By Claire Regan
Wagner College’s rich history has come to life in an outdoor exhibit recently installed on campus.
Located on an exterior wall of the Horrmann Library under a portico facing the Union building, the timeline highlights a dozen “turning points” in the college’s 141-year history. Each turning point is illustrated with historic photos and memorabilia culled from the college archives.
On their way to class, the library or the dining hall, students can take a few steps off the beaten path to learn about Wagner’s origin as a Lutheran seminary in Rochester, N.Y., and a dozen milestones that followed.
They can take a close look, for example, at the June 1894 report card for the Rev. Dr. Frederic Sutter, a seminary student who later became the guiding force in moving Wagner to Staten Island in 1918 and served as president of the board of trustees for the college’s first 41 years on Grymes Hill.
Faculty comments on the document are handwritten in German, but it’s clear Sutter would have made today’s dean’s list with all fours and fives out of a top score of five for every subject he studied.
“I was surprised to learn that at one point, German was the main language of instruction at the college,” said Frozan Tahiry ’24, one of eight students who conducted research for the project as part of an Intermediate Learning Community (ILC) honors seminar team-taught by Drs. Lori Weintrob and Felicia Ruff.
Weintrob is a professor in the History Department and founding director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center. Ruff is chair of the Division of Performing and Visual Arts.
Titled “Each One, Reach One,” the fall 2022 ILC seminar led students to creatively explore the college’s history as a mirror of cultural and political shifts in New York City. They were assisted by Lisa Holland, Horrmann Library director and archivist, and Lee Manchester, former media relations director who has written extensively about the college’s history.
The class mapped Wagner’s past with presentations, exhibits and a booklet that provides additional milestones leading up to the college’s 140th anniversary in 2023. The “Each One, Reach One” booklet is available online.
“When we first went to the archives, everything seemed incredibly interesting,” recalled Tahiry, a native of Afghanistan who is pursuing a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Michigan. “Learning about the day-to-day lives of students before us was captivating.”
Joining Tahiry for the seminar were Rocio Alvarez ‘24, Brianna Bodell ‘23, Alanis DeJesus ‘25, Chloe Gonnella ‘23, Katrice Jackson ‘23, Valencio Lazarcyk ’23, and Riku Toyohara ‘24.
For Professors Weintrob and Ruff, the outdoor timeline is a permanent tribute to the seminar’s success.
“It was wonderful to see this small cohort of students representing different faiths, interests and backgrounds explore the archives to see what resonated with them,” Ruff said.
“The project showed the class how Wagner’s past can be a guide to the future,” Weintrob added. “Seeing the passion of students from earlier generations helped our students feel more confident about their own choices of vocation.”
Other turning points include the enrollment of Wagner’s first women students in 1933, the occupation of Cunard Hall in 1970 by African American students calling on allies to support their concerns, and the 1997 launch of the Wagner Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts that continues today to promote learning by doing.
Wagner’s evolving culture is represented with archival photos of the Cunard anchor, Homecoming floats and freshmen women wearing “dinks,” or beanies.
The booklet offers information about the impact of two World Wars and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the campus community. It also showcases the power of a liberal arts education with an excerpt from the 1930 inaugural address by Clarence Stoughton, Wagner’s 10th president:
"We are blessed, in this metropolis, with some of the great universities of the world,” Stoughton said. “But while we do not need more universities, we do need the small liberal arts colleges, where personality remains sacred, where the student is always an individual, where his individuality is developed and emphasized."
Weintrob and Ruff are grateful to the Council of Independent Colleges and Lilly Endowment Inc. for supporting their efforts to “reframe the institutional saga” and merge Wagner’s past with its future.
