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This is an incomplete historical collection of audiovisual, digital, and paper-based materials documenting the history of distance learning at Central Michigan University (CMU).

This is an incomplete historical collection of audiovisual, digital, and paper-based materials documenting the history of distance learning at Central Michigan University (CMU). Papers include CMU publications such as fliers, brochures, reports, and class schedules, correspondence and memos, Memorandums of understanding (MOUs) and contracts for non-Michigan centers and military bases, budgets and financial reports, newsletters, faculty handbooks, and meeting minutes. Audiovisuals include photographs, photograph albums, CDs of images, VHS videotapes, and scrapbooks. Images document faculty, staff, librarians, and students and their families, at various centers working, learning, teaching, being trained, graduating, receiving awards, and attending social events such as Lem Tucker Award ceremonies, commencements, retirement parties, baby showers, and Halloween and Christmas gatherings, Military nurses are uniquely identifiable and documented in the CMU.IPCD Photograph Album, 1982-1988. Photographs also document buildings renovated for CMU purposes, the types of rooms created, how these rooms were equipped, and open houses. Most of the VHS videotapes are CMU-generated promotional and recruitment videos. There are three VHS videotapes of unedited and edited versions of testimonials of CMU students and faculty at the Atlanta, Georgia center, including military members, which were created by Barnes, Chase, and Davis. One video aimed at Detroit Metro recruitment and promotion includes President Mike Rao documents CMU Homecoming for online students and includes two Detroit Spots (short sections or advertisements) which feature John Arnold talking about Terry Faster and Ricardo Solomon, both Detroit CMU alums. Faster and Solomon each make very brief statements about CMU at the end of each spot. All boxes are letter-size and .5 cubic foot boxes unless otherwise specified. The collection is organized alphabetically and by format. The collection is in good physical condition

The strength of this collection is in the documentation of multiple CMU national centers and organizations CMU collaborated with including: Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland; Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.; Army National Guard, Washington, D.C.; ASIS (American Society for Industrial Security Foundation) in Dallas/Fort Worth Cohort, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Central Texas College, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton Joint Education Center; Fort Belvoir, Virginia; Fort Detrick, Maryland; Fort Meade, Maryland; Fort Myers, Virginia; Hawaii; Merrifield, Virginia; the Pentagon; Portugal; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia National Guard (VaNG); Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; and Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Columbus, Ohio. Having functioning air conditioners and photocopiers and getting the garbage picked up regularly in southern locations was sometimes a challenge for CMU, as documented in the Center folders.

For CMU to teach out-of-state and on military bases or locations, CMU signed and gathered approved Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) and agree to follow certain base and building rules approved by the boards of education in various states. CMU faculty, students, librarians, and staff worked with base ESOs or Education Service Officers, as documented in multiple communications. Off Campus Services librarians and staff were crucial to the success of distance faculty, students, and programs documented in the collection.

Michigan centers documented in the collection include Auburn Hills, metro Detroit, Flint, Mott College, Lansing, Livonia, Mount Pleasant, Southfield, and Troy.

Researchers may be interested in related collections documenting the evolution of CMU distance learning at the Clarke Historical Library and Off-Campus Library Services, part of CMU Libraries’ history. Researchers should search under the various names the unit had over time.

Processing Note: Approximately 6 cubic feet of duplicate, unidentified, and poor-quality audiovisuals and papers, including miscellaneous notes and financials, duplicates, reading materials, and materials with social security numbers, were withdrawn during processing. Scattered issues of two newsletters, CMU Communicator and CEL’s On Target, were added to those with the same title already separately cataloged in the Clarke Historical Library.

The collection documents the Flint Co-op Teachers Program with Wilcox’s subject files and correspondence with students studying to become teachers while he was Assistant Director of the Department of Special Studies.

The collection documents the Flint Co-op Teachers Program, 1957-1964, undated. Included here are Wilcox’s subject files and correspondence with students studying to become teachers while he was Assistant Director of the Department of Special Studies.

Collection of research materials on Michigan topics, mostly photocopies, notes, drafts of articles, and correspondence.

The collection consists mostly of photocopies of newspaper articles, magazine articles, information from websites, the Congressional Record, and chapters from reference and other books, on topics of interest to Barnett. Also included are his correspondence and email to various institutions and people asking for information and material, his notes, and typed articles he wrote on various topics. Topics documented in depth include: Ash, Center Line, John Farmer, Upper Peninsula railroads, Magnet Truck, Michigan railroads, the Mackinac Bridge, music and singers who sang songs about Michigan and or cars, the longstanding oleo versus margarine debates and laws, Michigan Central Railroad Co. Head Lights (a publication), Michigan jazz, traffic lights, with biographical materials on W.L. Potts, and Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad Co. maps (oversized transparencies). The materials (photocopies)on Headlights or Headlight Flashes includes: an advertising publication of the Company, which describes the comfort of traveling via the Company's trains and provides city histories with biographies of important families and individuals, as well as photographs of those people, expensive homes, businesses, public buildings, and pastoral scenes. Towns described include: Michigan City (Ind.), 1894; and the Mich. cities of: Albion, 1895; Pontiac, 1897; Benton Harbor and Flint, 1896; and Saint Joseph, 1898. Also included are microfilmed newspaper articles (photocopies), in which the Headlights of various cities were advertised, 1895-1896 and 1941, and 1997-2000 typed transcripts of other similar newspaper advertisements, 1895-1898. Additional subjects include: Agricultural Demonstration Trains of Michigan State University, 1906-1937; buying Michigan, 1795-1796; counties, name changes/considered creation of new counties; the history of county names; dandelions [as an emergency source of post-World War II rubber]; highway lighthouses [precursors to traffic lights]; lynchings; prisoners building Michigan roads during the 1920s; reflectors (roadside); roadside parks [Michigan had the first]; stagecoaches; broadcasting; homestead lands; Hollywood; the Port Huron and Milwaukee Railroad; Sabbath blue laws; Ludington (Mich.); swamp lands; centroids; Iron Range and Huron Bay Rialroad; ferries; population centers; Oldsmar, Florida; David Ward, Deward (Mich.); the Detroit and Charlevoix Railroad Company; Cigar Industry in Detroit, including strikes, unions, and women employees; Cigar Store Indians; crops of Flax and Gingseng and flax industries in Michigan prisons; Michigan Indians mentioned in county histories; Michigan Road Construction Train; Michigan World War I fruit and olive pit gathering campaign to create gas masks; Ragweed and hay fever and the Northern Hay Fever Resort Association, Topinabee, and the Western Hay Fever Association of the U.S., headquartered in Petoskey; General Philip H. Sheridan 's warhorse Rienzi; St. Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company and its subsidiary units, the Canal Mineral Land Company and the Michigan Pine Land Association; and Windmills in Detroit. Also included is a draft of a book by Graydon M. Meints on lumber baron David Ward that Barnett reviewed. The major topics found in 2021 Addition, Boxes 63-75, include: American Tract Society, Bloomers, Colporteur, Graphite Mining in Michigan, Medical Quacks, Michigan Iron and Land Company, Samuel Geil Maps of Michigan, and Whipping (Military corporal punishment). The 2022 Addition, Boxes 76-79, includes the major topics of Vigilance Committees against German Americans during World War I and Ski Trains. Other topics include: Buffalo Bill Train Accident, Carbon Works in Detroit, Detroit’s Streetlight Towers, Grand Duke Alexis A Romanov Visits Detroit, ‘Hello Girls’ [U.S. Army Signal Corps, World War I], Lindbergh in Michigan, Michigan World War II Veterans Bonus, Wetzel (Antrim County, MI, village), Bomb Mackinaw (which were 1925 practice maneuver plans to prevent enemies from crossing into the straits by dropping bombs from airplanes), and Crawfish. The collection is ongoing.

Processing Note: Abbreviations used by Barnett on folder labels were used and copied by Clarke processors exactly. Acidic materials were copied in 2014.