ended
because we ran out of money and had a president who didn’t want to spend money
People on campus seem to keep mentioning that they have pockets of documents they don’t know
what to do with.
o Encourage them to go to archives, that they are not giving it to a place that’s inaccessible.
People have a love of their personal history, working with an office develops a real connection,
always a tension on giving up personal things but they are well cared-for.
Question: what are constraints in terms of space? In a good spot, just took over 2nd floor of library
storage building. Have been doing some weeding, processing a lot more now and seeing a lot
more conversion to electronic i.e. registrar records.
o Paper still prevalent but not exponentially growing now.
o Don’t take student/personnel records or P and T records. Needs to stay in office or have a
records management plan to destroy. Not everything you get involved with is an
historical record.
o Committee minutes, newsletters, scrapbooks,
Question: what about university buildings? What kind of stuff do you typically have on our most
poignant buildings on campus?
o Don’t have blueprints, have certain ones through 1910’s. After that they are housed in the
plan room, also being converted to CAD gradually.
o Have an archive of materials, digitized, about the murals (Ham Smith)
o Have a collection of photographs from construction of a building
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Paperwork that goes with stuff
Campus planning maps, board of trustees minutes, TNH,
 TNH used to cover everything before splitting to Campus Journal staff vs.
students
o VP financial affairs papers,
Question: do you have stuff on Aristotle Onassis /oil refinery?
o Not so much the archives, but probably in special collections. John Durkin’s papers.
Have Save our Shores, Public Occurances. Special collections also has Clam Shell
Alliance papers, and forest society papers, looking to collect more political papers in the
future.
Q: What’s the archive’s bandwith? Say we get really ambitious and a lot of oral histories are
collected. We talked a little bit about other Universities doing interactive maps of campus. Do
you think there’s potential to partner with the library eventually? Just from working on another
digital archive with Aleta Exline and looking at the sheer space/bandwith to host it through the
library.
o Would need to do a study. If we’re talking hundreds of hours, would need to start
planning.
o Institutional Repository is place this stuff goes to live
o Small stuff can be handled.
Q: could there be a series of curated events or something, and those could be the building blocks
of some sort of App, building into a more coherent narrative of materials that could be put
together digitally?
Meghan got emails about oral history from land committee saying it was a good idea/offering
names to collect from.
o Emory Booska
o John Sanders
In a meeting with Facilities meeting a few years ago about illegal parking of golf carts on
campus, people are buying sheds to park them. Had I [Elizabeth] not been at that meeting, would
never have known about it.
A woman was writing a history of the university: Not what you’re looking for. More about the
development of the administration, large sections weren’t covered i.e. land use, cooperative
extension, didn’t cover student history. Is about the rise of UNH as a research institution.
o Marion James, now Prof. Emerita-History
All histories have difficulty. What we want to find is they decided on this date to move x to y etc.
But that’s rarely ever found in history, unless written specifically for some event or anniversary.
Oberlin College has an environmental dashboard, giving real time data on energy use and land
use. Has a community voices section, images/quotes from across the university and historical
photos. We have our own version of a dashboard for energy use on campus. Would be interesting
to adopt a model like that for sustainability and have a centralized place online. The Four Task
forces could work together to create something to this effect. Communicate and bring all of this
to one place
Did an exhibit about parking at UNH. Why do people feel the way they do about parking?
Working through the issues, there’s a good reason people feel that way. A good exhibit or
dashboard could really help us understand why we feel the way we do about an issue now.
Students have 4-5 year memory, administrative and high-level staff has 10-15 years, staff and
faculty have 30-40 years.
o Gives a sense of how things are developed over time. Right now we are seeing the
passing of people here in the 50’s/60’s which is when a lot of changes happened. We
don’t have to look the way we do now, but we did a series of choices that led us to where
we are now.
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All of this is not inevitable; we made choices to get to where we are.
When doing research into Bremer-Pond. Was interested in using Main Street as a highway, which
it was decades ago. That divides the campus in half. Charles Eliot was contacted, wrote a plan on
the back of an envelope and handed it to the board and that’s where the first five buildings were
on campus. Thompson, Conant, Murkland, etc. If you look at the original buildings, very different
from 1920’s.
o Faculty Club, opens up Edgewood, then that leads to Mast Rd. Families sell farms that
become UNH
o During Bermer-Pond time in the 1920’s, didn’t own land beyond ravine, where
Kingsbury and others are.
Any buildings on historic registry?
o Have complete records for Thompson Hall and what was pulled together for national
registry
Sense of place
o If you know the story of a place you can find the place in the story.
o Have transient populations coming in but not really providing a history of the campus
Have had arguments about when we were founded.
o We are very ahistorical. Don’t connect students when they come in to our history. Don’t
connect people to an overall sense of community and what it’s like to be here at UNH.
o Fragmented understandings of what it’s like to be here at UNH. Each student from a
major is different and has a different experience at UNH, how do you connect those two?
First thing legislature asked when we said ‘can we have money to found a college?’ was ‘can we
use the money for something else?’
o 1866
A lot of great stories to tell, campus planning/development a fascinating subject
Even though we’re land/grant, why do we push agricultural areas off to the sides, athletics
First dorm built for women to get women to come here. Guys would just find some place to live,
demerit hall housed a lot of them in the basement one year.
Cultural Heritage Management Plan
Land Committee meeting
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Meghan met with UNH Lands Committee. They were excited about the idea of a Cultural
Heritage Management Plan.
Woodlands committee, Steve Eisenhaure primary staff, manage woodlands, harvest/sell wood etc.
Land Committee, Tom Lee chairs, created ten years ago when trustees decided they were going to
liquidate land holding for cash, all hell broke loose,
o no coherent mechanism to inventory land or make a grounded decision of whether it
should be disposed of and what it’s being used for. If it’s not vital to the mission, series
of questions about impact on surrounding lands and where it was.
Land Use Committee would look at land, assess value and use for teaching/resource. Biodiversity
attributes that make it valuable to hold on to. If all those are no, what are recommendation for
disposal.
Open to including historical significance on their lands. Steve E sending a GPS files of lands and
spots that he knows about
The other thing that’s going on is the Ecosystem Task Force, through that TF a series of analysis
being done of our land holdings. Steve E. has done a lot of that work, did a comprehensive one on
college woods, just did one on the horticulture farm areas, looking at use, resources and other
factors.
Do we write a heritage management plan and go back for comments to land use committee
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At this point good to draft one
Who approves that?
 Would go up through the provost and to the cabinet.
Concise, our willingness/desire to consider heritage values on campus
Public art guidelines, aesthetics committee collected examples. Collect what we think are
the top, and adapt that.
Buildings/sidewalks have been put over sites that Meghan has dug and found.
Facilities needs to buy-in to say that they will consider this in decision-making.
EcoTF, one task is to propose projected boundaries for growth and expansion of the
campus were it to expand. Not guidelines now, made in an ad hoc way now.
Meghan will find some examples to see what’s there. Robert, Doug, Jess help develop
architecture, and then send out to CAST. Four of them sit down to hash out.
Oral Histories, way to start that on a small scale, through a class? Great anthropology or
digital humanities project. Why we’re doing it, how we want it done.
 A lot of good ideas, but we need more of a plan/mechanisms, etc. to figure out
first.
 Subcommittee to put together a proposal?
 Idea of just finding a mechanism to collect not the way to go yet. Need an idea of
what this is going towards.
 This body can set the theme and generate a list
 Tying into why we’re doing it, how we want it down
 Ahistoricism was a key point of what Elizabeth shared with us. What are our
obligations to memory as UNH? Could be addressed, follow the logic of
appropriate first steps to do this.
 Why do we care whether our students know the history. What’s the buy-in for
students, faculty, staff?
 People in general get there’s an obligation to future generations, but not
to previous.
 Needs to be in that context, good theoretical underpinnings but also
concrete things on campus that people will want to invest and participate
in. Simply donating more to archives or getting oral histories is all good
but otherwise all we’re doing is making more work for Elizabeth.
 Sub-group can talk to Alumni, the more you tell people the history of the place
 We have tiny reunions, maybe that would help to build them more, the
ones that do come back are very invested and spend a lot of time
reaffirming ties with each other about people who are not there.
 If they’re more invested in the history they’re more likely to give money
 Not what we’re interested in per say, is the motivation for alumni/T Hall
 What do we do to create the intellectual/academic side of things
Ambassadors Update
Updates from Ann Steeves
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Idea to bring all four ambassadors from each TF together on a project. Initially looked at a project
around waste, threw around some other ideas at a meeting, culture of sustainability here, jobs, etc.
At a meeting together, decided that having students come be on the task forces, role is to try to
integrate this work back to the student body because there’s work going on with Sustainability
Institute at UNH and with student orgs, how to bridge that together.
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Blog
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Hosting a sustainability Summit in April. Ambassadors thought it was the best way to make
connections with the students and all the different task forces and what’s going on on campus and
in task forces.
Just with other ambassadors at the Residence Hall Association meeting, Peter W. is president of,
letting them know that we’re here.
Initial concerns form students are residents/fellow peers don’t have recycling in their rooms. Lord
told that if they wanted recycling in their rooms would have to buy containers themselves. No
common areas in dorms have recycling, only option is the ones in their room and many don’t
have them.
CERC C (campus dorm) reps: Environmental Advocates wanted to have their common areas
lighting dimmed at night and non-peak hours, building was able to do that, wondering why every
dorm doesn’t do that.
Question: what do you envision the summit to be?
o Part demonstrations by different groups aka SEAC/ Slow Food/ Some other senior
projects aka urine recycling project with Nancy Kinner
o After initial meeting, could be a sustainability coalition with different representatives
from different organizations that could come together.
o Maybe a speaker, or just calling attention to different issues, letting people be aware of
issues on campus.
o Would be cool if they invited some key administrators to come listen and share what
you’re working on and be there and think about how they’re going to respond.
Setting a date, sooner the better we can get it out to faculty who’s courses are going to be related
to sustainability so they get it on their syllabi.
OMSA has a DSC – diversity support coalition a good model to look at
o Provides communication and overlap
April will be a tough month with a lot of other things going on.
o Solarfest?
o Always weekend after Earth Day
o Could try to do this on the Friday Before
o Having it be on a Friday so that staff would attend
Get human rights student groups involved in it as well, Freedom Café in Durham
Next one is on public art bike racks
Send to CAST group when it’s written – Jackie can share the site once it’s published.
Where are they placed on campus? One is buy Vinnie’s, one by Dean of COLA, one by Paul
College but not entirely sure, depends on size.
CAS Course Development plans
Meeting last week: updates
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CAST more involved in the selection process
Met and chose recipients last week, $3000 for a faculty to develop a course bridging
sustainability and their area of expertise
o Recipients will be announced by UNHSI soon
How do we want to think about this endeavor long-term?
o [There is a] Luncheon in January, have some dialogue about it then and bring it back to
CAST
How do we reach out beyond COLA in thinking about this for the future
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Initially was faculty in humanities didn’t see themselves as part of Sustainability, way to
stimulate more course design in sustainability. Great for this committee to think about do we want
to target areas? Business/health? How might we take that idea and expand it? UNHM? Starting
Next year.
Reached out to U. Events about 150th, very ground Floor Stages.
Other announcements
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Create your own story
o nominations are available to everyone, please submit a student to this. Becomes a
traveling gallery of students, go to UNH website, type create your own story.
o Nominator speaks about the student, luncheon event
Tom: two alumni events on west coast two weeks ago. LA and San Fran. About 60 alumni at each
event who love UNH and were all ages.
o Mark Huddleston saying we want to build closer ties, don’t want to just recruit from New
England but reach out.
Black Student Union
o December 3rd BSU Sit-In 15 years later event in Strafford Room.
o By 2003, asked we would have 10 tenure track black faculty, but mark hasn’t been hit
yet.
o Event is a great tangible way to show that there’s still work to do
o People involved in NAACP at the time will be there as well, institutional memory will be
involved
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