About the Upcoming Div III Showcase Exhibit

Below is a guest blog post by Archives student worker Greg McCarthy. Greg has been working tirelessly to find new Div III works with a Natural Science focus in order to refresh the library’s Div III Showcase (located on the first floor of the library). For information about the Showcase and to learn how to submit your Div III to the library (in analog or digital forms) please contact the Hampshire College Archivist at archives@hampshire.edu. For more about the Hampshire College Archives visit this page.

Greg’s blog post follows:

This whole project began as a sensation of irritation at the fact that it is nearly impossible to find examples of Natural Science Division III’s from the past four years. Between that and my understanding that Natural Science is underfunded and has minimal recognition from the Hampshire Community and the outside world, I felt the urge to try and do something about it. So, I spoke to Jimi Jones, my boss, about setting up an exhibit of Natural Science Division III’s in the library.
Going into this project, I had no idea what I wanted it to look like at the end. In fact the only thing I knew was that I needed to get Natural Science publicity and that I needed to make it easier for Natural Science students to find copies of Division III’s. So, I began making the rounds in Cole Science Center asking professors about the most impressive Division III’s they’d had in the last couple of years. Then using the names they were kind enough to give me, I began stockpiling papers and diagrams until I figured out what I could do with them.
The more I spoke to people about my project; I realized how much potential it had. It became clear that I needed to set up a documentary about the Natural Science program at Hampshire and that my exhibit needed to contain more than just copies of papers; it needed to have a video and visual component as well.

Obviously, this project snowballed into something much larger than I expected it to be. When I gave a talk at NS about the project, they seemed very excited to see that someone was attempting to get publicity for Natural Science.

Clearly, the stakes riding on this project are much higher than I initially thought. So, I’d like to take a moment to talk about what I’ve done thus far and what still needs to be done with the intention of asking for help. This has become a project too large for me to do on my own.

As of right now, I have set up most of the NS shelf on the Division III showcase and have an exhibit’s worth of photographs, diagrams, video and a sculpture that needs to go into the exhibit cases and/or on the magic board. The exhibit portion of this project needs to be completed by mid-April so that is taking priority at the moment.

Next semester, I want to begin working on the documentary and the Natural Science website. The documentary will be made up of interviews with faculty and students as well as videos of students working on their research and footage of courses. The website will be gaining an alumni page that will give a brief description of what each graduate went on to do after Hampshire as well as a link to their Division III paper and abstract.

Both of these portions of the project involve a lot of legwork. I am in the process of figuring out how to get a camera man and editing equipment set up for the documentary and how to get enough Division III’s and alumni information to put up on the website.