Conference Presenters
Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Independent Scholar
James J. Bohning, Lehigh University
E. N. “Ned” Brandt, Post Street Archives
Rasheedah S. Cremer, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Bruce Compton, The Pew Charitable Trusts
Arthur Daemmrich, Chemical Heritage Foundation
James E. Fogerty, Minnesota Historical Society
Eleanor Fye, Consultant
Ronald Grele, Columbia University Oral History Office
Gretchen Krueger, Wells Fargo
Paul Lasewicz, IBM Corporation
Tyler Priest, University of Houston
John Kenly Smith, Jr., Lehigh University
Arnold Thackray, Chemical Heritage Foundation
Regina Lee Blaszczyk is a an independent scholar specializing in business history. She was formerly a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, a history professor at Boston University, and the director of the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Beckman Center. Her books include Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (2002; winner of the Hagley Prize in Business History); Major Problems in American Business History: Documents and Essays (2006; coedited); and Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers (2007; edited). A veteran user of oral histories, Blaszczyk is currently completing a series of executive interviews for the Rohm and Haas centennial.
James J. Bohning is professor of chemistry emeritus at Wilkes University, where he was a faculty member from 1959 to 1990. He served there as chemistry department chair from 1970 to 1986 and environmental science department chair from 1987 to 1990. Bohning was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986; he received the division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989 and has presented more than 40 papers at national meetings of the society. Bohning was on the advisory committee of the society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program from its inception in 1992 through 2001 and is currently a consultant to the committee. He developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and he was the foundation’s director of oral history from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998 Bohning was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society. He is currently a visiting research scientist and CESAR Fellow at Lehigh University. In May 2005 he received the Joseph Priestley Service Award from the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society.
E. N. “Ned” Brandt has been the company historian of Dow Chemical since 1983. Brandt is the author of Growth Company: Dow Chemical’s First Century and other works. A journalism graduate of Michigan State University, he served as a U.S. Army officer in World War II, as a United Press correspondent, and as a U.S. State Department employee in Europe before joining Dow’s public relations department in 1953. Brandt’s service to Dow has included that of public relations director and executive speech writer. He lives and works in Midland, Michigan.
Rasheedah S. Cremer is the manager of the Oral History Program at the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s (CHF) Center for Contemporary History and Policy. She received a B.A. in anthropology from the Johns Hopkins University. CHF’s Oral History Program is built on the core principle that the preservation of the insights and experiences of individuals in the chemical enterprise facilitates an understanding of innovation, achievement, and the development and evolution of scientific disciplines. The program preserves a unique set of perspectives and enables current and future scholarship on 20th-century science.
Bruce Compton is archivist for The Pew Charitable Trusts, where he is responsible for managing the trusts’ library, archives, and oral history program along with its records management, grant information, and research activities. Compton previously worked as a manuscript librarian at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and as an archivist, a researcher, and a consultant for the United States General Services Administration, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Gardner Associates. Compton has served on the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including the Elfreth’s Alley Association, the Upsala Foundation, and the Irish-American Archives Fellowships. He is the author of numerous articles and pamphlets. In 1992 Compton was recognized by the Camden County Cultural and Historical Commission for his work to preserve the social history of South Jersey’s factory towns. He has degrees in history and philosophy from LaSalle University.
Arthur Daemmrich is the director of the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF). He earned a Ph.D. in science and technology studies from Cornell University. The projects Daemmrich supervises at CHF bring long-range perspectives to bear on key issues in innovation, globalization, risk, health, and environmental policy. Daemmrich has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council/Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and CHF. He has published on biotechnology policy and politics, the sociology of medicine, and pharmaceutical drug regulation. Daemmrich is editor or author of three books: Reflections from the Frontier—Explorations for the Future: Gordon Research Conferences, 1931–2006 (2006); Pharmacopolitics: Drug Regulation in the United States and Germany (2004; winner of the 2006 Edward Kremers Award from the American Institute of Pharmacy History), and R&D Meets M&A: Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on Innovation and Creativity in Chemical R&D (2004).
James E. Fogerty is head of documentary programs at the Minnesota Historical Society and director of the society’s Oral History Office. He has directed oral history projects for individual corporations on issues relating to agriculture, the environment, the recreation industry, and the medical device industry; he has also led projects with a number of immigrant communities. Fogerty teaches workshops on the use of oral history and video history in archives, corporations, and cultural organizations. He is a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists and has served on its governing council and on the council of the Oral History Association. He chaired the Oral Sources Committee of the International Council on Archives and is currently a member of its Business Archives Section. He has authored numerous articles on the development of oral history and archives in business.
Eleanor Fye is a content and communications professional with more than 15 years of experience in most aspects of the content life cycle, including strategy and development, editorial management and content programming, web publishing and taxonomy management, and archiving and retention. Following a seven-and-one-half-year career at Microsoft, where her roles ranged from corporate archivist to global communications manager for the customer service group, Fye is currently a content strategy consultant with the Ascentium Corporation in Bellevue, Washington. She holds an M.I.L.S. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a B.A. in art and humanities from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
Ronald Grele is the former director of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office. Prior to his work at Columbia, he directed the Oral History Program at UCLA and served as research director at the New Jersey Historical Commission and assistant director of the Ford Foundation Oral History Project. Grele began his career in oral history as an interviewer and archivist at the John F. Kennedy Oral History Project. He has been awarded a Fulbright teaching appointment at the University of Indonesia and has conducted workshops and seminars on oral history throughout Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 1988 he was elected president of the Oral History Association and was, for a number of years, editor of The International Journal of Oral History. Grele is the author of Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History, among other works, and editor of Subjectivity and Multiculturalism in Oral History. He received a doctorate from Rutgers University and has taught at Lafayette College, California State University, Long Beach, and Kingsborough Community College. He is currently conducting interviews for the Columbia Oral History office with female graduates of the Columbia Law School, with directors and officers of the Atlantic Philanthropies and the General Atlantic Group, and for a community project documenting the social and cultural history of Harlem.
Gretchen Krueger is a senior historian in the Family and Business History Center at Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco. From 2003 to 2006 she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of the History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She was a historical consultant for the American Society of Clinical Oncology as the organization celebrated its 40th anniversary. Krueger received a Ph.D. from Yale University. Her dissertation, “A Cure is Near: Children, Families, and Cancer in America, 1945–1980,” examined the cooperation, skepticism, and resistance between parents and practitioners during a childhood illness. Her work has been published in several historical and clinical journals, and her book manuscript on the history of pediatric cancers is currently under review.
Paul Lasewicz is the corporate archivist for International Business Machines Corporation in Armonk, New York. He was previously the corporate archivist for Aetna Life & Casualty in Hartford, Connecticut. A University of Connecticut alumnus, Lasewicz has chaired the Society of American Archivists’ Business Archives Section and has published and presented on corporate archives issues, including ethics, technology, and global records. He is also a cofounder and four-time winner of the Society of American Archivists Open golf tournament.
Tyler Priest is clinical professor and director of global studies at the C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Public History Program at the University of Houston and a partner in History International, a consulting firm specializing in corporate and public history projects. Priest received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught at Middlebury College. He has served as chief historian on projects for Shell Oil and the Department of Interior. He is the author of Global Gambits: Big Steel and the U.S. Quest for Manganese Ore (2003), The Offshore Imperative: Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America (2007), and coauthor of Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (1997). Priest is currently researching a project on offshore oil and the “New Golden Triangle” of the Gulf of Mexico, West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, and Brazil’s Campos Basin.
John Kenly Smith, Jr., is associate professor of history at Lehigh University, where he has been a faculty member since 1987. He coauthored Science and Corporate Strategy: DuPont R&D, 1902–1980 (1988), which won a Newcomen Prize in Business History. Smith served with the DuPont R&D History Project from 1982 to 1986 and was Newcomen Fellow in Business History at Harvard Business School from 1986 to 1987. He is currently working on the history of chemical catalysis and the history of gasoline.
Arnold Thackray is president of the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Thackray majored in the physical sciences before turning to the history of science; he received a Ph.D. from Cambridge University in 1966. He has held appointments at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1983 Thackray received the Dexter Award from the American Chemical Society for outstanding contributions to the history of chemistry. He served for more than a quarter century on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the founding chairman of the Department of History and Sociology of Science and is currently the Joseph Priestley Professor Emeritus.