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NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

May 21, 2004

NIU’s One-Room Schoolhouse celebrates grant
from DeKalb County Community Foundation

DeKalb — Leaders of Northern Illinois University’s One-Room Schoolhouse are celebrating a grant of $3,000 from the DeKalb County Community Foundation that addresses the critical need for preservation and storage of artifacts from the region’s country school roots.

Evelina Cichy, a member of the foundation’s board, presented a check Tuesday, May 18, to Lucy Townsend, a professor in the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations and curator of the Blackwell Museum in the NIU College of Education.

The DeKalb County Community Foundation grants more than $750,000 annually to local non-profit agencies, and has awarded $5.6 million since its creation in 1993 through the creative generosity of a local DeKalb family. It serves donors in achieving their philanthropic objectives, creates and builds a lasting source of revenue to benefit the community and provides leadership and resources in addressing community needs.

Tuesday’s money will pay for storage cabinets, exhibit display cases and preservation materials,all of which will come in handy as museum staff work on a project to collect and store pieces of history donated by area residents who attended country schools.

“Our foundation has supported the museum in the past,” Cichy said. “This is really a community treasure, and that’s what the foundation is all about.”

NIU’s One-Room Schoolhouse and the Blackwell Museum hold one of the area’s largest collection of rare historical materials related to education, Townsend said.

“These materials help people understand and appreciate our rich rural heritage and the critical role that one-room schools played in the development of our nation,” Townsend said.

“With increasing numbers of visitors to the school and the museum, greater demands are being made upon the collections by a larger and better-educated public. These demands have been accompanied by an increased awareness of the fragility of these materials and historical buildings,” she added. “We must plan and work now to ensure that these materials survive for the use, education and enjoyment of generations to come.”

The Milan Township District 83 one-room school was dedicated in 1900 on land that was originally part of the Osmund Knutson Tysdal farm. Commonly known as either the Tysdal or Berg school, it replaced an earlier structure that had become too small to handle the student enrollments. The school was 13 miles southwest of DeKalb on the corner of Perry and Tower Roads near the town of Malta. It moved to the NIU campus in 1999.

Friends of the Milan Township One-Room Schoolhouse are planning a banquet and silent auction for 6 p.m. Friday, June 11, to celebrate country education and to help build the country school endowment fund. Tickets are $50 per person, or $400 per table. For more information, or to make a reservation, call (815) 753-1561.

The endowment will continue the free use of the school, create regular hours for visitors, revise and expand curriculum for school groups and improve and change the informational, educational and promotional materials.

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