And over the past fourteen years, the Museum of Education has become something more: Under the guidance of Curator Craig Kridel, a professor in the College of Education, it has evolved into a repository of ideas, a community unbound by walls where exploration, inquiry, and adventure are nurtured.

The Museum opened to the public in September 1977, with Dr. William W. Savage as its curator. Savage, Kridel says, did "a wonderful job of developing a collection focused on education in South Carolina." When Kridel became curator in 1986, upon Savage’s retirement, he brought to the Museum a broader vision.

Not only did he expand the collection to include important national materials, but he began to form what he calls an extended family of people at USC and elsewhere who are committed to the history of education, to scholarship, and to the exploration of new ideas. "I’m pleased to be in the field of education," Kridel says, "and I have a social conscience. I want to be involved in building community and working for social change."

With that community flourishing and the Museum’s reputation growing, Kridel has decided to step away from the day-to-day operations to focus on teaching and writing. In a new administrative structure, he will remain as "curator of acquisitions" and Dr. Katherine Reynolds of EDLP will become the Museum’s director in August. "It’s time for a change, and Katherine is the perfect person to take over," Kridel says. Though he will continue to help out, he says he looks forward to pursuing several other Museum-related projects.

The Museum itself, a component of McKissick Museum, has grown to include a collection of more than 6,000 South Carolina elementary and secondary textbooks; extinct schools, desegregation, and teacher oral history projects; the Harold Taylor Professional Collection and the papers of other national education figures; the John B. Hawley Higher Education Collection of more than 20,000 postcards; audio recordings, video recordings, photographs, artifacts and more. You may visit the Museum’s web site at www.ed.sc.edu/musofed/index.htm.

Question (Lee Bauknight): What was the Museum like when you took it over?

Answer (Craig Kridel): In the summer of 1983, actually right as I applied for a position at USC, I was visiting a friend in Charleston and I stopped off in Columbia. While walking around campus I visited McKissick and saw the Museum of Education, then housed in the McKissick building. The new Museum area in Wardlaw was up and active by the 1984-85 school year. There were exhibits primarily of artifacts – books and school room items. I found it quite interesting.

Q: Was the Museum curatorship part of your position when you came to the university?

A: No, it was a fluke that all this came about. Dr. Savage retired and they weren’t quite certain what to do with the facility. They asked me to take it over (in addition to my full responsibilities), and I jumped at the chance. I’ve stayed at USC because of the Museum. It truly gives me meaning.

Q: Did you have a concrete vision for the Museum when you became curator?

A: The Museum was such a unique entity that I knew its presence should extend outside South Carolina. I wanted to continue and expand the South Carolina focus but thought there should be a national focus, too. Also, I saw the Museum as an experimental project – we could determine our own rules. I didn’t want to be locked into a conventional definition. Since we were one of the few museums of education in the U.S., I thought we could be "goal-free," do all sorts of things, and define ourselves as we went along. I’ve been very lucky. Throughout my entire career, from my first week in graduate school, I’ve been part of innovative programs – a community festival that attracted over 20,000 people; an award-winning cultural series; a teacher education program that received national acclaim – it’s all part of the adventure of what I would consider program development.

Q: What would you call the most useful aspect of the Museum?

A: My focus has been on acquisitions, not as much on usage. It was on attempting to locate and preserve documents from the various African-American schools of the early 20th century (a major gap in our collection); continuing to build the textbook collection; seeking out photographs. But also we have provided a major service to the national education community by reminding folks to preserve contemporary materials. We deal not only with the preservation of the past but the preservation of the present.

Q: What have been the Museum’s successes over the past decade and a half.

A: The countless ones have been those occasions when we saved something – boxes of professional papers to a photograph of an extinct school – from being thrown away. It’s amazing what gets lost. Another major accomplishment has been spearheading interest in biographical research in education. We started and head up a national research association on biographical research and, from our Biographical Imaginations project, we have started one for living history in education, too. So the most important thing about the Museum is not necessarily people showing up and asking for documents. Sure, that is important; but we’ve done massive outreach – going to state and national conferences and showing our collections, starting new research groups, informing people of other collections around the country, and taking Museum displays and productions out into the elementary and secondary schools. I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying that, as I looked at the Museum, there was the notion of public space where people could come here, but also we could extend out and establish community in other places – conferences, schools, and on the web.

Q: Tell me a little about the relationships you and the Museum have developed with people like Maxine Greene and Bill Ayers. How do they fit in to this idea you spoke of, this place of community and of ideas?

A: Things have changed in higher education, we’re in a time of the "moral collapse of the university" – a very common term – and we’ve lost what it means to be a leader in the community. In the midst of all this I thought it was crucial for there to be a place where people could come and engage in intellectual adventures. This can occur literally by going through archives; it can occur through discourse; it can occur in a variety of ways. I wanted the Museum to be a place of scholarship and social conscience where people were involving themselves in the excitement of exploration and coming together to talk – building community and what I would call a family. That family includes people here at the university and people outside USC. And that includes Maxine Greene and Bill Ayers, who have both visited the Museum on a variety of occasions to give public lectures and just to meet and talk with folks.

For me, a crowning moment was – and everything I’ve worked for came to fruition – in October 1998 with Maxine Greene’s visit. We all wonder if we make a difference, and to be able to let her know that her writings have made a difference to us, that was special. She inspired our Biographical Imaginations project, which has touched the lives of hundreds of South Carolina students. And then being able to have her visit and see the three productions – with the children. And to see standing-room-only faculty and students come together to hear her talk. For me, that’s everything I envisioned and hoped for the Museum. Everything came together – adventure, community, family, exploration all surrounding biography, history, and social conscience. That was one of those moments.

Q: So there has been a sense of personal, as well as professional, satisfaction?

A: Academics always wonder what is the importance of their work and can we help in any way. And those of us in education, I think, are more committed to working for social change. I never thought I was going to write the Great American Education Book. But I wanted to be a part of something larger than myself. And while, as a researcher and teacher, I do feel that I have done something for my field, there’s nothing more gratifying than knowing that I’ve helped build a place, intellectually and physically, where wonderful, important ideas can "linger" – where they can be stored and preserved and displayed. In a day and age when so many professors don’t care and act like freelance teachers and consultants and offer little … and give so little to their university and their profession … well, I felt that the Museum was the only way I could pay back my professors that gave so much to me and pay back a university that has given me such a wonderful gig, such a wonderful job. I never wanted to be a musician and I never wanted to be a historian. I wanted to be an educator – and in the last part of the 20th century, there is no better place to be an educator than in South Carolina. I’ve never had it easy, and I’ve never taken anything for granted.

A: On acquisitions and on biography. And I have to finish some Museum catalogs that have been lying on the writing table for the past five years!

Q: What do you see in the Museum’s future?

A: I can’t be more excited about Katherine becoming the director. She’s been involved in many Museum activities in the past. Her career and her interests are different from mine, so the Museum will go in new and exciting directions. But also she will, I sense, be able to draw upon a few of the things I have attempted to build, so there will be enough continuity as well as new possibilities and new opportunities. What I do feel is that a director should direct, and I look forward to being able to stand by and watch her re-conceive and refine those various tasks that I’ve struggled with.

Q: Since you bring it up, what were some of those struggles?

A: I guess, in terms of a struggle, an experimental project is just that: on the fringes. The Museum could have been closed in 1985 and, in past years, I always wondered if that would happen. This is bittersweet. I’ve never expected anyone to take the Museum as seriously as I have; however, it’s been a struggle in the past to get university staff to provide services that they were suppose to provide. Some wounds have never healed.

Q: And your future?

A: Stemming from my involvement with Don Greiner and the Provost’s Brainstorming Committee that led to the First-Year Reading Experience, I became more interested in working with undergraduate students. So I’ve made a major shift in my career. At this point in my life, I find nothing more gratifying than teaching EDUC 300 and working with a group of individuals as they are asking themselves, "Do I wish to become a teacher?" Similarly, I’ve spent over fourteen years assisting other researchers with their scholarship; now it’s my turn. There are two or three projects I must complete.

Q: What are some of those?

A: Ironically, I’ve been working on a history of the Eight-Year Study for the past fourteen years! Similarly, I’m working on a Museum "books of the century project," and I feel that this must be completed by the turn of the century. There are two Museum leaders catalogs that must be completed. I also have involved myself for several years in the area of biography, and while I’m well-versed with the biographical vignette and essay, I’m at a point to begin a biography. What I’m going to decide over the next year is whether the subject I’ve identified is good for me. I think I’m good for him; now I have to see if he’s good for me.

Q: And the Museum of Education, has it been good for you?