John Thelin

Kentucky’s college "Town and Gown" heritage has been too long a neglected area of historic study, says John Thelin, University Research Professor and member of the Educational Policy Studies faculty in the College of Education. Through a grant from the Kentucky Humanities Council, awarded last December, Thelin hopes to promote greater attention and appreciation of the role campus and community relationships have played in the development of Kentucky’s communities and in building an intellectual and cultural identity for the state. It's an identity, Thelin adds, that deserves more notice.

Usually, the images evoked by the term “college town” are associated with New England's villages flanked by stoic buildings of red brick and ivy-covered granite. Yet there also is a fascinating history and legacy associated with Kentucky’s college campuses and towns.

“Kentucky is home to a large number of institutions. Their contribution and impact are substantial, but their legends and lore as part of the civic life and local history remain under-studied and under-appreciated,” writes Thelin. The project follows from his assignment as a guest columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in which he wrote a year-long series of articles that discussed the campus and community relations of UK and Lexington in terms of national trends.

To help correct this oversight in Kentucky historical scholarship, Thelin intends to use the Humanities Council grant to sponsor a series of lectures entitled, “The Kentucky Campus: Colleges, Culture, and Community in the Commonwealth.” Research Associate and Editor for the project is A. Sharon Thelin-Blackburn. Their site visits and archival research will be conducted in several locations across Kentucky, namely in several of the state’s college towns. The result will be a lecture series and travelling exhibit of historic photographs and documents for presentation throughout the Commonwealth.

The presence of a college campus in a town has a demonstrable impact on the culture of the community, Thelin stated. The most obvious contribution is the economic boost, achieved principally by the creation of jobs as well as the influx of students and faculty into an area. But, historically, a college has been a community asset used to promote area commercial, real estate, and tourist development. And it includes such public events as intercollegiate sports, fine arts and dramatic performances and other ceremonies.

It includes a strong visual legacy of monuments and mementos. “Mass produced picture postcards were important to developing a tourist industry in the United States – and, interesting, publishing companies relied strongly on depictions of college campuses…college towns responded in kind,” Thelin points out in his grant proposal.

The interaction of colleges with their hometowns often creates a distinctive living environment. As an example, Thelin writes, “the case of Berea College and its host town stands in national prominence as a pioneer in racial coeducation and coexistence – the model of an island community.”

There are myriad other examples where town and gown relationships impart a rich historic tradition, one in which Kentucky should be justly proud. The series of talks presented by Professor Thelin will be accompanied by traveling displays citing significant events in Kentucky’s town and gown heritage and memorabilia specific to the contributions of colleges. It will be varied in scope, ranging from Centre College and its host city of Danville, Western Kentucky University, Murray State University, Transylvania, Asbury, Lindsay Wilson, the University of Kentucky, and Kentucky State University, as well as the community colleges and KCTCS, to name but a few.

Thelin said that project's research team would spend the better part of 2004 gathering documents and reviewing records on site at various Kentucky college towns in order to prepare the displays for the public speaking series. The presentations will be held in the spring of 2005. For additional information please e-mail Professor Thelin at jthelin@uky.edu.