As I began thinking about the Hope College campus during the 1930s and 1940s, I considered the current atmosphere and dynamic between Hope College students and professors. Many students, myself included, choose Hope because of the ability to form close relationships with professors. I know of students who babysit for their professor’s children, go out for coffee with professors, work with professors as teaching assistants, etc. These connections with professors impact the student experience at Hope today and I was curious whether this trend dates back to the 1930s and 1940s. 

I started by researching women faculty at Hope College and using the Milestone to gather names of female faculty. Then, I utilized the Joint Archives of Holland to access as many of the women faculty files as possible, which often contained correspondence, diaries, documents relating to their profession, articles about them, and many other helpful resources. 

The research on women faculty depends on what is available in the archives. Many of the women who had comprehensive files worked at Hope for several decades and were graduates of Hope College. A lot of my research includes prominent names featured on current buildings, scholarships, or other memorial tributes. Thus, this research generally comes from women who dedicated their lives to Hope College for several decades and does not include women that taught at Hope for only a few years or were unsatisfied with their time at Hope. Furthermore, oral interviews or comments on these women come from tributes, acknowledgments, and eulogies that commemorate the lives of these women. Memories change with time and reflections are typically positive because they were created at the end of these women’s lives. 

Based on the archival records and available resources, it seems that these prominent women faculty worked to create an impact on the students and Hope community through their work as instructors, professors, deans of women, assistants, librarians, and advisors for student groups.