Richard Louis Hauke was a Professor of Botany at the University of Rhode Island from 1959-1989. Born on April 28, 1930 in Detroit, Michigan, and educated in the Catholic schools there, he earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1952, received his M.A. in Botany from the University of California at Berkeley in 1954, and his Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1960.
Dr. Richard Hauke began teaching Botany at the University of Rhode Island in September, 1959. His principal area of research was the morphology, taxonomy and anatomy of the genus Equisetum (often called horsetails or scouring rushes). He took several sabbaticals to further his studies: Costa Rica, 1966-1967; University of Jordan, Fulbright Lecturer, 1973-1974; University of California at Berkeley, 1980; and Kenyatta University, Kenya, 1987-1988. Also of research interest to Dr. Hauke were botanists Agnes Arber, Edith Saunders, and Edmund Sinnott. The result of which was an article entitled "Vignettes from the History of Plant Morphology" available in the collection (see box 15B, folder 100) and on the web at http://members.aol.com/cefield/hauke/, accessed in May, 2001.
Professor Hauke served on various University committees including a term as vice-president of the Faculty Senate (1969-70). He was a founding member of the URI Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and served as president twice, remaining active until he retired in 1989, becoming Emeritus Professor of Botany, and moved to Atlanta to be with Kathleen. There he taught for an additional 10 years at Georgia State University. Professor Hauke belonged to many scientific societies including: The American Institute of Biological Sciences, Phi Sigma, The American Fern Society, Sigma Xi, The Botanical Society of America, The American Society of Plant Taxonomists, and The International Society of Plant Taxonomists. He was also elected to the honor society Phi Kappa Phi. He was particularly involved with the American Fern Society and held the offices of Treasurer, 1962-1965; Secretary, 1971-1973; Vice-President, 1976-1977; and President, 1978-1979.
Richard Hauke met Kathleen Armstrong at the Newman Catholic Center at the University of Michigan in February 1958. They were married on September 20, 1958. Together, they raised four children: Katherine (1960), Nellie (1962), Andrew (1967), and Henry (1968).
Kathleen Armstrong was born the middle of three daughters of a nurse and a pediatrician on August 27, 1935 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. As a girl she exhibited a talent for writing and was encouraged by her mother. As war brewed in 1940, changing the world, Kathleen's life changed when her father left the family and changed his medical specialty from pediatrics to anesthesiology in 1946. Kathleen's older sister had died of rheumatic fever in 1943. In 1949, her mother took a position as nurse/teacher at the Children's Hospital School in Eugene, Oregon, so Kathleen, her mother, and sister Nellie Ann moved West. In 1949 Kathleen began a family newsletter, The Jargonian, which continued until 1975. When she was 14, she persuaded the editor of the local newspaper, the Eugene Register-Guard to launch a weekly teen-age column, which she would write. It was called "Teeners Topics." The following year she was asked to add a second column "Teen of the Week." During the summer of 1951, her mother, while working on her Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, was killed in an automobile accident. Kathleen and her sister returned to Kalamazoo to live with their father and stepmother on her father's tree farm. She continued writing a teen-age column, "Teen Talk," in Kalamazoo, this time for the Kalamazoo Gazette. In 1953 she financed a trip to Europe with a series of 10 subscription newsletters which described her adventures. She postponed college for a year in order to work for Henry Holt publishers in New York. She saved her money and made her first trip to Africa, by freighter, in the fall of 1954. Kathleen earned her undergraduate degree in Journalism in 1958. While at the University of Michigan, she edited the Catholic students' newspaper. After earning her degree she married Richard Hauke and moved to Rhode Island where he began a position as an Assistant Professor of Botany. During Richard's 1967-1968 sabbatical in Costa Rica, Kathleen taught fifth grade at the Country Day School in San Jose, Costa Rica.
While Richard pursued interests in the academic community, Kathleen pursued her interests in promoting racial equality in education. In the1970's she was active in CANE (Citizens to Advance Negro Education), an organization founded to encourage and promote black students to pursue higher education. To that end, CANE established a day care center aimed at providing a preschool learning environment to encourage educational advancement in the black community. The CANE Day Care Center continues to thrive today. She edited the CANE Newsletter and, a tennis enthusiast, Kathleen founded the CANE tennis tournament in Kingston in 1969. She worked as a research assistant at Harvard University's Graduate School of Business (1971- 1972) for Professor Stuart A. Taylor, a URI graduate who, with Registrar Edmund Farrell, and communications director Polly Matzinger, had founded CANE in 1962.
Kathleen A. Hauke earned both her Master's Degree (1962) and Ph.D.(1981) in English from the University of Rhode Island. Her dissertation is entitled A Self-portrait of Langston Hughes. Kathleen was also a basketball enthusiast and in 1972 she wrote a privately-published chronicle of the first season of URI basketball coach, Claude English. (English was coincidentally one of Richard's former botany students.) Kathleen Hauke was asked to write an essay on Hughes' friend, Ted Poston, the first black to "make it" in mainstream journalism, for The Dictionary of Literary Biography. That project led to the work which consumed the rest of her trime: writing the biography, Ted Poston: Pioneer American Journalist, Athens: University of Georgia Press,1998. She also edited Poston's childhood short stories, The Dark Side of Hopkinsville (1991), and a collection of his best journalistic articles, First Draft of History (1999). She published essays on Charles S. Johnson and Frank London Brown for the Dictionary of Literary Biography (volumes 51 and 76); and on poet Julia Fields for The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1997). She moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1984, to teach a course at Emory University, then became an Assistant Professor of English at one of Atlanta's historically-black institutions, Morris Brown College, in 1985. She taught part-time courses while at Morris Brown at Georgia State University and at Spelman College. In 1987-88, she joined her husband on his sabbatical in Kenya. She taught that year at the University of Nairobi and at Kenyatta University, and during the spring break making her first trip to South Africa, before the fall of apartheid. In 1990, she left teaching in order to complete the research on and writing of her books. Kathleen's journals are at the Schlesinger Library, at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
During their time at URI, Richard and Kathleen Hauke saw a need within the University community for a place on campus in which Catholic students could gather as they had at the University of Michigan. To fill that need Professor Hauke, a devout Catholic, helped found the Catholic Center at URI. Although they were both active at Christ the King Church in Kingston, the Haukes were also good friends with Mary B. and John Hall, Rector of the Episcopal Chapel of Saint Augustine's located on Lower College Road. They and the Halls were active in CANE. Both couples adopted mixed-race children in 1968 and were founding members of the Rhode Island Families for Inter-Racial Adoption. He and Kathleen delivered sermons for the congregation of Saint Augustine's (see Manuscripts, box 15, folder 75 and Kathleen Hauke, Subject file, box folder 6).
The Haukes moved to Arlington, Virginia, in 1999 to be closer to their grandchildren. Richard runs the food pantry at St. Charles Borromeo Church, which serves needs of the poor. The papers of Richard L. and Kathleen A. Hauke offer a rich and interesting look into the life of an academic couple who devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge in their respective fields and in their dedication to equity in higher education.
Any qualified person doing scholarly research is permitted to use material housed in the Special Collections Unit.
Photocopying and scanning of materials is a fee based service available in the repository and is allowed at the discretion of the Archivist when in compliance to the Unit's policy on copyright and publication.
Guide to the Richard L. and Kathleen A. Hauke Papers, Mss. Gr. 68, University of Rhode Island.
The papers pertaining to Richard L. Hauke were given to Special Collections, University of Rhode Island by Professor Hauke upon his retiring in 1989. The papers contain correspondence, photographs, research notes for publications, lecture, and teaching materials used in the courses while a Professor of Botany at the University of Rhode Island.
In 1997 and in 1999 Professor Hauke sent an additional one linear foot of material to incorporate into his papers. These materials are mostly research materials for his publication relating to Agnes Arber, Edith Saunders, and Edmund Sinnott for Vignettes of Plant Morphology. The materials include photographs, slides and three micro audio cassettes of interviews with relatives of Edith Saunders and Agnes Arber. The interviews are accompanied by written transcripts. There is also an audio cassette tape of a talk given by Oz Tippo in 1987 (see box 15, folder 59), a distinguished Botanist who later became Provost and Chancellor at the University of Massachusetts. With the exception of a talk for the Southeastern Fern Conference: "Tales of an Itinerant Equisetologist," Oct 12, 1990 (Series IV, box 22,folder 26A), these research materials and publications were interfiled into Series II, Manuscripts, in May 2001.
In 1998 Nancy Potter, English Professor Emerita at the University of Rhode Island, received a small collection of papers and books from Kathleen Hauke to evaluate for research value. The collection was given by Dr. Potter to the Library. The books were cataloged into the circulating collection and the papers, consisting of travel journals to South Africa and other writings by Kathleen Hauke, were incorporated into the Hauke Papers, MSG #68 .In addition to the South African journals, the writings include "Notes From African Diary" written in 1955 and a typescript manuscript entitled "Biography of John Bilson, M.D" written in 1975. In March of 2002 Kathleen Hauke donated .25 linear feet of her papers to Special Collections and the collection was renamed the Richard L and Kathleen A. Hauke Papers.
The original collection was compiled by Joan M. Barnes in 1997. Subsequent additions to the collection necessitated a reorganization of the papers and an extensive revision of the register.
The collection is arranged into two sub-groups and seven series as follows:
The papers pertaining to Richard L. Hauke were given to Special Collections, University of Rhode Island by Professor Hauke upon his retiring in 1989. In March of 2002 Kathleen Hauke donated .25 linear feet of her papers to Special Collections and the collection was renamed the Richard L and Kathleen A. Hauke Papers.
Sub group 1, Richard L. Hauke, contains Series I, Subject File; Series II, Manuscripts; Series III, Botany Department; Series IV, Courses; Series V, Conference and Seminar Papers, and Series VI, National Science Foundation. The papers are arranged alphabetically within each series by folder title and chronologically within each folder.
Series I, Subject File, contains correspondence, records from committees within the University, correspondence and records pertaining to professional societies, and subjects of interest to Professor Hauke such as Nuclear Winter, Creationism, and Bioethics. There are also two folders on a survey of flora at the W. Alton Jones Campus (box 9, folders 76 & 77).
Series II, Manuscript, contains Hauke's publications, book manuscripts, research material, and his masters thesis. Most of his research dealt with the genus Equisetum (commonly known as horsetails). Of particular interest are the research materials relating to botanists Agnes Arber, Edith Saunders, and Edmund Sinnott. The resulting article entitled "Vignettes from the History of Plant Morphology" is available in the collection (see box 15B, folder 100) and on the web at http://members.aol.com/cefield/hauke/, accessed in May, 2001. Also in the Manuscripts series are drafts of sermons given by Professor Hauke for the congregation of the Episcopal Chapel of Saint Augustine's located Lower College Rd. in Kingston, Rhode Island. The Chapel serves as the Episcopal Center for the URI campus community.
Series III, Botany Department, contains materials dealing with Professor Hauke's functions within the Botany Department. The records include departmental correspondence and the agenda and minutes of the departmental meetings. This series also contains records kept by Professor Hauke while serving on the Merger Committee, Space Committee, Ranger Hall Renovation Committee, and the Safety Committee of which he was Chair. Of interest is the Merger Committee (box 17, folder 15) in which the merger of Plant Science, Botany, and Plant Pathology/ Entomology is explored. There are also memoranda concerning his work as Chair of the Greenhouse Committee within the Space Committee (box 18, folder 21). This series also contains Professor Hauke's peer reviews and access is by permission of the Archivist.
Series IV, Courses, contains course notes and general information for specific courses. Folders 20 and 21 contain class and grade record books and may be researched only by permission of the Archivist.
Series V, Conference and Seminar Papers, contains correspondence, papers, notes and drafts for talks given by Professor Hauke for seminars, lectures, and conferences.
Series VI, National Science Foundation, contains research proposals and the supporting documentation submitted for approval to the National Science Foundation.
This series contains records and correspondence that deal with Richard Hauke's activities and interests. Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by the sender or the receiver and then chronologically.
There are also records relating to the American Fern Society, Association of American University Professors (AAUP), the Faculty Senate, among other organizations in which Professor Hauke was active. Records relating to his Fulbright scholarships and sabbaticals are also located in this series. In addition, Professor Hauke had reference files on subjects of interest to him. These subjects include Nuclear Winter, Creationism, and Bioethics. There are also two folders on a survey of flora at the W. Alton Jones Campus (box 9, folders 76 & 77).
The subjects are arranged alphabetically within the series and chronologically within each folder.
This series contains Hauke's publications, book manuscripts, research material, and his masters thesis, "A Review of the Literature and a Study of the Anatomy of Stomata and Sheathes of Equesetum." Most of his research dealt with the genus Equisetum. Of particular interest are the research materials relating to botanists Agnes Arber, Edith Saunders, and Edmund Sinnott. This research resulted in an article entitled "Vignettes from the History of Plant Morphology" available in the collection (see box 15B, folder 100) and on the web at
Also in Manuscripts are drafts of sermons given by Professor Hauke for the congregation of the Episcopal Chapel of Saint Augustine's located on Lower College Rd. in Kingston, RI. The Chapel serves as the Episcopal Center for the URI campus community.
This series contains materials dealing with the Botany Department. The records include departmental correspondence and the agenda and minutes of the departmental meetings. There are also records of Professor Hauke's own Annual Peer Review and resume. This folder may be accessed by permission of the Archivist. This series also contains records kept by Professor Hauke while serving on the Merger Committee, Space Committee, Ranger Hall Renovation Committee, and the Safety Committee of which he was Chair. There are also memoranda concerning his work as Chair of the Greenhouse Committee within the Space Committee (box 18, folder 21).
The records are arranged alphabetically by subject and chronologically by date within folders.
This series contains syllabi and records of the courses that Professor Hauke taught. The records contain articles that dealt with the subject matter of the course, lecture notes and exams. The courses are arranged by their course code. Folders 21 and 22 which contain class grade/ record books may be accessed by permission of the Archivist.
This series contains correspondence, papers, notes and drafts for the talks and lectures presented by Professor Hauke for the American Fern Society, New England Fern Conference, and the Botanical Society of America, among others.
This series contains research proposals and supporting documentation submitted for approval to the National Science Foundation.
Sub group 2, Kathleen A. Hauke, contains one Subject File series. This series is comprised of writings by Kathleen A. Hauke. Of particular interest is her family newsletter, the Jargonian. She began writing it in 1949 and offers an interesting look into the life and thoughts of an intellectually mature teenaged girl during the post WWII years. She continued writing the Jargonian into her adult years. In addition there are "Notes From African Diary" written in 1955 (Jargonian), journals of tours to South Africa, and a typescript manuscript entitled "Biography of John Bilson, M.D" written in 1975. Another item of note is the CANE newsletter the first few issues which Kathleen Hauke edited. Citizens for the Advancement of Negro Education (CANE) was an organization created to stimulate educational opportunities for Black children. A result of CANE's work was the establishment of the CANE Day Care Center which continues to operate today. The issues of the newsletter document the struggle for racial equity in education which was a big part of campus life in the 1970s.
Prior to 1998, Kathleen Hauke donated about 1.75 linear feet of her journals to the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
This series is mostly comprised of writings by Kathleen A. Hauke. Of particular interest is her family newsletter, the Jargonian. She began writing her newsletter in 1949 and offers an interesting look into the life and thoughts of an intellectually mature teenaged girl during the post WWII years. She continued writing the Jargonian into her adult years. Of interest are "Notes From African Diary" written in 1955 (Jargonian, folder 9), journals of tours to South Africa, and a typescript manuscript entitled "Biography of John Bilson, M.D" written in 1975. Another item of note is the CANE newsletter the first few issues which Kathleen Hauke edited. Citizens for the Advancement of Negro Education (CANE) was an organization created to stimulate educational opportunities for Black children. A result of CANE's work was the establishment of the CANE Day Care Center which continues to operate today. The issues of the newsletter document the struggle for racial equity in education which was a big part of campus life in the 1970s.