Getting Started with Exploring Northeastern’s HistoryMakers

Screenshot of the page of the Digital Archive in which Monte Ford describes his time at Northeastern University. (Source: The HistoryMakers Digital Archive)

This was a productive week for my time with the HistoryMakers. As you may know, I am master’s student at Northeastern University, where I’m getting a degree in history with a concentration in public history. I learned late last month that I could use my job with the HistoryMakers to accumulate hours for my public history field work requirement, which I need to graduate.

So, on Tuesday, I met via Zoom with Dr. Ángel David Nieves (the director of Northeastern’s public history program) as well as Julieanna Richardson and Zhu Sun from the HistoryMakers. We had a good discussion about how getting field work credit will work, how Dr. Nieves can serve as a sort of “advisor” who I check in weekly about my HistoryMakers work, and how I can start preparing for the semester before it begins. Schools in New England, I’ve heard, typically start later than those in some other parts of the country. In Northeastern’s case, the fall semester begins on September 8.

I have my work cut out for me, to say the least. I think, in this coming week, I’m going to start trying to contact organizations that I plan on working with during the school year. That might be pretty difficult, since as I’ve mentioned before I have never even been to the Northeastern campus and really don’t have a huge idea of who I need to contact. But, I have to try. Onward!

Monte Ford

Anyway. Over the past few weeks, as we draw nearer and nearer to the start of the school year, I have given myself the task of becoming as familiar as possible with those HistoryMakers featured in the Digital Archive who are affiliated with Northeastern University. This is for two reasons: First, if I’m representing the HistoryMakers Digital Archive on Northeastern’s campus, it only makes sense for me to be an “expert” on where the history of Northeastern University and the Digital Archive converge. Second, my idea for the Digital Archive Contest in February (the plans for which are still very tentative at this stage) involves trivia about Northeastern alums and former faculty in the Digital Archive. So, really, it is within my best interest as a Student Brand Ambassador to learn as much as I can.

The first HistoryMaker whose interview I’ve delved deep into is that of Monte Ford, who attended Northeastern for his undergraduate degree and graduated in the 1980s. He earned his degree in marketing. At the time of the interview (October 29, 2004), Ford was the senior vice president and chief information officer at American Airlines. Larry Crowe interviewed Ford at Ford’s office at the American Airlines headquarters near the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas.

Like with all of the HistoryMakers, Ford began his interview with describing what he knows about his family background, where he grew up, and his pre-college education. In the clip, “Monte Ford explains his decision to attend Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts,” Ford provides a brief description of his time in college. He remarks that Northeastern’s co-op program—in which students gain work experience during the school year as part of their degree—played an important role in his decision:

“I liked Northeastern just from talking to, to Brent about it because you could work and you could go to school; it was a co-op school, so you work a few months and then you go to school a few months, you work a few months, you go to school a few months. And I liked that 'cause I could earn money; I had never had any money, I wanted to have money in my pocket for a change, and I wanted to still be able to advance myself in my career and my life, so this was a great compromise and this Tem--this and Temple [University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] were two of the best co-op schools you could go to, and Temple had a technical focus and I didn't wanna be an engineer. So I went to school in Boston [Massachusetts], and there were sixty colleges in the City of Boston, I think, at the time, and so I wanted to go to school there with all those people and all those other kids, and I did that; I went to Northeastern and the co-op program; I did well in the co-op program, ended up working at technical companies. I worked at Digital Equipment Corporation [Maynard, Massachusetts], I worked at Prime Computer [Natick, Massachusetts], I worked at IBM for a long time, and then I was a buyer at Gillette, working--buying technical gear and equipment at the Gillette Corporation in South Boston.”

But, of course, it was not all sunshine and rainbows for Ford at Northeastern University. (Nothing at any school is!) He remarks, in that same interview clip, that he also experienced some degree of racial prejudice at his co-op in South Boston:

Working in South Boston at Gillette was also interesting; had my tires slashed there, and writing on my car, and racial slurs and epithets. But that, too, was an interesting experience, but Boston was a great place to go to school. I met my wife [Ingrid Ford] there--on a bet.”

Reflection

Ford doesn’t spend a huge amount of time talking about his experiences at Northeastern, but I think his interview does provide some important context for what the school was like, especially in the 1980s. No doubt his interview’s content will prove to be more insightful and grounded in context as I comb through the interviews with other HistoryMakers affiliated with Northeastern and gain a more complete view of what the Digital Archive has to say about the school.

Quote of the Week

As part of this blog, I’m going to try and start sharing a quote I heard in the Digital Archive the previous week that I thought particularly resonated with me. This week’s quote is from William “Mo” Cowan, a former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and a graduate of Northeastern’s law school.

In this quote, Cowan talks about how the personal values his mother instilled in him were vital to how his career proceeded:

“You know, I don't get to the U.S. Senate certainly without Deval [HistoryMaker Deval L. Patrick] appointing me but I don't get to the U.S. Senate if I'm not my mother's son. … And if I don't live the values she taught us from an early age and continually reminds us about.”
— Mo Cowan, from the clip, “The Honorable William "Mo" Cowan talks about his parents' family values”