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“Mateo Burtch ’82 has mapped out Reed’s dominance of a corner in Eastmoreland since 1950.” (John Sheehy ’82)

Enjoy viewing this history of the Reed College campus 1950-present, as told through maps. The maps from 1950 to 1996 were collected and combined by Mateo from the college catalogues sent out to prospective students during that period.

(It has come to our attention that there exists an aerial history of campus as well!)

Continue reading The evolution will be mapped

As noted on our sister blog, Sallyportal (‘Think Different”), the death of Steve Jobs (an “almost” alumnus) has occasioned many tributes to his “archetypal Reedie” persona.  He was unconventional, driven, and a bit subversive.  Reed coursework influenced him deeply, whether or not he was officially enrolled, especially his study of calligraphy at the hand of Robert Palladino. An article on Smithsonian.com has gone so far as to suggest that mastering the lettered hand led Jobs to think like an artist.

Steve Jobs’ sense of design and artistry set him apart from other engineers, to be sure, but I like to think that his intuition and personal taste are what made the first Macintosh, and consequent inventions, so distinctive.  He is quoted as observing that “Taste is trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”  This concept of applying human qualities to technological devices may be at the heart of the appeal.  While the Smithsonian article talks about typography triggering emotion, an essay by Adam Penenberg ’85 takes this idea further by arguing that the design of Apple products moves people to “ascribe human values” to them.

Continue reading Feel Different.

by John Sheehy ’82

This fall, Oregon State University Press will publish a book drawn from the Reed Oral History Project entitled Comrades of the Quest: An Oral History of Reed College. The following excerpt from the book features the voices of students and academics who found their way to Reed in the 1920s and 1930s. It offers a sense of the socio-economic and cultural diversity of students at the time–many of them first-generation college students from small towns and farms–and also highlights some of the qualities of Reed College that attracted them.

You may order the full article in the summer issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly online.

Excerpt:

REED COLLEGE’S character–and its aspiration to be among the most intellectually demanding schools in the country–was already well established by its launch in 1911. William Trufant Foster, Reed’s first president, sought to make critical thinking the holy grail of the educational experience. He believed that if Reed was to be relevant in an educational landscape dominated by specialized research universities, it would be essential to impart to students the most rigorous possible set of intellectual skills and attitudes for informing every area of inquiry. In doing so, he worked to establish a new kind of college, one that would give renewed vitality to the liberal arts while preparing its graduates for the ever-widening dimensions of the modern world. 

To insure the highest standards of intellectual rigor, Foster imposed a number of curricular hurdles, including a senior thesis and orals exam. To instill self-discipline and discourage students from working for grades instead of for learning, after 1915, professors gave no grades except on request after graduation. To stress democracy and inclusiveness, Foster banned fraternities and sororities as well as the sideshow amusements of intercollegiate sports. To ensure small, intimate classes, he adopted a ten-to-one student-to-faculty ratio and directed professors to focus on teaching, not research. Finally, to promote intellectual freedom and better capture students’ enthusiasm, Foster established a free electives curriculum.

Continue reading Voices of Reed in Oregon Historical Quarterly