New digital collection: History of UW-Stout

A new digital collection from the University of Wisconsin-Stout Archives looks at more than a century of vocational education in northwest Wisconsin. In 1891, James Huff Stout, heir to the Knapp, Stout and Company lumber fortune, established the Stout Manual Training School in his home city of Menomonie. As the school grew, its name changed several times — to the Stout Institute, Stout State College, and later Stout State University — but practical manual training remained its core focus. In 1971, the school was incorporated into the University of Wisconsin System as UW-Stout, with a mission statement dedicated to instruction in “industry, technology, home economics, applied art, teacher education and the helping professions.”

The Archives at UW-Stout, led by University Archivist Heather Stecklein, recently collaborated with the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center to share online more than 500 photographs illustrating the history of manual training, industrial arts, and domestic science at Stout. This collection can now be discovered through Recollection Wisconsin.

Read more about this project on the Recollection Wisconsin website.
Browse and search the History of UW-Stout digital collection.