Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
While cataloguing artifacts from Service Road, we stumbled across an intriguing piece of a milk glass jar featuring an applied color label with bright red and blue hues. I say it was intriguing because many of the artifacts we have left from Service Road are …
It has been nearly 167 years since Michigan State University first opened its doors in 1855. Starting with only three buildings, five faculty members, and 63 male students, it has grown to encompass 5,192 acres and has over 50,000 students enrolled, making it the state’s …
Here at Campus Archaeology, we love outreach – just this past week, we presented at both Michigan Archaeology Day and at our annual Apparitions and Archaeology Tour! (Thank you to those who stopped by!) We love outreach so much because we are passionate about archaeology and MSU’s history that we can’t help but find ways to connect with our local community here so we can all understand and learn about our history together.
However, over the past year and a half, we’ve had to adjust our events – some were cancelled while others were transitioned to an online setting. In fact, we have only started back in person this semester and still have certain protocols in place to protect us and those that come to our events. And this has been a different experience for us, as we usually love the opportunity to answer questions and listen to stories from our participants. But during this process, we learned a lot more about tools available for online learning and how we can engage with all of you in a new way!
I (Rhian) got to work with our Campus Archaeologist, Jeff Burnett, last year to create the Virtual Haunted Tour twine. I had never encountered Twine before, but loved how we could create an interactive exhibit that provides more information than we are able to do in person! Plus, we could incorporate more primary sources of photos and information available through the university archives! I personally learned a lot making the Twine and I’m hopeful that others felt the same way when reading it.
Based on this experience, I started to think about how we could use digital outreach again this year as an educational tool for those who are interested in learning more about the process of archaeology. I am in the forensic anthropology program here at MSU and while I knew the methodology for forensic archaeology, I joined CAP specifically to get more experience with traditional archaeological methods – both in the field and in the lab. Now that I’m getting more familiar with the nuances of archaeology, I wanted to create a tool to help others out there like me, who also want to learn about archaeology!
So I am teaming up with another CAP Fellow, Aubree Marshall, to create a new Twine tool for learning archaeology! We will be creating two different Twines:
The first Twine will guide our users through one of our more famous excavations: Saints’ Rest! While many of you may be familiar with this site, as we found many exciting artifacts at this site, we will walk you through each step of the process over the years and why we used certain methods, tools, or protocols. We hope this can help everyone understand why we process sites in a formalized way – and how that helps us to preserve the context and association of the artifacts we find and understand their historical significance!
The second Twine will be a choose-your-own-adventure format! Based on an excavation we did this summer at Spartan Village, we will provide a practice scenario for all of you: at each step of the process, we will provide you with the information we are typically given regarding a site (e.g., MSU’s construction crews were digging and hit a bunch of artifacts!) and you will be able to choose what you should do in response (e.g., go out now, wait one hour, start in the morning, etc.). In this way, you will understand how we make choices as how to excavate a site without delaying construction while still doing our best to preserve the history of our campus.
Twine is often used for interactive fantasy/role player games online where players can choose their own character and then decide what path they choose in a hope to win the game! Because of its success in that format, we believe this choose-your-own-archaeology-adventure will be a great learning tool as anyone who goes through our Twine will learn via experience!
We will be working on writing the script for the Twines this semester and will begin piecing together the html code next semester – hopefully these will be available for next summer and we can’t wait to make them available for all of you!!
We love the work we do through MSU’s Campus Archaeology. While our primary purpose is to mitigate and protect the archaeological and cultural resources on MSU’s campus, CAP goes above and beyond to also engage with our public audience and local community through outreach and …
Welcome back to our blog series on research and historical laboratories on MSU’s campus! In our last blog we learned more about the first three buildings added to Laboratory Row and how they have been used on campus over time. As we mentioned in our first blog …
Welcome back to our blog series on research and historical laboratories on MSU’s campus! In our last blog we discussed how MSU branched out to expand their research to fields outside sciences directly related to agriculture, such as chemistry and botany, by creating a Mechanical Shop Building. This space allowed students to get hands-on experience creating tools, such as a twelve horse-power engine, and helped to develop the Engineering Department! In fact, this program was so successful, in addition to the growth of chemistry and botany, that the College clearly recognized the importance of providing laboratory space to their other departments. This is illustrated by the creation of Laboratory Row, a row of seven buildings built over a 24-year period to hold laboratory space for different departments in the College.
Today, we will start exploring which buildings were added to Laboratory Row to see how research continued to boom on MSU’s campus!
While the Veterinary Laboratory has been talked in one of our previous blog posts, it is important to recognized how its laboratory space grew on campus! Veterinary coursework was seen as essential from the establishment of the College in 1855, as President Williams stated it was “fundamental to the very idea of an agricultural college” in his second report (as cited by Beal 1915:154). As farming and animal science depends on the ability to keep livestock alive and healthy, it is easy to understand the importance of veterinary science to the early College!
Although Veterinary Medicine did not become an official course of study until 1910, the College could not have functioned without it, which likely led the College to offer courses in the subject in the 1870s (Beal 1915:154). However, as these courses continued to be taught in the College, the need for laboratory space became more and more apparent. So it is no surprise that when the College found the necessary funds in 1885, the Veterinary Laboratory was the first building constructed for what would later be known as Laboratory Row.
Left: Veterinary Laboratory, dated to 1886. Right: Veterinary Medicine class, dated between 1890-1899. Images courtesy of MSU Archives and Historical Collections.
The Veterinary Laboratory was placed next to the Mechanical Shop (also built in 1885), southeast of College Hall. The first floor was used as an operating room for clinical instruction on College livestock, while the second floor contained an anatomy lab where a horse was dissected by the students each fall term (Forsyth 2020a). Furthermore, the Veterinary Laboratory even included an elevator to raise and lower animals between the two floors (Kuhn 1955:151)!
This location was fitting because it allowed the new laboratory to sit right next to the college farms where they used to sit north of the river, unlike campus today (Forsyth 2020a). These barns later moved to a more southerly location, still north of the river, between 1902 and 1908, which led to the creation of a new Veterinary Clinic (now Giltner Hall) in 1915 (Forysth 2020a). After this move, the old laboratory building transitioned to a space for human anatomy courses until it was torn down in the summer of 1930 during construction of the new, modernized Anatomy Building (Kuhn 1955:352).
No building has ever replaced the exact plot of old Veterinary Laboratory – the location today would rest west of Auditorium Road and north of the Computer Center parking lot. Due to this, CAP had the opportunity to excavate in this location in 2014. Check out our blog post on the Vet Lab excavation to learn more about what we found!
As would be expected for an agricultural institution, courses in horticulture were offered to students soon after the College was established. But the subject grew exponentially with the addition of Liberty Hyde Bailey to the faculty, who’s lectures were so popular that unregistered students would sit in (Kuhn 1955:151-2)! As both a botanist and horticulturalist, Bailey brought the laboratory mindset to horticulture, teaching students that plants could be advanced through “cross-breeding, by hybridization, by the ‘chance of growing seedlings,’ and by selection from the wild” (Kuhn 1955:152). Even Bailey’s predecessor, Levi Rawson Taft, kept up the scientific vigor, as he introduced Michigan to spraying orchards in order to curb disease (Kuhn 1855:153). It was clear that hands-on research was revolutionizing the field, but it was unheard of to provide laboratory space for horticulture.
While the efforts of the horticulture professors and students won over the College and a Horticulture Laboratory was built in 1888, it was the first of its kind in the United States (Forsyth 2020b)! With no preexisting model, the College did everything it could to provide the department with proper amenities, equipping the building with a classroom, laboratory, seed-room, heeling-in cellar, a dark room for photography, and a grafting room (Kuhn 1955:153). In fact, an additional four acres was provided, which Professor Bailey used to create a fruit garden to give students hands-on experience testing new varieties of small fruits. The garden even included a system of tile drainage placed underground (Beal 1915:88-89)!
Left: Horticulture class, dated to 1893. Right: Horticulture students, dated to 1884. Images courtesy of MSU Archives and Historical Collections.
Unfortunately, it became clear that the laboratory was not nearly large enough and so a new Horticulture Building was constructed in 1924 to provide more space and updated features. After the Horticulture Department moved to the new building, the original laboratory took in the Basic College (Social Sciences, Humanities, etc.) before then taking in the Honors College (Forsyth 2020b). In 1961, it was renamed in honor of Harry J. Eustace, the Chair of the Horticulture Department from 1908-1919, who aided in good storage and transport of food during the first World War (Forsyth 2020b). In 1999, a donation by Jeffrey and Kathryn Cole, former Honor students, allowed for a new set of renovations, which explains its current name of Eustace-Cole Hall (Forsyth 2020f).
In 2016, CAP had a chance to excavate near Old Horticulture. Check out our previous blog post to learn more about what we found!
As the first education institution in the state dedicated to agriculture, the Agriculture Department played an essential role in the College – in fact, it was the only department until 1885 (Beal 1915:135). And even after other curricula were offered at the College, Agriculture still housed the most equipment for instruction, was the most strongly advertised throughout the state, and earned $15,000 per year, starting in 1887, for the College for experimental work (Beal 1915:135; Kuhn 1955:162). As a role model for Land Grant universities across the nation, MSU has always taken its dedication to agriculture seriously!
In 1889, the College finally provided Agriculture with its own building so that the subject could take advantage of laboratory work in addition to its efforts outdoors (Forsyth 202c). However, considering the strong focus of agriculture in the College, it quickly became clear that the building did not provide nearly enough space for proper instruction and learning. Therefore, just twenty years later, a new Agriculture Hall was constructed that was over three times the size of the original building and the “old” Agriculture Laboratory became the Entomology Laboratory (Forsyth 2020c). Luckily the space was an adequate upgrade for the Entomology Department, who stayed in this building until the new Natural Science Building was added to campus in 1948.
Left: Agriculture Class, undated photograph. Right: New “Entomology” façade on the original Agricultural Laboratory. Images courtesy of MSU Archives and Historical Collections.
Although it no longer held the Entomology Department, in order to celebrate their research in that laboratory space it was renamed in 1969 to honor Dr. Albert Cook, the Professor of Zoology and Entomology from 1868-1893 and the first curator of the museum (Forsyth 2020c). Cook’s Collection of Insects, originally housed in the museum, were moved to an annex at the rear of the Entomology Laboratory in the 1930s, but have since moved to the fourth floor of the Natural Sciences Building (Forsyth 2020c). The Entomology Laboratory was renovated in 1998 and has altered its function to house offices for graduate students in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Recently, another set of renovations were completed in 2018-2019 thanks to a donation by Gary Seevers, a previous animal science and agricultural student, which led to the building’s current name: Cook-Seevers Hall (MSU Today 2019).
In 2014, CAP was called to the southwest side of Cook-Seevers Hall for a salvage excavation, as a short length of brick wall was uncovered by a construction crew (CAP Report No. 48). Upon further excavation, CAP team members exposed a large metal drum with metal pipes connecting the drum to the foundation of Cook Hall – a cistern! To learn more about this cistern and how they were used on campus, check out our Cook Hall Blog Post!
The creation of Laboratory Row was a big step for MSU in terms of research. But maybe not quite big enough because all three departments housed first on Laboratory Row later required even more space! MSU was a pioneer in providing laboratory space for numerous departments on campus and so needed a few tries – and more funding – to provide the right amount of space for their departments, but the ability of the College to meet these demands for space demonstrates its commitment to providing its students with hands-on opportunities and facilitating state-of-the-art research!
Join us next week to learn about the last four laboratories built as a part of Laboratory Row!
Welcome back to our blog series on research and historical laboratories on MSU’s campus! In our last blog, we talked about the first two laboratories on campus, the Chemistry and Botanical Laboratories. Both laboratories highlight MSU’s commitment to agriculture, as a better understanding of the hard …
Welcome back to our blog series on research and historical laboratories on MSU’s campus! In our last blog, we outlined how the university gained its start with an emphasis on scientific research and its uses for agriculture. Although the College used as much of its …
We are all familiar with Michigan State University’s (MSU) status as a part of the top ten conference (Go Spartans!) and for its place as a top tier research university (recently ranked in the top 8% nationwide). In fact, MSU offers 170 degrees for undergraduate students, 275 degrees for graduate students, and 12 graduate professional degrees (MSU Office of the Registrar) – it is clear that our university goes above and beyond to foster research across all disciplines!
Here at Campus Archaeology, we recognize that MSU’s positive mindset towards research is not new but has been a tenet of this university since its establishment in 1855. Therefore, in order to highlight how this passion for research shaped MSU’s early history, we are dedicating our next Blog Post Series to an overview of the first laboratories on MSU’s campus.
Originally known as the Michigan Agricultural College (MAC), the school was founded in 1855 in order to create an institution entirely dedicated to scientific agriculture, as farming was the leading profession in Michigan at the time. This need for formal instruction in agriculture may seem strange because farming is traditionally learned through familiarity and hands-on experience, but new research in soil chemistry, such as the chemicals essential to plant life (lime, iron, potash, magnesia, and silica), demonstrated the importance of science at a time when Michigan was still establishing itself as a new state (Kuhn 1955:3). Scientific instruction seemed the perfect way to revolutionize farming and earn Michigan a place within the already established market.
While some schools in the United States offered training in the sciences, courses were few and far between – and inadequate without any hands-on instruction. The Michigan State Agricultural Society felt that if they could foster the creation of a new school, they could develop a unique curriculum that focused on hands-on scientific learning rather than just textbooks or lectures (Kuhn 1955:8). While other existing schools, including the University of Michigan, argued that they could and should offer the scientific agricultural program, the Society believed only a new college could provide the flexibility to develop a scientific curriculum, as well as provide the necessary lands and instructors. With tremendous support from John C. Holmes, funds for a new college were finally approved and the process to form the MAC began.
The MAC’s efforts to establish itself as a unique institution were clear from the start, as the MAC actively deviated from traditional classical education and instead offered a curriculum based primarily on training students in the following disciplines:
Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Botany, Animal and Vegetable Anatomy and Physiology, Geology, Mineralogy, Entomology, Veterinary Art, Mensuration, Leveling and Political Economy, with Book-Keeping and the Mechanic Arts which are directly connected with agriculture
(as cited by Kuhn 1955:10).
Unfortunately, such a curriculum required proper equipment and laboratory space that was not easily attainable during the first years of the College – more funds had been used to build the first lecture and dorm halls than anticipated (Kuhn 1955:13). Luckily, the MAC’s passion for scientific instruction and strong spirit kept the College running until enrollment increased and funding could be attained.
When the MAC first formed, the College heavily relied on the insight of Holmes, who had led the push for the creation of the College, and asked him to design the curriculum. Holmes firmly believed that a degree from the MAC should be attainable for students of all backgrounds and so pushed for free tuition, assuming that the farm lands owned by the College would provide enough profit.
Image: John C. Holmes, dated to 1888. Image courtesy of MSU Archives and Historical Collections.
However, by 1859, just four years after the College was established, funds were completely depleted due to the heavy costs of building the first few halls and an endless need for repairs (Kuhn 1955:48). The farm did little to assist the College, as it had to be started from scratch and Holmes had decided that students should be paid for their labor. Needless to say, the first few years of the College were a fight for survival.
Without any funds, the first laboratory on campus – the Chemistry Laboratory – was located on the first floor of College Hall, the only instructional building on MSU’s campus until 1870 (Kuhn 1955:13). However, this decision was not entirely due to a lack of funds, as the College did not know any better – other science courses, even those at Harvard, were taught solely through lectures and textbook learning and thus did not need any special accommodations (Beal 1915:39). While a shared space sufficed for other universities, the College’s passion to teach science through hands-on instruction changed the dynamic of the curriculum and how students would interact with the subject directly (Beal 1915:39).
Luckily, under the guidance of Lewis Ransom Fisk (later Fiske), the first Professor of Chemistry at MSU and future pro term President of the College, instruction in chemistry soon became state of the art despite its location (Kuhn 1955:16).
Image: Professor L. R. Fiske (Kuhn 1955:20).
Having pursued graduate study and having taught chemistry for three years previously, Fiske argued for funds to furnish the laboratory with proper bench space, as well as $300 worth of chemicals and $2300 worth of equipment (~$8,850 and ~$67,800 today), which included actual chemicals, a static electric machine, and a balance scale (Kuhn 1955:16).
Thus students could perform and be tested via actual experimentation – a new and revolutionary method of instruction at the time!
While the use of chemicals actively challenged the students, the poor construction of College Hall provided the laboratory space with just two windows, which rarely provided enough light to work by and severely affected the ventilation, causing dangerous fumes to waft into other rooms and offices upstairs (Kuhn 1955:84). These structural issues limited the scope of instruction at the College and illustrated that a larger and more functional space was clearly needed.
Luckily, the College recognized the impact of this hands-on instruction and did everything in its power to provide a space and the equipment for scientific training and research. Tune in for our next blog where we will address how the College worked to increase laboratory space for its students!
Resources
Welcome to the new decade – 2020! With the start of this new era, and our spring semester at Michigan State University, we are happy to continue working through the Campus Archaeology Program! In addition to working on our individual projects (detailed in our previous …