We are happy to host classes as one-time archival awareness and introduction to primary source literacy opportunities with no expectation that the students will further engage with the materials. However, if you are interested in developing an assignment or class product using our collections, we can collaborate with you to make that happen.

SCARC staff have supported numerous class products and models, and we welcome use of SCARC materials to support your instruction in other forms!

• We require at least one quarter of advance planning for each of these items.
• If students are not visiting as a class, we prefer to visit your class to orient students to our access policies and appointment model.
• Due to staff capacity, we will not be able to offer full instructional support for class assignments that rely on SCARC resources but for which we have not received prior notification.

Examples of Writing-Based Assignments:

• ENG 530: Biography of a Book ~ For this assignment, the faculty member wished her students to gain hands-on intensive exposure to one book in our rare books collections for an extended period. SCARC faculty developed an assignment called "Biography of a Book," which asked students to explore one artifact in depth to determine its provenance, printing history, and social, political, cultural, and economic effects. This assignment was capstone to the course.
• HST 310: Historian’s Craft ~ As a required course for all History majors and minors, SCARC has partnered with History faculty concerned by students’ high use of AI programs like ChatGPT to create hands-on and public-facing research projects. In past classes, students (individually or in groups) have done original research in SCARC collections to write about continuities in women’s gender roles, the development of a Liberal Arts curriculum, the local and national impact of Oregon State College’s nutritional health programs, Japanese American student experience, OSU Extension and domestic education for food production, student war deaths, and female activism through Victory Campaigns. Students have the option to submit their work for publication on SCARC’s “Speaking of History” blog.

SCARC has various physical exhibit spaces on the 5th floor of The Valley Library. The space we have used most as a class exhibit co-curation collaboration has been our small display case in the lobby of our reading room space.  

Examples of Class Exhibits:

• ART 494: Illuminated Manuscripts Display ~ Students from this class visited SCARC to study and explore examples of illuminated manuscripts from the period of 1280-1500. After working with these examples and learning about techniques and materials, students created their own illuminated manuscripts which were displayed outside SCARC for one quarter after the class.
• TCE 408H: Sundown Towns in Oregon Displays ~ Students from this class visited SCARC as well as additional archives across the state to co-curate displays featuring their research on Oregon's Sundown Towns.

Please Note:

• Exhibit curation collaboration using a SCARC exhibit space requires substantial notice as we often have exhibit schedules in place for the academic year.
• SCARC does not have the capacity to co-curate and host digital exhibits.

SCARC has a robust oral history program and we are happy to offer support for oral history projects through consultations and our detailed tutorial on Oral History Interviewing Methods and Project Management written for individuals interested in pursuing oral history projects of their own. We can offer various levels of oral history support based on your project and student's needs. For projects that will be donated to SCARC, we have specific paperwork and metadata requirements that you must include in your assignment.

Examples of Oral History Projects:

• WGSS 521: Feminist Leadership: additions to the OSU Queer Archives Oral History Collection ~ In honor of the 50-year anniversary of the WGSS program at Oregon State, the students conducted oral histories with members of our WGSS community. The students worked collaboratively to determine the structure and process of the oral history project, create an interview guide, and to support each other throughout the process. 
• AHE 638: Collaboration: Oregon Higher Education Oral Histories Collection ~ a collaboration with the graduate level course AHE 638 “History of Higher Education.” The purpose of the course was to survey American higher education across 200-plus years of history, with a specific emphasis on community colleges. The goal of the collaboration was for the graduate students to conduct oral history interviews with founding members of Oregon’s community colleges, a history not broadly represented in the archival narrative.

Example of Oral History Related Projects:

• 416/516: Migrant Health ~ The students listened to the oral history interviews from the Erlinda Gonzales-Berry Papers to create: interviewee bios, interview summaries, and historical context essays – all of these components are in both Spanish and English as the majority of the interviews are in Spanish.

Please Note:

• A collaborative oral history project with SCARC will more often than not include the submission of the oral histories to existing oral history collections or SCARC may decide to create a new oral history collection for the interviews.
• Accepting an oral history collection for preservation and access through SCARC requires consultation and approval based on SCARC's collection scope. We do not typically accept oral history projects after the fact and require advanced notice of a hope to deposit an oral history collection with us. 

The creation of a tour guide requires extensive pre-course planning to ensure we have the materials and capacity to support the envisioned tour guide.

Examples of Tour Guide Class Projects:

• ES 453/553: Ethnohistory Methodology ~ A multi-year collaboration to create several "Social Justice Tour of Corvallis" guidebooks. In terms of class research opportunities, this was also a collaborative effort with the Benton County Historical Society.
• ALS 199: U-Engage “Untold Stories: Histories of People of Color in Oregon” ~ A collaboration to create an OSU campus tour regarding the histories of the university’s students of color. We included locations representing people, places, or events significant within OSU’s history pertaining to the activism and accomplishments of students of color.