The Department of History has refashioned its Honors Program over the last five years by placing more emphasis on the art of research and on the necessity of writing grants to sustain that research. Both are essential parts of history-writing, long before any article or book gets written. To learn such techniques, a cohort of five junior-year honors students who are preparing senior theses for presentation to the faculty in April 2026 spent a week in March 2025 at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. as a mandatory part of their degree program. There, they learned the importance of building good relationships with the archivists at the National Archives. They learned the importance of keeping good records for later use, when the time comes to write. And they learned that documents that appeared promising for their research questions at first glance didn’t always provide the answers they hoped to find. This is the second year of the department’s archival trip, which has now become integrated into the curriculum for all thesis writers. While in D.C., our students also met with alumni of the History department who work as attorneys, researchers, and government administrators. As chair of the department, I accompanied our students for three days, to learn more about their particular projects and to survey the D.C. environment for future trips. I was pleased to learn that all of our students said they had benefitted from the experience, and I thank our alumni and friends whose gifts to the History department have made our now-annual trip a successful one for professors and students alike. - Ruben Flores, Chair

From the Doran Funeral Home:

Dr. Mary Ellen Corey, née Paddock, (1946-2025) died unexpectedly after a short illness on July 7, 2025, surrounded by her family. She had already embarked on her robust summer reading list — as she had done every summer since she was a child perched in the branches of a plum tree behind her parents’ home — when her health turned suddenly.

Mary was born to the late George and Domenica Paddock (Scaramuzzino) in Seneca Falls. She was inspired her whole life by its association with the suffragist and women’s rights movements. She graduated from Mynderse in 1964, where the faculty had tried to form, like many young women of her generation, a bookish and gifted student into a secretary; they succeeded briefly. After a varied business career ranging from legal secretary to bookstore manager, and the birth of two children, Mary embarked on a B.S. in history and English at SUNY Brockport, then a master’s in education and later a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Rochester.