News & Updates

Sargent College in the BU Archives

By Johanna Kaiser September 10th, 2026 in Special Collections & Archives

by Kate Silfen, Health Sciences Librarian

As a health sciences librarian, I spend most of my time helping researchers find current peer-reviewed articles. This past summer, I had the privilege of exploring an entirely different type of source. I spent some time exploring special collections at The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at the Boston University Libraries. The Gotlieb Archival Research Center houses the University's rare books and archival material. Here, you will find the personal papers of cultural and historical icons, including the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Howard Thurman, and Elie Wiesel, and the University Archives. If you are interested in BU's early history, you will find many documents that tell the University's unique story. 

You will also find extensive archives that document the history of Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. In these documents, you will learn about the school's humble beginnings as "Dr. Sargent's Normal  School of Physical Education." Initially housed at an annex on Harvard's campus, the college eventually moved into a carriage house on Church & Palmer Streets in Cambridge, where it remained until 1904. You can read about Sargent's journey from a school for physical education teachers to a comprehensive school for allied health and the rehabilitation sciences. There are pamphlets from the "Sargent Camp" where campers could engage in physical exercises, form lasting friendships, and engage in good-natured mischief. A pamphlet titled "The First 100 Years of Leadership and the Challenges Ahead" provides an excellent overview of Sargent's storied past. I especially enjoyed reading "Sargent Clippings," which gives humorous accounts of the academic year. In a "Sargent Clipping" from 1908, a student jokingly noted that Dr. Sargent taught Freshman Physiology for the first time in many years, and concluded that he must not have liked it, since he did not teach it again! 

The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center also has an extensive collection of materials that document the extraordinary career of George K. Mackechnie, who served as Dean of Sargent College from 1945 to 1972. Mackechnie began his journey at Boston University when he enrolled as an undergraduate in the College of Business Administration in 1925. Mackechnie soon realized that this was not the right fit for him, and he changed his major to education. He later earned his master's from the School of Education (now named Wheelock College of Education & Human Development) and joined the faculty, where he taught history and social sciences. While teaching, Mackechnie served as an assistant to Sargent College's Dean Wilder, helping find a suitable location for Sargent's camp in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Mackechnie was later promoted to director of undergraduate studies. In August of 1945, BU President Daniel March promoted Mackechnie to Dean of Sargent College. By the time Dean Mackechnie retired in 1972, Sargent College had evolved from a physical education school for women to a co-educational school for the allied health professions, including both undergraduate and graduate programs in physical therapy and occupational therapy. 

Dean Mackechnie's impact on Boston University went beyond his impressive work at Sargent College. While he was a professor at Wheelock, Mackechnie spearheaded a study to assess the feasibility of starting a nursing program at Boston University. As a result of the study, a division of nursing education was added to the School of Education, laying the groundwork for the opening of the School of Nursing in 1946. While serving as Dean of Sargent College, Dr. Mackechnie also served as interim dean of the School of Fine and Applied Arts for two years and received praise for his role in promoting the arts at Boston University. 

As I was looking through Mackechnie's papers, I was especially fascinated to learn about his friendship with Dr. Howard Thurman, former Dean of Marsh Chapel, whose papers are also held in the Gotlieb Center. By attending Thurman's services at Marsh Chapel, Mackechnie found a worship service where no one was excluded, something he had been seeking for a long time. He and Thurman planned programs together, and Sargent students often enlivened services at Marsh Chapel with interpretive ritual dances of "Deep River," "Go Down Moses," and other worship music. When Howard Thurman died in the spring of 1981, a heartbroken Mackechnie decided to devote himself to preserving the ideals of his dear friend. When the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground was established in 1986, Dean Mackechnie became its first director. Mackechnie went on to write a book titled Howard Thurman: His Enduring Dream, which you can find at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and Mugar Library. You can learn more about the history of Sargent College by reading Dean Mackechnie's Optimal Health: The Quest. 

I hope you will take some time to explore both the Sargent College and Mackechnie collections at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center to learn more about Sargent College's place in BU's history. You are warmly invited to make an appointment to see these special collections in the Reading Room at Gotlieb Center.   

Works Cited 

Mackechnie, George K. Optimal Health: The Quest. Boston, Boston University, 1970. 

Sargent Clippings. 1908. Sargent College Collection. BU-01481. Box 17. Folder 17. Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. 

Smith, Trudie. 70 Stories About Boston University. Date Unkown. Sargent College Collection. BU-01481. Box 17. Folder 17. Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center. 

Students Rescue Lost Stories with Archival Research

By Johanna Kaiser August 28th, 2026 in Special Collections & Archives

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a 2,000-to-3,000-word piece of narrative non-fiction about a key event in a historic figure’s life or a significant event or moment in history. The trick? This must be based on primary sources from a library’s archive.  You’ll use personal letters, handwritten diaries, government documents, contemporaneous media reports, and anything else you can find in an archival repository.

Fourteen BU students accepted this challenge, posed by journalism lecturer Erick Trickey, by enrolling in College of Communication class JO 543: Rescuing Lost Stories: Writing Nonfiction Narratives from the Archives. Trickey, who has written about U.S. history for Smithsonian Magazine and The Washington Post and is enterprise editor of the New Bedford Light, has been teaching this class since it debuted in the summer of 2020. Six years later, students have still barely scratched the surface of the stories that can be found in the rich collections of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at BU Libraries.

During the Spring 2026 semester, students explored myriad collections at the Gotlieb Center, ranging in subject, time, and geographical location. Elaina Fuzi (COM’26) delved into the collection of prominent political journalist Oriana Fallaci, who was one of the few women reporting from the front lines of the Vietnam War. After visiting the Gotlieb Center, Fuzi was able to use interviews done by Fallaci with soldiers on the front lines to add emotional, firsthand accounts of the horrors of war into her narrative:

“There’s nothing glorious, nothing exciting; it’s just a filthy tragedy you can only cry over,” American Captain Scher (no first name is mentioned) said about war. “You cry for the man you bawled out and who is blown to pieces in front of you. You cry for the man who killed your friends.” (Fuzi)

Other archival finds by Trickey’s students include FBI documents signed by David Greenglass, who testified against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in their 1951 trial for espionage.

Greenglass, Ethel’s brother, had been arrested for espionage himself and was instrumental to the Rosenberg’s prosecution. The signed FBI statement, as well as the FBI report that alleges to have found communication between Greenglass and his wife related to communist activity, are housed in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg collection at the Gotlieb Center. George Atencio (COM’26) was able to use these documents, as well as correspondence between Greenglass and his wife, to argue that without Greenglass, Ethel may not have been executed along with her husband.

Joan Nygbah (COM’27) dove into the recently processed archives of influential poet, writer, and activist Nikki Giovanni, who was a central figure in the Black Arts Movement. Giovanni’s papers illuminated the tensions she faced in relation to her work being taught in high schools. In 1994, roughly 80 copies of an anthology that included Giovanni’s Woman Poem were pulled from classrooms in Hempfield, Pennsylvania due to parental pushback. Correspondence between Giovanni and a local teacher show that the school board acted rashly by pulling the books without deliberation and that they “[seem] to doubt [Giovanni’s] credibility as an author.” But not all the correspondence were negative. After speaking in another classroom three years later, Giovanni received thank you letters from students, with one writing “You are cool because your poetry relates to us.” The stories in Giovanni’s personal papers exposed the duality of how her writing was perceived: where adults may have feared her perceived radical ideas, students saw themselves in her poetry.

Archives provide journalists critical connections and insight. Journalists rely on primary sources to develop a clearer and more nuanced picture of someone’s life and understand how historic events were perceived in the moment, enabling us to see multiple sides of  history from those who lived it. With their hands-on archival experience, these students developed research and reporting skills, and new perspectives that will help them excel in future endeavors.

Once finished, students can share their research on OpenBU, Boston University’s Open Access digital repository. While not a requirement, most students this year chose to publish their scholarship on the website. Read their stories:

• Oriana Fallaci’s experience reporting from the front lines in Vietnam, by Elaina Fuzi
• David Greenglass and the Rosenberg saga, by George Atencio
• From Union Square to Red Square: the 6,000 mile Walk for Peace, by Jordan Delfuigo
• From Malcolm to Malik: the pilgrimage that changed the last year of Malcolm X’s life, by Maroua Rahaoui
• David Halberstam: defying an American president to change American journalism, by Leia Green
• The banning of Nikki Giovanni’s “Woman Poem” and what it means now, by Joan Nygbah
• 50 years later: the man who refused to let Allensworth disappear, by Alexandria Z. McKenzie
• The Witching hour: what the Spotlight film left out, by Camille Bugayong
• The Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire killed 492 people. Eighty-four years later, its mysteries - and legacy - live on in Boston, by Chris (Sicheng) Che

Applications open: Nursing Archives Associates Archival Research Award

By Johanna Kaiser June 24th, 2026 in Special Collections & Archives

The Boston University Libraries Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and the Nursing Archives Associates are pleased to announce that applications are sought for the 2026-2026 Nursing Archives Associates Archival Research Award.

The award will help offset travel and related expenses to visit the Boston University Libraries to conduct research in the more than 200 collections that comprise the nursing archives at BU. Please see the History of Nursing Archives at Boston University Special Collections guide.

The award is open to all students, faculty, and independent researchers and will be awarded based on evidence of preparation and/or productivity in historical research related to nursing and health care. Successful grantee will receive $2,500. This award is payable to the individual applicant and is taxable income. The purpose of the award is to support travel, photocopy, digitization, and other expenses related to using the nursing archives in Boston University's Special Collections.

Applicants should submit a full research proposal of no more than 500-600 words, exclusive of title page and references, along with a current CV. The proposal should include the following:

• Abstract (maximum 100 words)
  • Project description indicating the scope of the historical research
  • Boston University Nursing Archives collection(s) to be used
• Narrative for existing scholarship and how the research will advance scholarship in the history of nursing and health care
  • Methodology and timeline, and
  • Intended product and plan for dissemination

Evaluation of the proposal will consider the clarity and feasibility of the project. Recipients of the research award are expected to submit a summary of their work, a head shot and brief biography for the Nursing Archives Associates Newsletter and BU Libraries blog.

The deadline for proposals is November 1, 2026. Awards will be announced in December 2026. Proposals should be sent to: nursing@bu.edu

Read about past recipient, Dr. Lydia Wytenbroek, and her research