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13 books match the query 'Alumni and alumnae'

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A Noble and Independent Course

The Life of the Reverend Edward Mitchell

Forrester A. Lee and James S. Pringle

Dartmouth College Press, 2018

In 1828 Edward Mitchell was the first student of African descent to graduate from Dartmouth College, more than thirty-five years before any other Ivy League school admitted a black student. This book tells Mitchell’s life story with the help of a recently rediscovered trove of his college essays, notes on his religious conversion, and hand-copied versions of his sermons. Born and raised in the French slave colony of Martinique, Mitchell immigrated to the United States and came of age in Philadelphia, where he broke bread with the city’s African American clerics and civic leaders. The Dartmouth trustees initially denied Mitchell admission but yielded to unified student protest. After his graduation, Mitchell continued his northward journey to serve as a Baptist preacher and evangelist in the pulpits of northern New England. His religious odyssey concluded in Lower Canada, where he was remembered as “the most profound theologian ever settled.” During his travels throughout the Atlantic world in an age of revolution and religious revival, Mitchell encountered the dominant social, economic, and political realities of his time. Although long celebrated as the inspiration for Dartmouth’s legacy of educating men and women of African ancestry, Mitchell’s life story remained unknown for almost two centuries. This book, which embodies history as recovery, is a testament to the authors’ desire to know the man behind the story.

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Children of the Struggle and the Ancestors Who Stayed

The Tuskegee Institute High School Class of 1964

Edited by Sonjia Parker Redmond and Beatrice J. Adams, Foreword by Fred D. Gray

University of Alabama Press, 2025

WINNER OF THE ANNE B. AND JAMES B. MCMILLAN PRIZE

A powerful collection of firsthand stories from the Tuskegee Institute High School Class of 1964—students who came of age in the crucible of the Civil Rights Movement. Their stories uncover the bold choices of their ancestors who chose to stay and help shape the South.

Children of the Struggle and the Ancestors Who Stayed, edited by Sonjia Parker Redmond and Beatrice J. Adams, brings together twenty-one deeply personal narratives from members of the Tuskegee Institute High School Class of 1964. These students grew up at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, coming of age during landmark legal battles, community-led voter registration efforts, and the long shadow of Jim Crow.

Graduating in the year of the Civil Rights Act and Freedom Summer, these young people had already helped desegregate Alabama schools. They marched from Selma to Montgomery, mourned the assassination of classmate Sammy Younge Jr., and witnessed firsthand the violent resistance to change that defined the era.

Rather than join the Great Migration northward, many of them followed the lead of their ancestors and chose to stay—becoming educators, organizers, and civic leaders. Their lives reflect a powerful legacy of resistance and renewal, rooted in a deep sense of place and purpose. This collection preserves their voices and honors the generations of Black families who fought for justice not only through protest, but by staying, building, and believing in the promise of the South.

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Crossing the River

A Memoir of the American Left, the Cold War, and Life in East Germany

Victor Grossman

University of Massachusetts Press, 2003

What could possibly impel a relatively privileged twenty-four-year-old American-serving in the U.S. Army in Germany in 1952 to swim across the Danube River to what was then referred to as the Soviet Zone? How are we to understand his decision to forsake the land of his birth and build a new life in the still young German Democratic Republic? These are the questions at the core of this memoir by Victor Grossman, who was born Stephen Wechsler but changed his name after defecting to the GDR.

A child of the Depression, Grossman witnessed firsthand the dislocations wrought by the collapse of the U.S. economy during the 1930s. Widespread unemployment and poverty, CIO sit-down strikes, and the fight to save Republican Spain from fascism-all made an indelible impression as he grew up in an environment that nurtured a commitment to left-wing causes. He continued his involvement with communist activities as a student at Harvard in the late 1940s and after graduation, when he took jobs in two factories in Buffalo, New York, and tried to organize their workers.

Fleeing McCarthyite America and potential prosecution, Grossman worked in the GDR with other Western defectors and eventually became, as he notes, the “only person in the world to attend Harvard and Karl Marx universities.” Later, he was able to establish himself as a freelance journalist, lecturer, and author. Traveling throughout East Germany, he evaluated the failures as well as the successes of the GDR's “socialist experiment.” He also recorded his experiences, observations, and judgments of life in East Berlin after reunification, which failed to bring about the post-Communist paradise so many had expected.

Written with humor as well as candor, Crossing the River provides a rare look at the Cold War from the other side of the ideological divide.

Mark Solomon, a distinguished historian of the American left, provides a historical afterword that places Grossman's experiences in a larger Cold War context.

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Educated Out

How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—And What It Costs Them

Mara Casey Tieken

University of Chicago Press, 2025

Through the stories of nine rural, first-generation students and their families, Educated Out shows how geography shapes college opportunities, from admission to postgraduation options.

A former third-grade teacher in rural Tennessee, education researcher Mara Casey Tieken watched as her former students graduated high school. She was shocked at how few were heading to college—and none were going to elite four-year schools. These students were representative of a larger national phenomenon: In 2021, 31 percent of rural adults aged twenty-five and older held a postsecondary degree, compared to 45 percent of urban adults, and rural students are especially unlikely to pursue degrees from private, selective schools. Why, Tieken wondered? And what happens to the handful of rural students who do attend elite colleges, colleges that may feel worlds away from home?

Tieken addresses these questions in Educated Out—a study that shows how geography shapes rural, first-generation students’ access to college, their college experiences, and their postgraduation plans and opportunities. Tieken closely follows a group of nine students for their college years and beyond at an elite New England private school that she calls Hilltop. Interviews with these students reveal the critical moments in the students’ educational careers when their rural origins mattered most: when applying to college, she shows how students are hindered by limited college counseling resources. Once on campus, they learn that many of the school’s opportunities are not available to them: they cannot access spring break trips, job networks, or low-pay-but-important internships. These students discover that home and college are very different worlds with different academic, social, and political climates—and, over time, they start to question both. As they near graduation and navigate a job market in which the highest-paying and most prestigious opportunities are located in urban centers, they begin to feel the complicated burden of their schooling: they’ve been “educated out.” Their stories show the costs of college for rural students: If they do not pursue higher education, they lose the opportunity for social mobility; if they do, they face a more permanent departure. These costs are individual, but rural families and communities also suffer—they lose young people with talent and skills.

In addition to advocating for a higher education landscape that truly includes rural students, Tieken critiques a system that requires people to leave their rural homes in search of opportunities. Our current economy depends on inexpensive rural labor. Without meaningful change, some students will have to make the impossible decision to leave home—and far more will remain there, undereducated and overlooked.

Both engaging and accessible, Educated Out presents important and timely questions about rurality, identity, education, and inequality.

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From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop

University of Cincinnati Stories

Edited by Greg Hand

University of Minnesota Press, 2018

As the University of Cincinnati celebrates its bicentennial, students, faculty, staff, and alumni look back on the university’s remarkable past and its progression as a pioneer in higher education. From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop: University of Cincinnati Stories reflects the breadth and diversity of the University of Cincinnati over its rich and eventful history, emphasizing just what makes UC’s history so special and inspiring—its stories.

Former Ohio Governor Bob Taft remembers his law school days in a building named for his great-grandfather. Broadway star Faith Prince recalls her musical theater start at UC’s College-Conservatory of Music. More than thirty-five contributors provide their own unique perceptions of this extraordinary urban university. Some are well-known names like Taft and Prince, while others are current students and alumni whose education and futures were profoundly shaped by memorable experiences connected to UC. Clark Beck recounts the struggles he initially faced upon coming to UC and offers readers an inspiring story of perseverance and tenacity. Sid Thatham gives a captivating tale of his move from India and the home base he made in Cincinnati with UC graduate students. Other contributors celebrate the relationships, such as that between the strong-willed duo of Jack Rouse and Helen Laird, that give UC its storied past.

In From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop, anyone can find a person, whether it be the trailblazing Lucy Braun or the celebrated Carl Blegen, or a place, be it the changing landscape of Ludlow Avenue or the new frontier for the DAAP College, to which he or she can relate. Such figures, places, and stories present a sampling of the UC experience. From the Temple of Zeus to the Hyperloop offers readers an inside look at the many lives that have influenced UC and the opportunity to envision how their own stories can be a part of its future.

Just as Hand titles his introduction, “a dedicated crew of bearcats assembled this book,” the University of Cincinnati and its story continue to be a community effort, deeply intertwined with the lives of the people who have made up the university and its two-hundred years.

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Leadership Gets Personal

Finding Purpose, Transforming Lives, and Never Giving Up

Nan McRaven and Susan Engelking

University of Texas Press, 2026

How the University of Texas shaped twelve people who changed the world.

College is a time for personal growth. But any Biology 101 student knows that growth (personal or otherwise) requires the right environment. Collecting the revealing and deeply personal stories of twelve UT alumni who became leaders in their fields, Leadership Gets Personal honors the transformative impact of the Forty Acres on those who learn and grow there.

Matthew McConaughey, Academy Award-winning actor and #1 New York Times best-selling author, was destined for law school, but with the encouragement of his UT community, he realized he was a born storyteller. Brené Brown, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Dare to Lead, struggled for years before finding her purpose in the Social Work Department. Dr. Amy Ho knew she wanted to change the American health care system, and at UT she gained the confidence and skills to make a difference. Astronaut Karen Nyberg was a shy kid; her UT graduate studies propelled her to space. And Darren Walker would go on to become president of the Ford Foundation, taking inspiration from the financial aid counselors who made sure he got the education he yearned for. For these and other outstanding alumni profiled here, the road was often rocky. Through perseverance, humility, and collaboration, they learned not only to exercise leadership but to live it.

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Overcoming All Obstacles

The Women of the Académie Julian

Becker, Jane R

Rutgers University Press, 1999

Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian is the first book to examine late nineteenth-century Paris's most famous training ground for the leading women artists of the period. The Académie Julian was founded in Paris in 1868, initially to prepare students for entry to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the nineteenth-century's preeminent art school. Because women could not study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts until 1897, Julian itself became an international equivalent for many of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century's most important women artists.

Not only does Overcoming All Obstacles introduce the reader to many works by women artists-both famous and lesser known-but the essays offer a cultural and historical context in which to appreciate their art. Gabriel Weisberg's essay concentrates on the rigorous training methods enforced by Rodolphe Julian and the teachers at the Academy. Jane Becker explores the competitive environment of the Julian Academy as it affected the Ukrainian painter Marie Bashkirtseff and the Swiss painter Louise-Catherine Breslau. Essays by Catherine Fehrer, the leading scholar of the Académie Julian, and Tamar Garb, an art historian who focuses on the training of women artists, give us a richer understanding of the Académie Julian's place in the sphere of art education in late nineteenth-century Paris.

Generously illustrated with both color and black-and-white images, this volume includes documentary photographs and caricatures that have never before been reproduced. The core of the book draws on the large collection of the Académie Julian Del Debbio, the Académie Julian's successor institution in Paris. This publication accompanied an exhibition organized by the Dahesh Museum in New York that opened after its exhibition at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. The exhibition subsequently continued to the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis.

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Political Attitudes over the Life Span

The Bennington Women after Fifty Years

Duane F. Alwin

University of Wisconsin Press, 1992

The culmination of one of the most famous long-term studies in American sociology, this examination of political attitudes among women who attended Bennington College in the 1930s and 1940s now spans five decades, from late adolescence to old age. Theodore Newcomb’s 1930s interviews at Bennington, where the faculty held progressive views that contrasted with those of the conservative families of the students, showed that political orientations are still quite malleable in early adulthood. The studies in 1959-60 and 1984 show the persistence of political attitudes over the adult life span: the Bennington women, raised in conservative homes, were liberalized in their college years and have remained politically involved and liberal in their views, even in their sixties and seventies.
Here the authors analyze the earlier studies and then introduce the 1984 data. Using data from National Election Studies for comparison, they show that the Bennington group is more liberal and hold its opinions more intensely than both older and younger Americans, with the exception of the generation that achieved political maturity in the 1960s. The authors point out that the majority of the Bennington women’s children are of this 1945–54 generation and suggest that this factor played an important role in the stability of the women’s political views. Within their own generation, the Bennington women also appear to hold stronger political views than other college-educated women.
Innovative in its methodology and extremely rich in its data, this work will contribute to developmental and social psychology, sociology, political science, women’s studies, and gerontology.

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