As part of Miami University’s “Humanities Works 3.0” Program, which links humanities classes with real-world businesses, organizations, and communities, Dr. Offenburger’s “Researching Midwestern History” class has formed partnerships with several organizations.
Miami University undergraduates will work with Storm Lake schools to interview individual high school students, and their families, and to produce a series of profiles known as “Small Town, Big World.” These will be published on social media and other platforms, with the goal of introducing the town’s fascinating community to other cities in the region, the state, and beyond.
Miami students are partnering with a class at Buena Vista University — Dr. Andrea Frantz’s “Digital Journalism” — to produce the “Small Town, Big World” series (above). Students at BVU will also create audio stories in the format of StoryCorps to accompany the SLCSD profiles.
The Buena Vista County Historical Society will receive and house the materials produced from this research for the benefit of the greater community. This will include audio/video and transcripts from oral history interviews and testimonios. The thousands of notes taken from Storm Lake newspapers will be printed and deposited with the Historical Society, as well, though a searchable database of these notes will also be accessible online and via the Storm Lake Public Library.
Anchor Pictures, a film company based in Los Angeles, is currently producing a documentary about Storm Lake, “The Americans.” Research completed by this class will inform the historical narrative of the film.
