10/01/2021
https://www.luther.edu/archives/assets/Koren100No.1_Final.pdf
Happy anniversaries!
BY Hayley Jackson
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The year 2021 marks several major milestones at Luther. The Koren building celebrates its 100th birthday, Nordic Choir turns 75, and the Nottingham study-away program welcomes its 50th group of students. We asked college archivist Hayley Jackson to share some background—and some current student/faculty research—on these Luther institutions.
Koren
Koren building at Luther College
On October 14, 1921, the Luther College community gathered to officially dedicate the new Koren Library. At the ceremony, two men were honored: college founder Rev. U.V. Koren, for whom the library was named, and President C.K. Preus, who led the 12-year effort to build it. From the bricks made by students that formed its walls to the furniture purchased using funds raised by alumni, Koren embodied the collaborative spirit of its campus community.
A century later, both Koren and that collaborative spirit remain. In honor of the building’s centenary, museum studies director Destiny Crider and college archivist Hayley Jackson will launch the first issue of Koren 100, a series of newsletters documenting the history of Koren from its library beginnings to its current role as home to the social sciences. These newsletters, like Koren, are based on an ongoing collaboration between faculty, staff, and students to gather the stories of this building through historical records and the memories of the campus community.
One of the original goals of Koren 100 was to provide museum studies students hands-on experience in historical research. To that end, research began in fall 2019, when students in the Introduction to Museum Studies class used records from the Archives to create exhibits on different aspects of Koren’s history. For students who only knew Koren as the social sciences building, it was eye-opening to learn that the building once housed the Hendrickson Organ and that the original archaeology lab stored its artifacts in the old library stacks where college sweethearts once flirted.
Koren building at Luther College
The story of Koren was not only in the paper records, but in the memories of Luther College faculty, staff, students, alumni, and families. To gather those stories, Crider and Jackson worked with professor Jacqueline Wilkie to create a project for her 2020 Public History course, in which students interviewed Luther College community members about their memories of Koren for preservation in the College Archives.
The community response was incredible. With over 60 people volunteering to participate, under the direction of Crider, anthropology lab work-study students picked up where the public history students left off, continuing to interview throughout fall semester. For months, they listened to reminiscences of college pranks, campus personalities, and the local effects of national events ranging from Vietnam to 9/11. “[Koren] really was the center of everything,” Lori (Van Gerpen) Stanley ’80 remembers, “not just where we took our courses or had the artifacts, but of all the relationships...where the culture resided.”
“It’s rewarding to see our students connect directly with alumni via Zoom during a tough pandemic year,” Crider says. “Koren is the center of our interview focus, but the value is in the relationships built between current students and alumni that emerged through every conversation. . . These exchanges show how Koren can continue to provide a central place for meaningful relationships across different groups within the Luther community.”
Koren building at Luther College
The first newsletter will be released during Homecoming 2021, with subsequent editions published throughout the year. The newsletters and information for participating in an interview can be found here.
