senior Hannah Monaghan

Hello! My name is Hannah Monaghan and I am a processing Intern for the Clarke Archives. During Spring term working with Marian, I helped process over 24 boxes of materials, 14 of which I did almost entirely by myself. And I only got 8 paper cuts while doing it! We worked hard to process, list, and encode the finding aid for the materials donated by CMU's Athletics Department. We went through records of football, cross country, gymnastics, tracks, field hockey, and baseball history, some of the records stretching back over a century ago into the 19th century. I also got to write a research paper regarding women's history in sports, inspired by a photograph of an undefeated women's field hockey team from 1968 with a large St. Bernard puppy mascot named 'Lily." Finding such precious pieces of history are what make working in the archives a delight.

It was my pleasure to work with Marian and the other members of our processing team. I have no doubt in my mind that I will look back on this time fondly and I highly recommend anyone interested to take a leap. You will learn loads and find a deeper appreciation for the amount of work we lovers and guardians of history do to preserve the past. I am graduating this year with my bachelor's in Public History and moving on to greener pastures. Fire up Chips! May you enjoy your time in the Archives as much as I did. Hannah did a very good job for me with CMU. Athletics. That photograph in particular highlights how we often found minimal surviving documentation for early women’s sports at CMU, resulting in some interesting conversations about possible reasons why this is the situation. It also has sadly resulted in the accomplishments of women's teams and individual athletes being largely forgotten. I wish you the very best in the future, Hannah. Congratulations on your graduation!