Project Lead: Prof. Sarah Purcell (L. F. Parker Professor of History)
Vivero Fellow (Spring 2025): Zachary Bressler
Georgia Dentel’s work at Grinnell College was remembered fondly by many alumni, who wanted to honor her by creating a research fund for current students at Grinnell College. Despite Dentel’s large role in student life, there is yet to be any public-facing recognition of her. This website and future projects aim to rectify this. It started as a semester-long research project by Hayden Suarez-Davis ’25, under history professor Sarah Purcell. The project turned into a summer Mentored Advanced Project, adding on three new members: Bowen Wei ’25, Jackie Harris ’26, and Maya Albanese ’26.
The past summer, we worked to research student life, Georgia’s life, and concert history at Grinnell. In addition, we have conducted oral history interviews with alumni and people who knew Georgia. Our goal with these oral histories is to have them put in the college’s archive for future researchers.
In the spring, we plan to continue checking the transcriptions of a few oral interviews, working to upload the interview videos and transcripts to the website. We will also be adding additional web content including a TimelineJS timeline about student life at Grinnell (with content guidance from prior project participants) and PDF files of campus events calendars (which have been digitized at the college archives).
