Roy A. Waggener Papers, 1918-1969 | Carleton College Archives

This collection holds the personal and professional papers of Roy A. Waggener, professor of zoology at Carleton from 1928-55.  Born in 1890 in Missouri, he earned his B.A. from LaGrange College in 1916, his M.A. from Brown in 1917, and his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1927.  Before coming th Carleton, Waggener served as a high school superintendent, held the position of assistant professor of Biology at Brown, and taught summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Cold Springs, New York.

Waggener wrote his Ph.D. thesis on "An Experimental and Histological Study of the Parathyroids in Anura," and his research centered on endocrinology, his­tology, and physiology.  His groundbreaking work on the thyroid in the early thirties is especially noteworthy.  The collection contains some of his research and many of his articles; his handwriting and notes are easily legible.  There is even some work that appears never to have been published.

Waggener kept prodigous notes on all the classes he took and all the classes he taught:  these make up the bulk of the collection.  The provenance of some of this material is unclear, and many of his notes cannot be positively indetified as to place, date, or course.  Despite this problem, this collection could be useful in documenting the development of zoology and the teaching styles employed over these forty years.

Unfortunately, the collection does not have much information about the growth of the sciences at this time both at Carleton and in general.  Neither does the collection have much about the organization or content of the natural science curriculum at Carleton during the years of its genesis, even though he oversaw the creation of the department of zoology in 1931.  And for such a lengthy and distinguished research career, the collection does not have much cor­respondence between Waggener and his colleagues.  The collection does contain some administrative, personal and routine papers, ranging from letters to his friends to order forms for lab animals to income tax forms.  The collection also holds several papers pertaining to Waggeners wife, Nelle Elizabeth Thompson.  All of these can be used to get a sense of what life for a Carleton professor and his wife was like in the thirties and forties.