Wendy Mathewson and Beth Watkins (both BA '96) met in an avant-garde honors seminar, "The History that Music Made." They became roommates and lifelong friends. Both graduates of the Department of History, both women are employed by the university today. Mathewson is the undergraduate advisor for the Department of History, and Watkins is the Education and Publications Coordinator at the Spurlock Museum. In this interview, they describe campus life in the 1990s and the gradual shifts in their political, religious, and worldview perspectives that they attribute to a liberal arts education. They reflect on enduring friendship across deep differences, the value of finding smaller communities within a large university, exposure to diversity, and the importance of resilience.
Willard Broom attended the University of Illinois in the late 1960s. At first, Willard was oblivious to political activity on campus; but he has memories of escalating tension and violence that surrounded the Vietnam War, Project 500, and environmental concerns.
William Rose was a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois from 1922 to 1955. He speaks about his youth, amino acid research, work on pepsin and creatine, krebiozen, World Wars I and II, research support, students, presidents, and textbooks.
William Schaller completed his undergraduate (1910) and masters degrees (1912) in the electrical engineering department of the University of Illinois. He discusses electrical engineering at Illinois, various faculty, his engineering career as an army officer in World War I, and his graduate work.
William O'Dell (1909-2009) graduated in 1931. He joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity and studied Commerce and Business. William said his choice of major made him aware of the stock market crash and the Great Depression. He said he felt a pinch during the Depression, but he was not seriously impoverished.
Winton Solberg, professor emeritus in the Department of History, wrote numerous articles and published multiple books on the University of Illinois's history. Born in 1922, Solberg grew up during the Great Depression and served in World War II, and after the war decided to pursue a PhD in history. He came to the University of Illinois in 1961, when university president David Dodds Henry approached Solberg to write a volume on the university's history. He taught American Intellectual and Cultural History as well as an occasional survey course until his retirement from teaching in 1992. In the spring of 2018, he had two manuscripts pending publication in addition to the recently released Creating the Big Ten: Courage, Corruption, and Commercialization.
