The
History of Mankato's Walking Tour
Most
college students arrive at their university without knowing anything about the
town that they're going to call home for the next few years. Usually it's not even a factor in their
choice of a university. After arriving,
students continue their educational career in relative ignorance of the host
town's history and culture. At
Minnesota State University, Mankato, students have the opportunity to actually
take a class that will help them learn the city. Professors H. Roger Smith and Janet Cherrington have developed a
walking tour for their classes to help students appreciate Mankato's history
and the urban planning involved in its development.
It
all began when Dr. H. Roger Smith came to the university in 1965. This was during a period of urban renewal in
Mankato. He saw that many of the
buildings being demolished were a significant part of Mankato's history. Smith became an advocate for preservation,
educating students about Mankato's historical buildings and important
resources. He also wanted students to
understand that architecture was "a reflection of our past."1 Dr. H.
Roger Smith believed that "the best way [to demonstrate this to students
is] to take [them] out and show them."2 So in 1974, he developed a walking tour of
Mankato where he had his students go on a two mile walk through the older areas
of the city to actually see what they've been learning in class.
Professor
H. Roger Smith continues to focus on the importance of scale, forms and styles
of Mankato's houses and buildings with his Urban Studies 110 class, "The
City." Students in this class go
on the walking tour each semester. They
start in the neighborhood where the original university campus was, then
venture into Lincoln Park, go down through the new mall development and then
back through the homes at the base of the bluffs. These homes, Smith says, "were built by foundry and mill
workers and show some of the same characteristics as homes found in the silk
stocking district but they are not so grand and flamboyant."3
After
the tour, Smith gives a two and a half hour presentation of the complete
history of the area, going back thousands of years to when Minnesota was
covered by glaciers. He goes into great
detail about the geographical aspects of southern Minnesota; even why the
Minnesota river bends and curves the way it does! This gives his students an understanding of why the area has
developed into what they see today.
More
recently, Dr. Janet Cherrington has adopted a walking tour for her Urban
Studies class titled "Introduction to the City." Dr. Cherrington says she became interested
because she "was really anxious to learn more about the city and saw it as
a way to do two things: educate [herself] about the historical significance
that Mankato has and to learn to navigate the city which has a very confusing
street pattern."4
The
first semester that Dr. Cherrington used the walking tour in her class was in
the fall of 1999. By the end of that
semester, she realized that students needed a better way to help them navigate
through the tour. Three students helped
her put together the first walking tour packet which included a narrative with
photos, history, trivia and a map. Josh
Casper dug up some trivia about Mankato from old newspapers to put in the
packet. John Jenness took the pictures
for it and Jason Hamilton designed the cover for the guide. Based on H. Roger Smith's tour narrative
which takes the same path in the city, Dr. Cherrington's new tour booklet was
completed by the end of the spring semester in 2000.
Students
also wrote a paper about their experience on the walking tour, incorperated
photographs and did a class powerpoint presentation. Cherrington says that her classes worked very hard on the presentations
and they caught the attention of Mankato's public information officer, Shelly
Shulz. Ms. Shulz asked for permission
to borrow some of the presentations and it was then that Dr. Cherrington says
she got the idea for the virtual walking tour.
In
the virtual walking tour, a person can click their way through the streets of
Mankato via the world wide web. Like
the physical tour, historical narratives and trivia accompany the photographs. Dr. Cherrington has made it so that people
outside of Mankato can see the town and learn about its historical and
architectural significance as well as students in her classes. Since the tour has been available on the
world wide web, she reports receiving one e-mail per month from people all over
the United States. In the fall of 2000,
the city of Mankato decided to link to Dr. Cherrington's virtual walking tour
through their visitor's center.
Like
H. Roger Smith, Dr. Cherrington was interested in helping students develop a
sense of community in Mankato. She believes
that "because the university is a community in itself, students don't have
to go off campus to do anything.
Students become isolated from the community, not understanding the
culture of it."6 Cherrington calls this the "town and gown
syndrome." She did research and
added a narrative to the virtual walking tour about this phenomenon. Dr. Cherrington's narrative states her
feelings that "the walking has become a win-win scenario: students break
the traditional town and gown isolation that so often plagues a community and a
nearby university and Mankato gets an infusion to its economic base by students
who frequent more of their sports and entertainment sites."7
During
the fall semester of 2000, Dr. Cherrington and her class put together a
bulletin board across from the copy shoppe in Morris Hall. They used a large, laminated map of Mankato
that Jason Hamilton made the previous year.
Dr. Cherrington calls this a
"culture map." The map showed
the major highways going out of Mankato and some major topographical points of
interest, like the bluffs. This piece
stirred up a lot of interest and people came to talk to Dr. Cherrington about
it. When they were ready to disassemble
the board, John Hedstrom from the historical society expressed interest in using
the exhibit. The bulletin board now
resides in the historical society's entrance way.
In
spring of 2001, Dr. Cherrington begun conducting research with a professor from
Minnesota State University's social work department, Dr. Deborah Gohagan. They did a study and compared students who
took the real walking tour and those that took the virtual walking tour. They submitted an online paper titled
"Taking Learning From the Classroom to the Community Using Online
Technology" for "Home on the Web: Challenges and opportunities of
online learning communities." The
paper was published online for other educators to read and comment.
As
for the future of the walking tour, Dr. Cherrington recently submitted a
proposal to obtain a grant to improve the tour. She was awarded a $5,000 Bush foundation's
"Learn-By-Doing" grant and will be using the money to purchase
digital cameras for students to use during the walking tour and also to hold
regular technology training labs for her class.
The
walking tour used here at Minnesota State University has helped me get to know
the city better. It has been difficult
for me to learn the streets because I do not drive. Now, because of the walking tour, I have become more acquainted
with the town and I'm beginning to appreciate the process of city planning as
well as Mankato's history. I especially
like the area that is now referred to as old downtown. The adaptive reuse of that area has saved so
many buildings in Mankato, and the look and feel of it is very unique to this town.
I believe that the walking tours that Dr. H. Roger Smith and Dr. Janet Cherrington take their students on have helped them accomplish their original goals of teaching students about Mankato. Students get a first hand experience of the town and are no longer stuck in the rut of the average "town and gown" isolated college life. The city of Mankato also appreciates the tours and has become involved by displaying exhibits put together by students and linking to Dr. Cherrington's virtual walking tour. All in all, the walking tour has been a wonderful experience for me and it will continue being a valuable resource for incoming students here at Minnesota State University, Mankato.