Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Melissa Klapper.  She was born in Miami but raised in Dallas and Baltimore.  Her father is a doctor, her mother is a high school English teacher, and she has a younger sister.  She was always interested in history and loved reading, especially works of history and historical fiction.  They always had lots of books in their home, and they also took many family vacations to “dead people’s houses.”  She also always wanted to teach.  She went to a private Jewish girls school and graduated in 1991.  Dr. Klapper spent a semester in Israel after graduating and began at Goucher College, a liberal arts college in the suburbs of Baltimore, in the Spring of 1992.  At Goucher she majored in history and had two minors, one in English and the other in secondary education.  Goucher had been a women’s college, only becoming co-educational a couple of years before she began.  As a result, there were a number of leading feminist historians on the faculty, including Julie Jeffrey and Jean Baker.  She loved her professors at Goucher, and they recognized that she loved doing historical research.  They encouraged her to consider an academic career that would combine her love of teaching with research.  While she did finish her certification so that she could teach high school, she ended up following their advice and applied to doctoral programs in history.  She applied to Rutgers University due to the quality of the women’s history program, the best in the country, and she was delighted to be admitted, beginning classes in the Fall of 1995.  Dr. Klapper found Rutgers to be a supportive environment and enjoyed her time there, eventually completing a dissertation on adolescent Jewish girls in the late 19^th and early 20^th century United States.  She had multiple opportunities to teach while working on her doctorate at Rutgers and then was fortunate to be successful in her first year on the job market, when she accepted an offer to become an assistant professor of history at Rowan University in the Fall of 2001.  Dr. Klapper has been one of the University’s most productive researchers in her time at Rowan.  She has published four books, including Jewish Girls Coming of Age in America, 1860-1920 (NYU, 2005); Small Strangers:  The Experiences of Immigrant Children in the United States, 1880-1940 (Ivan R. Dee, 2007); and Ballet Class:  An American History (Oxford, 2020). She has won dozens of grants and fellowships, including several residential fellowships at the University of Michigan, NYU, and the University of Pennsylvania, and a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend, among many others.  In 2013, she won the National Jewish Book Award for her book Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace:  American Jewish Women’s Activism, 1890-1940.  In 2021, Dr. Klapper was awarded the Senior Excellence in Research Award by Rowan’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

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My favorite thing about Rowan is the warmth and collegiality of the History Department. It is, in my opinion, a very supportive place for both faculty and students.  Before I came to Rowan, I only knew one faculty member.  Her name was Dianne Ashton, a professor in the Philosophy and Religion Department, and she was already a mentor to me.  She was a published and established expert in American Jewish women’s history.  Once I took the job at Rowan, she obviously was important in helping me navigate life at Rowan and as an assistant professor. 

As soon as I got to Rowan, I became involved with the Women’s and Gender Studies program, eventually becoming Coordinator.  As someone who believes strongly in the importance of women’s history, it was a natural fit.  I wanted to support already existing efforts to highlight the critical role of women and the importance of gender in history.  I am particularly proud of the cross-campus connections that the program has made with other Colleges on campus, especially in Performing Arts and Communications and Creative Arts. 

I have been at Rowan for over twenty years, and the University has grown tremendously during this time.  There have been great things about this growth, though inevitably some things have been lost along the way as well.  I like the fact that most of our students truly enjoy learning, and I love the fact that our small class size allows discussion and “give and take” in the classroom.  I have also enjoyed the ability to design and teach new courses related to my expertise.  For example, I developed a course on the History of Childhood and Youth in America and, even more recently, a course on American Travel.  For over a decade now I have taught courses for the Martinson Honors College and now serve on its Faculty Advisory Board, a very rewarding experience.

For me, the Department of History – my colleagues and our students – is the center of my community at Rowan.  I am still excited about coming to work because of them all these years later. 

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/