This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Sean French.  He was born in Los Angeles, California.  The day after he was born, his parents flew to Los Angeles to adopt him.  He was then raised in Haddon Township.  His father is Danny French who was a machine operator for Haddon Township Public Works until he retired in 2020.  He did all manner of things for the town, including snow plowing, tending water mains, and much else.  His mother is Ginger French, and she was an executive assistant for a law firm.  He has an older brother, also adopted, who went to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.  Sean attended public schools and graduated from Haddon Township High School in 2017.  He entered Rowan in the Fall of 2017 as a history and secondary education major.  He graduated with honors in 2022 with a history major and an international studies major.  He focused on Asian Studies and completed a Certificate of Undergraduate Study in Japanese.  In June of 2022, shortly after graduating, he took a position as a Passport Specialist working for the US Department of State at the Philadelphia Passport Agency.  He continues in that position, nearing completion of his second year.

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I always thought that I was going to college.  From a very early age, I liked learning and helping people.  I had a fantastic third grade teacher that I still remember very fondly named Mr. Baker.  It was him, my father’s public service for our town, and my mother’s interest in history that led me to be interested in history and teaching from a young age.  When it came time to apply to colleges, Rowan was a natural choice due to its long history of training teachers.  I also have family who attended Glassboro State College and Rowan.  I ended up applying to three schools, Rutgers-Camden, Rowan, and Camden County College.  Money was a major factor in where I applied and in choosing Rowan because they gave me a scholarship.  I was fortunate that, with this scholarship, I could afford to go to Rowan.  

History was always my favorite subject in school. It was also the class that I scored the best in during high school. I would routinely assist fellow students, naturally fostering my interest in teaching history.  Of course, I soon realized that what I thought about history in high school was not what studying history at college would be like at all.  I began college thinking of history as a set of facts and truths which one took in through reading or lecture to then later regurgitate out onto a paper or in some other manner.  This view of the past changed very soon into my freshmen year.

My first semester I had two history classes.  One was your class, United States to 1865.  This was part of the CLIO program, and I remember that you went out of your way to tell the class, which was filled mostly with students who wanted to be teachers, that there were other opportunities for history majors should we decide that we no longer wanted to teach.  The other CLIO course was Stephen Hague’s Western Civilization to 1660.  Dr. Hague’s class was particularly helpful in the realization that history was a series of arguments about how to interpret the past. Dr. Hague emphasized constructing the best possible version of the argument that you wished to challenge, a “steel man” instead of a “straw man.”  I later had Dr. Hague for the second half of Western Civilization. 

I had Dr. Melissa Klapper for the CLIO Historical Methods section.  This course was fantastic for sharpening my research and writing skills and preparing me for upper-level history courses.  Part of what made it so good was bringing in guest speakers such as Jim Heinzen who discussed archival research.  Another aspect that made it so helpful was how well structured and organized it was.  The course took you step-by-step through the process of how to construct a research paper, making it much less daunting.

In my sophomore year, I began taking Japanese language courses.  Through the influence of my friends, I had been paying a lot more attention to Japanese culture during my freshmen year. When I started taking the language, I took to it much more readily than I had to Spanish, which I had taken in high school.  I soon found that I wanted to improve my Japanese even more.  To do this, I needed to study abroad.  I was put in contact with Dr. Cory Blake.  She told me about the Boren Scholarship and showed me that I could fulfill my passion for helping people through public service.  In fact, the Boren Scholarship requires that you spend one year working for the federal government after you graduate.  During this time, I made the decision to drop my education major and switch to International Studies for greater flexibility to study abroad.

During the Summer and Fall of 2019, I studied abroad in Japan at JF Oberlin University in Machida.  While in Japan, I studied the Japanese language, Japanese politics, and Japanese folklore.  The Boren Scholarship ended up covering all my expenses for this experience. I loved my time there.  I developed not only my language skills but also intangible skills such as cultural awareness.  I met people of different backgrounds and perspectives, which was invaluable to me.

I returned to the United States in January of 2020 and began taking courses at Rowan again.  One of the things that I took back up at this time was work I had begun in my sophomore year with the Japanese Culture Club.  I became the President of this club for the 2020-21 academic year.  I am very proud that we continued to offer club activities despite the pandemic.  We offered events online and helped with the tutoring of students taking their Japanese language classes online. Our club felt it critical to try and keep our community connected, despite the challenges of not being in-person. 

During the remainder of my time at Rowan, I had courses again with Dr. Mikkel Dack and Dr. James Shrader. Dr. Dack’s courses always helped to build confidence, encouraged inquisitiveness, and fostered an environment to have a healthy discourse during classroom discussions. Likewise in Dr. Shrader’s courses, he was incredibly supportive. Despite the virtual medium over Zoom, Dr. Shrader was consistently encouraging, had open conversations, and was always patient when answering all of my dozen questions every class. Finally, your voluntary “Coffee with Carrigan” chats with my fellow history majors over Zoom during the pandemic helped to bring some kind of normalcy and connection during a time when there was very little.

Going to Rowan helped prepare me well for my time at the US Department of State.  I think the most important skill that I learned at Rowan was critical thinking.  The cases that I work on now require research and the collection of much knowledge about laws and policies, but they also require that you make your own decisions on how to apply and interpret what you have learned to the case at hand.  The ability to weigh and evaluate different factors to determine the strongest outcome is something that I feel came directly from my historical training.  I feel very fortunate to have gone to Rowan, and I wouldn’t change my decision if I could go back and start over at any college. 

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_all/project_100+.html