Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

An appointment for research is required. The collection is open for research. No interlibrary loan.

Use Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Dean's office records, M'Ledge Moffet Collection, Radford University Archives, McConnell Library, Radford University, Radford, VA. Dean's office records: M'Ledge Moffett Collection , Accession # RU 4.1.2, University Archives, McConnell Library, Radford University

Accruals

No additional accruals are expected.

Processing Information

Processed by Chelsey Slemp and Gene Hyde, July 2010.

Biographical/Historical Information

Dr. M'Ledge Moffett joined the Radford State Teacher's College in 1913, the year of its initial opening. Beginning as the only member of the Household Arts Department, she quickly made her mark upon Radford, soon after being selected by President McConnell to be in charge of the college's dormitory - from this, there are many papers in the collection relating to day-to-day maintenance of the residence hall. Additionally, she was appointed as the college's first Dean of Women in 1920, a post she held until her retirement in 1962. Dr. Moffett had a hand in the initial creation of many of the student organizations listed in this collection. She, in fact, assisted in the beginning of the first two student organizations on campus: the Ingles and Pocahontas Literary Societies. There are several letters and other documents of interest collected by Dr. Moffett within the collection pertaining specifically to the Ingles Literary Society, which outlived the Pocahontas group. The Student Government Association was another student-run organization that she helped initially organize in 1914, along with the Grapurchat in 1921, which was the student newspaper. The Executive Council was a branch of the SGA. It was a disciplinary committee that kept extensive records, collected by Dr. Moffett's office, of the disciplinary hearings of the 1920's. In 1922 the Blue Gate Tea room was opened as a spur of the moment method of having enough dining space for visitors that flourished into a new area of interest on campus. It was a former storage closet attached to the school's gymnasium, ran primarily by the Home Economics Department, in which M'Ledge Moffett kept tedious records until 1927 when it became student-run. In addition to these groups, Dr. Moffett was involved with several other organizations and committees, leaving behind records that can be found in this collection.

Scope and Content

The collection contains various hand-written and typed documents from approximately 1913-1978. In addition, there are financial records, appointment books, and notebooks. The documents include assorted items such as telegrams, letters, hand-written notes, and official documents that correspond to their respective group or organization. The financial records vary from ledger books to bank statements, receipts, checkbooks, canceled checks, and documents recording inventories of items purchased. The notebooks and appointment books vary in size and in category. Some are large and record several years' worth of material, while others are small and merely contain information for a single year. Several notebooks and ledgers contain accompanying documents. The collection additionally consists of items such as program guides, a songbook, newspaper clippings, and brochures. Box 1 and Box 2 of this collection deal primarily with general maintenance of the college. More specifically, these boxes contain financial records for the cafeteria and tea room, listing an inventory of food costs and other expenditures. Also, there are several notebooks from the Bureau of Information at the college that list visitors and their purpose for going to the President's Office, Dr. Moffett's office, and others. There are documents, in addition, dealing with various staff members and staff positions at the university. These boxes contain items primarily from the 1920's and 1930's.

Boxes 3-5 contain information pertaining to several different student organizations. There are many documents from sororities and fraternities on campus, such as Pi Gamma Mu, Phi Kappa Phi, Alpha Tau Pi, Sigma Sigma Sigma, and Phi Alpha Theta. The Pi Gamma Mu folders, in particular, contain financial information such as bank records, canceled checks, and a treasurer's notebook. The other groups' folders contain official documents, letters, and a Sigma Sigma Sigma song book. The folders on Phi Alpha Theta and Alpha Tau Pi also contain documents dealing with the opening of their chapters at Radford University. In addition, clubs and organizations mentioned in boxes 3-5 are the Home Economics Club, Ingles Literary Society, Radford Chapter of American Federation of Art Club, Choral Club, Commercial Club, Debate Council, and others - all of which have various miscellaneous handwritten and typed documents.

The Student Government Association has several documents within the collection including handwritten notes and official documents, most of which originated from the 1970's. In addition, the Executive Council, which was a branch of the Student Government Association that saw to disciplinary hearings has a notebook of several of these hearings from the 1920's that contained several hand-written documents dealing with the girls charged with breaking the rules. There are also documents pertaining to the Student Organization Committee from the 1920's and the 1970's. Boxes 6-8, the M'Ledge Moffett notebooks, are primarily day planners that Dr. Moffett wrote the occurrences of her day in with diary-like entries, most of which have to do with student teachers at high schools. The folders labeled appointment book list merely her schedule, or a particular event for a specific day, and do not contain such diary-like entries. All of the notebooks had within them several handwritten, and few typed, documents ranging from informal notes to an official document from the Department of Agriculture in 1944 pertaining to the World War II Liberty Gardens. The notebooks run from 1940-1954. There are several weeks in each book in which Dr. Moffett wrote no entries.

Arrangement

Box 1: Maintenance and Supervision

Box 2: Maintenance and Supervision

Box 3: Student Organizations

Box 4: Student Organizations

Box 5: Student Organizations

Box 6: M'Ledge Moffett notebooks

Box 7: M'Ledge Moffett notebooks

Box 8: M'Ledge Moffett notebooks