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Dr. Roland Holroyd Collection

 Collection
Identifier: UA-01-055

Scope and Contents

This collection contains the documents of Dr. Roland Holroyd, who was the driving force behind the development of La Salle University’s Biology Department. These documents include course material, department papers, publications, correspondence, and photographs. The Academic Material series is comprised of lecture notes from when Holroyd was a student at the University of Pennsylvania and notes from when he was teaching at La Salle University. It also includes course schedules, midterm and final exam, tests, handouts, and final student grades. The latter has been separated from the other materials and is restricted. The bulk of the courses focus on biology, botany, and genetics. Academic Material series contains some sensitive material in the form of final grades of students. These have been separated from the other materials and should be restricted. The department papers include registration information and information on the professors in the department. The Correspondence series includes writings from colleagues of Holroyd who sent him letters and certificates that Holroyd himself received. The Journals and Publications series contains publications that were also sent to him from his colleagues. These publications are from 1899 to around 1973 and they touch on the plant life from different parts of the world. Two photographs were found in the collection; one is a photo of an unknown group, the second is of a La Salle graduate preforming surgery on a U.S. submarine during World War II. The Travel series contains maps, postcards and souvenirs from Holroyd's international trips. Finally, the Personal collection contains religious materials that belonged to Dr. Holroyd as well as a family crest. When processing this collection, it was determined that the order the collection arrived to the archives was not created for the archives, it was more of someone cleaning out an office and putting the contents into boxes. Taking this into consideration the material found was re-ordered in a way that would make sense. However, if documents were found to be filed in a certain way by Dr. Holroyd, those documents were kept in the original filing order.

Dates

  • 1904 - 1985

Conditions Governing Access

For the most part, the collection is open for research use. There are two folders of Exam Grades that have been restricted. These are located in the Academic Material series under the Class Materials subseries.

Biographical / Historical

Originally born in England, Dr. Roland Holroyd began teaching biology at La Salle in 1920. Prior to holding his position at La Salle, he was an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania. For a while, he taught part time at University of Pennsylvania and at La Salle. Eventually, he taught at La Salle exclusively. Over the course of his career, he went on several botanical trips to places like Europe, the Arctic, South America and Australia. He cobbled his findings together into a lecture series that he delivered after the fact. In 1961, he and Dr. Joseph Flubacher were the first to receive a Lindback award at La Salle. Dr. Holroyd retired in 1973. Despite being a devout Episcopalian, Dr. Holroyd was given an honorary membership to the Christian Brothers. After dying in 1985, he was buried at the Brothers Cemetery in Ammendale, Maryland. Dr. Holroyd was a beloved instructor who had two yearbooks dedicated to him. Today, Dr. Holroyd has a science building named in his honor on campus.

Extent

5.5 Linear Feet (5 boxes)

Language of Materials

English

Arrangement

This collection has been organized by series. Upon processing, there was no clear order intended in the filing system overall. Therefore, the boxes are arranged physically in series order and are divided into subseries within each series. There is one exception to this: in one case a folder in the Correspondence subseries appears towards the end of the Class Materials subseries within the Academic Material series. This particular piece of Correspondence relates to ordering a set of histological slides that was used in Holroyd's class.

Title
UA.01.055 - Dr. Roland Holroyd Collection
Author
Finding aid prepared by Alex Palma Finding aid updated to combine UA.01.055.01 and UA.01.055.02 by Kelsey Duinkerken, April 2022
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin

Repository Details

Part of the La Salle University Archives Repository

Contact:
1900 West Olney Avenue
Philadelphia PA 19141 United States