Mesa Community College Archives

Scope and Content Notes

The Mesa Community College Archives is organized and arranged into distinct record groups based on the type of records rather than the offices of origin.  This is mainly because of the lack of transfer paperwork, identifying notes, and organization.  A small portion of the collection was originally organized according to a made-up Dewey Decimal system, while the majority of the materials were still unprocessed in folders, drawers, and boxes without any transfer paperwork or collection policy.  All of the materials were then reorganized into a traditional archival order represented in this finding aid.  

Consistent coverage of official college records in the collection is poor.  There are no official records for any MCC office, department or program, including the Office of the President.  As a result, the existing records vary greatly in substance and size.  Some time periods and topics are covered extensively, while others have only single folders or none at all.

Digitization began in order to increase access and preserve the physical collection by reducing handling and direct contact.  The materials to be digitized were chosen based on value, demand and condition of the items.

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̲̲̲̲Coverage of the MCC Administration is poor overall.  The best coverage of Office of the President correspondence is for Dr. John Riggs from 1965-1973.  Because these papers cover the beginning of the school’s history, there is an item-level description of the Dr. Rigg boxes in the Finding Aid.  There is also good coverage of the Dean of Instruction from 1967-1973.  After that, coverage for the MCC Presidents is spotty with only one box of correspondence from Helena Howe from 1976-1978.  Larry Christiansen has only one folder of correspondence, but a good collection of his Weekly Communiques from 2000-2007.  There are no records for Theo Heap (1978-1984) or Wallace Simpson (1984-1988).  Dr. Shouan Pan’s (2008-2016) paper records consist only of the “College Community” communication newsletter from 2008-2013.

Coverage of the Business and Administrative Services is poor with a few exceptions.  The Public Safety reports are extensive from 2004-2015.  There is a complete set of faculty handbooks from 1966-2009 and student handbooks from 1965-2016.  Class catalogs and schedules coverage is extremely poor with only four items between 1965-2000.  Most of the Students Services have only a handful of items, and much of that are brochures or handouts.  There is a good representation of MCC brochures and promotional materials, along with MCC Fast Facts booklets.

 The Athletic Department is covered best in the earlier years of MCC.  There are quite a few programs, schedules and articles that cover the major college sporting events:  football, basketball, and baseball.  Some of the other sports are mentioned in small sampling, if at all.  There is a brief history of the MCC Athletic Program along with a Women’s Athletics retrospective.  There are also MCC Athletic program publications like MCC Hokams, T-Bird Talk and Sports Shorts.  There was also a serious effort to collect MCC sports clippings from various newspapers around the state between  1979-2001.  Unfortunately, many of the sources and exact dates of these clippings are not included in the finished collection.  The other Departments are not as well documented in the Archives with the exception of the Library and Theatre Outback programs and “Mom” news sheets.

The Committees/Organizations record group has some groups that have generally good collections of their meeting minutes, the Associated Student Governing Board, the Faculty Senate, the Curriculum Committee all have fairly consistent coverage of their minutes.  There are other committees and organizations that have some informational materials represented in this record group.

The Publications record group has the complete yearbook collection from 1965-1977.  The Faculty Bulletin has almost consistent coverage from 1963-2009.  The school newspaper underwent a number of name changes throughout the years but was mostly called The Legend and ran from 1964-current.  There are scatterings of many different departmental and organization newsletters along with some MCC literary arts magazines and anthologies.

The Events record group has a fairly complete collection of commencement programs but is missing all of the 1970s.  Other events coverage is more limited because there didn’t seem to be any consistency for collecting these materials.

The Red Mountain Campus record group comes out of the creation of this campus from the original MCC campus.  The coverage here is limited to materials that relate to the creation of the campus and there is little to no coverage of the campus since it opened.

The Oral Interviews were originally in the form of cassette tapes, which can be found in the Media collection.  They were part of a larger project by Richard Fenagle who used them to write his book on the history of Maricopa County Community College District.  These 5 interviews were the only ones that were found in the Mesa CC archives.  The audio tapes were transcribed during processing for easier access because the sound quality is not very good.   

The Photograph collection consists of mostly black and white photographs as early as the beginning of construction of Mesa Community College and goes through the early 2000s.  Any identifiers such as years and names of people or events were taken from the backs of the photographs or from the envelopes that they had been stored in and were so identified before they were processed.  Because the photographs were processed as they were found and because so many are undated, sections (especially SG 1--Events) are not organized chronologically.  

The Media collection consists mostly of DVDs and VHS tapes of various events and promotional clips from MCC.  The collection includes MCC graduation ceremonies from 1990-2004.  During processing, the media was viewed for clarity and content, and the finding aid includes those processing notes for each of the items.  All copies of a particular item were kept until these can be digitized or transferred onto a more stable format.

The Negatives collection is mainly from the negatives that were left to the Archives by MCC photographer Don Koonce.  These are mostly from photographs that were taken in the 1970s and 1980s.  There is also a random selection of  negatives found both with their photographs and alone.  As with the photographs, identifying information such as subject and dates were taken directly from the handwritten notes on their storage envelopes. 

The Slides collection is housed separately from the negatives and is very slim.  A few of the topics in the slides collection are also in the negative or photograph collections, but the larger portion is not in either of the collections at the time of processing.  Special note can be made for the slides of MCC on Wheels, Family Easter Day and the Unity Picnic, which are not represented anywhere else in the collection.