Dennie Eagleson, a documentary and fine arts photographer, has been working on campus as an artist-in-residence since the beginning of the 2009 fall term.

When Dr. Robert Brecha and Susan Byrnes, ArtStreet director, approached her about developing an interdisciplinary course that would integrate art and science, Eagleson put her interests and experience to work to create a new class titled Archaeology of a Neighborhood with a mission to uncover the history of UD's student neighborhood across several decades.

To spread awareness of this mission, a student photography exhibit featuring work from this course is on display now through Nov. 23 on the second floor of Roesch Library.

"The picture sets made us all look more closely at the environment that we walk through on a daily basis, but rarely see," Eagleson said.

The work in the exhibit showcases an assignment in which students chose a photograph from the UD archive or from another source that was taken before 1930 and then re-photographed the same site from the same angle. Twelve pairs of photographs are displayed in the exhibit. The results show significant changes on UD's campus and in downtown Dayton over the past century.

"The main purpose of the assignment was for students to become familiar with the UD campus when much of the campus was still farmland, and also to appreciate the particular history of the NCR company and the very rich archive that exists because of John Patterson's desire to document both manufacturing aspects of the company and the surrounding neighborhoods," said Eagleson, now a co-professor of the course.

Students photographed several spots on campus, in the student neighborhood and in downtown Dayton, co-professor Dr. Robert Brecha said.

"We wanted students to get a sense of the changes that have taken place in their own surroundings," he said. "I'm always fascinated by change and by trying to imagine how a place looked at some time in the past."

The original inspiration for the project was a series of photographs that Dr. Andrea Koziol of the geology department took a few years ago with help from a student. Students are now trying to carry on this mission to recreate images of UD and the surrounding city.

"It is fascinating to think about how much has and has not changed in the past 50 to 100 years at UD," said junior Leah Winnike, fine arts education major, who is currently enrolled in Archaeology of a Neighborhood.

In addition to this photography assignment, students are also putting together personal maps in the form of photographic essays of their own space, Brecha said. They have also interviewed individuals that they consider to be leaders in the UD community. Currently, they are working on another assignment in which they must interview UD alumni about how they have experienced community in the UD neighborhood. The final assignment will be a project involving the students' experiences of living in the student neighborhood and their sense of community at UD.

This course is mainly intended for juniors and seniors, but sophomores can take it as well, Brecha said. Brecha said they plan to offer it once a year in the future under the number SEE 303 - Constructions of Place. In the future, it will be a requirement for a new minor in Sustainability, Energy and the Environment.

"The focus of the class is on community and how it is built and maintained over time," Brecha said. "In addition, one focus of the class is on considering the connections between this community and the student neighborhood more specifically and the outside world ... Being in a community in one physical location is never an exercise in isolation."

Winnike said she would recommend the class to other students because she believes that having a sense of the place one lives in is very important.

"I find value in the fact that I feel much more connected to UD as a campus now," she said. "I love looking at a building and knowing it used to be a pond or walking through the Ghetto and knowing that Rubicon creek used to be there and is now underground."