By Evan Papageorge, President of the Stevens Institute of Technology Historical Society
Many often see history as an uninteresting subject in school, memorizing dates and writing about people who have been dead for hundreds of years. However, history is so much more than that. There is a history, no matter what interests you, who you are, or what you do.
At Stevens, there are countless clubs, departments, and organizations: Office of Student Culture and Belonging, the library, The Stute, and many more. Each group on campus has a history. For The Stute, there are 120 years’ worth of published papers, all with a story of the world at that time and the students who worked on putting together the articles.
Over the past few weeks, I have been working to start a student organization on campus to celebrate, teach, and advertise history across campus. Called the Stevens Institute of Technology Historical Society, or SITHS for short, our purpose is to advocate for history on campus. In the short time of our existence, we have celebrated the founding of Stevens with a Stevens’s Founder’s Day celebration in partnership with the Archives and Special Collections and a Black History Month event featuring Prof. Swindall of HASS, who specialized in civil rights and the SGA’s DEIBA committee.
We want to work with clubs around campus to advocate history, whether it be inviting some of the first female graduates of Stevens to celebrate Women’s History Month or a visit to where George Washington was sworn in as president on the 235th anniversary of it (the end of this upcoming April).
While we do not expect everyone to fall in love with history and add a history minor (although that would be a dream), we hope to show that history is not a boring high school lecture but a representation of culture, identity, and who we are.
If anyone is interested or has any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me (epapageo@stevens.edu).
Sincerely,
Your Historical Society
