Working in the Archives: Knowing Joe and How the Project Started

Reflections from Researcher Barbara Kappler Mikk

Knowing Joe

Through the gift of technology and the work of U of M staff to record and make presentations available, Dr. Josef Mestenhauser’s voice is accompanying me as I write this section on how I came to know “Joe” and how I came to work on his archives. In this 2010 recording, Joe introduced himself at the Internationalizing the Campus and Curriculum Conference at the University of Minnesota and he began with a bit of humor about how you can’t get him to shut up when asked to talk about curriculum. But as was Joe’s custom, he didn’t laugh or smile with it. He just kept rolling. He had an unbelievable penchant for words and for speaking. I was fortunate to know and work with Joe from 1989 through his retirement in 2002. For those who haven’t met Joe, you can listen to a 1963 World Affairs interview moderated by reporter George Grim in which Joe describes that people are not prepared to look for cultural differences, hear Elija Bitange Ndemo (2009 recipient of the Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals) praise Joe’s character and work with international students with these comments for Joe’s memorial, and peruse the Mestenhauser Collection in the University Archives for the incredible scope of Joe’s professional work.

To be honest, I didn’t know Professor Mestenhauser before arriving in August of 1989 when I began graduate studies at the University of Minnesota. I quit my job at a Fortune 500 company and took a position with the Student Project for Amity among Nations (SPAN) program that prepares students to conduct research in select countries each year. SPAN was down the hall from the meeting room where conversations took place about the important affairs of the international units such as the Global Campus (now the Learning Abroad Center), the International Study & Travel Center, and the International Student Office. I didn’t know enough to realize the years of experience and wisdom in that meeting room, but I could hear Joe’s voice and accompanying conviction march down the hall. Within a few weeks, I realized Joe was also a professor and dedicated to understanding how culture permeates all that we do in higher education and beyond. My studies became interwoven with classes with Joe and, ultimately, with teaching and presenting together.

It took me years to call him “Joe.” As Dr. Inge Steglitz and I noted in our chapter in "Mestenhauser and the Possibilities of International Education,” working with Joe was like walking with a giant. It seemed important to have some measure of deference to this man who had accomplished so much. In an email exchange in 2011— 22 years after I met Joe—he insisted I call him by that first name when I asked him as “Professor Mestenhauser” to give a speech for Dr. Kay Thomas’s retirement from directing International Student and Scholar Services. While he accepted, he required, “Since we are colleagues, my participation is conditioned on your indeed getting to first names with me.” Of course, I would not want to miss it for anything. "About 5 minutes OK, Joe?" (personal communication, 2011).

Joe is often praised for his systems thinking and connecting theory, practice, and research. Rightfully so. I want to add applause for the kind of faculty mentor he was by inviting graduate students and early career professionals to present in his classes, write together, and teach short courses in the college. The workload was shared, and Joe made it clear he thought you had something to contribute. His belief in others, while all the while criticizing systems, fostered deep discussion and collegiality. Joe conveyed that you belonged. For me, as a kid from rural Wisconsin, this was profound.

While interviewing others, admiration was easy to be found. Dr. Neal Goodman, a long-time interculturalist who did his first study abroad in the 1960s and who met Joe at NAFSA conferences in the 1980s, praised Joe for his scholarly contributions and found Joe—and others from the U of M—to be inspirational (Personal Communication, 2026). Dr. Deanne Magnusson, who began the U of M’s Leadership in International and Intercultural Education cohort program, convinced Joe to teach the Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Leadership course for this program in 1996—and the course continues to this day. Deanne noted how, at the time, the rest of the faculty learned the intercultural communication perspective from Dr. Mestenhauser when he transferred from his administrative responsibilities to faculty in the College of Education and launched the Comparative and International Development Education program (Personal Communication, 2026). Gayla Marty reflected that it was perhaps Joe’s opportunity to return to Prague and recognition he received for his law degree that enabled him to transition from the Office of International Education to a full-time faculty member (Personal Communication, 2026).

As an intercultural communication instructor and facilitator, I greatly appreciated Joe’s centering culture. As a program coordinator when I first began at ISSS, I always appreciated the emphasis Joe and his successor, Kay Thomas, had on the critical importance of programming in support of international students. As a director, I felt deeply indebted to the ways in which he institutionalized this support. As a novice working with the archives, I grew to understand just how large of a giant Joe was and the shoulders of his predecessor Dr. Forrest Moore he stood on. These two created a field of international education from their vision, dedication, and imagination. I’ve more to share about Forrest in another article.

Getting Started in the Archives

I requested the opportunity to work on Professor Mestenhauser’s archived files of boxes with his writings, speeches, and projects. Given my time working with Joe— and that I was one of relatively few left on campus having done so—I felt I would be a good partner to others in this work. Global Programs and Strategy (GPS) Alliance Communications Director, Jennifer Schulz, provided critical background and expertise, having worked with the historical materials on many projects over the years.

The University of Minnesota Archives offices and research center are housed within the beautiful Elmer L. Andersen Library on the banks of the Mississippi River. Researchers and archivists from around the world request access to boxes and materials primarily stored in caverns in an “underground room the size of two football fields stacked on top of each other, located beneath the Elmer L. Andersen Library and the University Law School” (Colwell, 2013, MN Daily). The riverbanks provide natural limestone and clay for a "geology-friendly" environment (read more about the caverns and the library). Additional archival materials are stored in a climate controlled facility in St. Paul.

Once requested materials are retrieved, researchers access their chosen materials in the Reading Room, following critical rules that allow for the preservation of these historical materials. On any given day in this room, researchers may be listening to recordings, pouring over maps, handling delicate paper records, or taking photographs from one of the largest holdings of children’s literature in the world, The Kerlan Collection.

My work began by meeting with Collections Archivist Rebbecca Toov, who introduced me to the five boxes named “The Mestenhauser Archives.” Over several months, Research Services and Student Life Archivist Katelyn Morken guided me through this new world of what is in the archives (which is what departments either choose to send to the archives or are required to, in the case of the memos from the President’s Office and Board of Regent agendas, for example), and what else the archives might have related to Professor Mestenhauser and international education (including boxes from the predecessor of GPS, the Office of International Programs). Erik Moore, now head of University Archives, when writing in 2018 about the archives' 90th anniversary, explains the archives began per the request of former President Folwell to then President Coffman in 1927, and describes the accompanying anniversary exhibit of historical documentation that “illustrates that the people and events that are a part of the University of Minnesota may have gone into history, but they are not lost” (Moore, 2018).

The scope of the boxes wasn’t massive, but it was daunting nonetheless. How to not lose the words, ideas, and great uncovered finds of a walking giant? There were potentially dozens of additional boxes to be explored with potentially hundreds of files. The driving question was “what might be useful to highlight?” to bring attention to the physical papers in the archives. After many weeks with the paper files, funds were offered to enable materials to be digitized, significantly altering the questions to focus on how much material should be digitized, what is important in noting the specific history of international education at the University of Minnesota, and which materials could be useful today and in perpetuity to others who may never travel to see the paper documents.

Read more about working in the archives, Forrest Moore, and international education at the University of Minnesota. (Links)

References

Colwell, Hailey. (2013, July 17). The University’s archives and special collections advance with technology. The Minnesota Daily. https://mndaily.com/uncategorized/u-archives-advance-new-technology/07/17/2013/snoadmin/

Collections Facility | University of Minnesota Libraries. (2025). Umn.edu. https://www.lib.umn.edu/spaces/collections-facility

Goodman, N. (2026). Personal Communication, February 18, 2026.

Magnusson, D. (2026). Personal Communication. May 13, 2026.

Marty, G. (2026). Personal Communication. May 6, 2026.

Mestenhauser, Josef and D’Angelo, Anne (2010). Internationalization – Theory to Practice? Practice to Theory? Presentation at the Internationalizing Campus and Curriculum Conference, University of Minnesota (March 29, 2010). Presentation retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQlXajNl9-8

Minnesota Library Access Center: Cavernous Storage! - Minneapolis Riverfront News - Minneapolis Riverfront Neighborhoods. (2026). Millcitytimes.com. http://millcitytimes.com/news/minnesota-library-access-center-cavernous-storage.html

Moore, E. (2018, January 26). Gone into history: 90 years of the University Archives - UMN Libraries News & Events. https://libnews.umn.edu/2018/01/gone-into-history-90-years/

Sturdevant, A. (2015, October 15). The subterranean caverns that protect the U’s Asen Library collections. MinnPost. https://www.minnpost.com/stroll/2015/10/subterranean-caverns-protect-us-andersen-library-collections/

University of Minnesota. Radio Station KUOM. Explosion of Foreign Travel: People To People Diplomacy with Melton Altschuler and Josef Mestenhauser. 1963-02. University of Minnesota Libraries, University Archives., umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll171:3572 Accessed 17 Jun 2026.