![[Case Western Reserve University -- Toolbar]](/pix/lowpro.gif)
Posted 12-20-99
Cleveland's two oldest cultural institutions -- Case Western Reserve University and the Western Reserve Historical Society -- will share a newly established professorship, the Krieger-Mueller Professorship in Applied History.
The first recipient, assistant professor John Grabowski, is well acquainted with CWRU and WRHS. At CWRU, he teaches such subjects as the history of immigration, sports in America, America in the era of the Civil War, issues and methods in history, and an introduction to American history.
Nora Krieger of Ft. Meyer, Florida, and Werner D. Mueller of Cleveland endowed the professorship. Their gift will enable Grabowski to spend approximately 51 percent of his time at the historical society and 49 percent at the University.
Through this new chair, the historical society will always have a professional historian on its staff, says Grabowski, while the University will have on its faculty a historian with experience in public and applied history such as archival, museum, and publishing work.
Grabowski received three degrees from CWRU -- a B.A. magna cum laude in history in 1971, M.A. in 1973, and Ph.D. in 1977.
He joined the staff of the historical society in 1969 as a book page, and later was the associate curator of manuscripts, curator of manuscripts, and director of research.
Grabowski also organized the society's first ethnic archives and served as interim director of its history museum for 15 months until the recent appointment of Dana Thorpe, the museum's new director. He also serves as the senior historian on the new lakefront Crawford Museum.
His first professional link to the University came in 1981 when he assisted David Van Tassel, editor of the Cleveland Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (now a joint CWRU and WRHS project) and director of National History Day Project, in establishing the foundations for the first major city encyclopedia.
Van Tassel, the Hiram C. Haydn professor emeritus of history, and Grabowski launched the voluminous encyclopedia and its companion Dictionary of Cleveland History into cyberspace in 1998. Grabowski now serves as the online editor of the electronic version.
For nearly 20 years, he has worked as managing editor of the encyclopedia, an adjunct professor of history, or both.
Grabowski plans to expand the encyclopedia by adding new hyperlinks to Cleveland organizations, films, audio, color photographs, and more articles. The encyclopedia effort receives help from each year's Ralph Besse Fellow in CWRU's Department of History. Grabowski will seek funding to support additional graduate students in expanding the electronic text.
He also would like to find funding to support an internship program for college students within the historical society as well as develop an educational arm for university researchers to use the collections.
The combination of his work at the two institutions has made it possible for Grabowski to pursue some book projects. He currently is collaborating with his wife Diane on a coffee table book about the history of transportation and industry in Cleveland.
The new professorship also will free up time for him to pursue writing the history of the Western Reserve Historical Society and the development of similar other agencies, as well as a history of the Turkish immigration to America.
![[Toolbar]](/pix/ribbon.gif){kind=small}