Written by Megan Melone
Photography submitted by Austin Herrera
Austin Herrera is a junior majoring in secondary history education. Austin manages McKendree’s archives, the collection of the university’s historical documents, photographs and artifacts. I interviewed Austin on his work in the archives and his experience as a McKendree student:
Where are you from?
HERRERA: I’m from Belleville, Illinois.
You are a history ed. major. Why’d you choose that?
HERRERA: I was getting my associate in arts at SWIC (Southwestern Illinois College), and I had a history professor named Raymond Webb, and I was just engrossed in his teaching style. He told history like a story, which was impactful because usually people do not have much interest in history, but in his classroom everybody was engaged. I thought, I want to do that.
Why did you decide on secondary education?
HERRERA: At SWIC, they had an intro to education program, and we had an assignment to observe a classroom. It was convenient for me because my mom is an early childhood educator. I went to observe her classroom, and about five minutes in I realized that elementary is not for me, too chaotic. [laughs] So it was reactionary. I figured I couldn’t do the youngest, so I’ll do the oldest. But now I’m considering middle school as well.
Honestly, I think you’d be great at history, but I can see you as a coach as well. I can see you wearing a whistle.
HERRERA: [laughs] I’m not a sports guy, but a lot of history teachers end up coaching too.
So you transferred from SWIC. Why did you come to McKendree?
HERRERA: In that intro to education class, we had a lot of local colleges visit and explain what they offer in their education programs. I was deciding between McKendree and Lindenwood, but the representative from McKendree said something that caught my attention. They said that because McKendree has a good reputation in Illinois, all of the education graduates are almost guaranteed a job. That security sounded really nice.
Ok, so the archives. How did you start working down here? [The archives are in the basement of the library.]
HERRERA: One of our history professors, Shelly Lemons, who is amazing, brings a lot of her classes down to the archives. My first semester, I had three classes with her and during one of those trips she introduced me to Debbie Houk, who supervises the archives. Debbie showed me around and I thought it sounded cool, so I went for it.
How would you describe the archives?
HERRERA: The archives is a collection of all the physical documents, contracts, even syllabi from all of McKendree’s history. We have stuff from the founding in 1828 up to last year. To put it most simple, it’s McKendree history in boxes.
Yeah, there’s a lot of boxes.
HERRERA: It’s a lot of boxes.
What does a typical day look like for you down here?
HERRERA: I usually come in between classes. Right now I’m working on a big project that I started last spring where I’m going through all of our boxes and introducing a labeling system and removing lots of staples. [laughs] The labeling system will be used for a massive finding aid. My Google doc is around 297 pages long. It will be on the library website, and the idea is that when it’s finished, students or professors can search for something, and the website will tell exactly where the document is located in the archives.
Before the project, though, it was more relaxing because I would find documents and file them and read about the history. There’s a lot of fun stories, and we had a lot of talented and gifted students here as well as faculty.
Do you have a favorite story about McKendree?
HERRERA: Yeah it’s called “You Are What You Eat,” which is this passage written by a student sometime in the 1970s. McKendree had an outbreak of the Russian flu, and in response Ames Dining Hall started serving complimentary meals to the sick students. The students with Russian flu that were receiving free meals from Ames became sick from food poisoning from the free meals. So the students became extra sick, and the author wrote this hit piece on Ames and the terrible experience of having Russian flu and food poisoning. Disclaimer, the FDA exists today so we no longer have to worry about Ames food giving us food poisoning. But after reading this hit piece, I wasn’t eager to go try it.
That’s good to know. On the surface, some may say, “Okay, McKendree is this tiny college in southern Illinois. Why would it be important that we keep this history?” Why do you believe keeping this history is important?
HERRERA: I mean, as a history education major I believe history is valuable. The old saying “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it,” is true. McKendree has a very poor financial record, we almost went under three separate times, and for reasons like that it’s important that we keep these records to see what went wrong then and how we can prevent that and improve today. It’s also just fascinating. You mentioned that you didn’t know there used to be a lake where the Piper Academic Center is, and just learning about how the school has changed and grown and the fun stories about food poisoning is valuable. Honestly, we need more room for more boxes.
Do you have anything else to add?
HERRERA: Shout out to my education gang: Valeria Gomez, Sarah Hemann, Cortez McGlown, and Katie Fertig.
