Dear Visitors:

Thanks  for visiting our virtual exhibit which traces, in broad strokes, the past one hundred years of the University of Mary Washington's history. This site was conceived of and  designed by the students of Historic Preservation's Museum Lab,  in close partnership with the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies.  The students spent long, tedious hours scanning close to 300 historic images dealing with Mary Washington's history over the last century.  And this is merely the beginning of a much larger project as the University is preparing for the imminent centennial celebration.

Each student in the class explored two distinct decades, one from the early part of the 20th century, and one from the latter part. This website was designed in order to make the images that were collected over the last three months more easily accessible to all interested parties. We are particularly excited about the prospect of using this virtual space to reach out to all of those people who contributed to the making of the rich history of this educational institution.  We believe that the history portrayed here is just a rough outline of a much larger, nuanced, and compelling story. The only meaningful history of a century's worth of experiences can be told by a community, not a class. To this end, we are integrating a number of conversational spaces within the website in an attempt to fill in the missing details and appropriately widen the scope of this project.

In order to achieve such an open-ended, conversational project that reaches out to the community that made it possible, we have included some interactive authoring tools that allow you to share your own thoughts, reflections, and experiences. What are they and how do they work? Click here for more details ...