southern journeys:
slc visits the tennessee valley
Students meet with "Farmer Irwin," from Saturday Review, 1951. Photograph by Sue Greenburg '53.
Emma Llewellyn, with her husband, Carl, organized the first of four trips taken to the TVA. She explained to the Curriculum Committee in January, 1941 that the reason for the trip was to teach students more about agriculture and the economy. She stated, “Students…have very little knowledge of the place of agriculture in our economy.” In order for students to fully grasp this knowledge, students participated in four trips to the TVA over a span of 15 years.
Only five students participated in the 1941 trip by car, while thirty students loaded onto the bus for the last trip in 1955. Each trip was slightly different resulting in different experiences for the students and faculty. However, the common threads through all the trips were the lessons learned in race relations, tolerance, segregation, agriculture and the rural South. The professors who participated in the excursions were Edward Solomon, Emma Llewellyn, Charles Trinkaus, Irving Goldman, Bert James Loewenberg, Edith Yalden-Thomson, and Albert Lauterbach.
This exhibit examines the impact these trips had on the students and faculty that participated and the importance of the field trips in relation to the College curriculum.