Because the official record of the college is silent about behavior of women students, this is a gap which can only be filled through interviews with those who were present. This person also died shortly after this research was completed. For both of these studies, former students and staff members provided information which could not have been recorded originally, either because of political concerns or because it simply takes time to understand the historical process through which one has lived. Some of these informants are now more than 80 years old. Their advancing age provides the most urgent argument for undertaking historical research now.
Historical research provides an accurate basis for current decisions.
Historical research is merely storytelling if it fails to comment on current events and present-day decisions. The history of women at Magnolia State University revealed that curricular decisions were never gender-neutral. The number of women at the university grew sharply for the first time in the 1950s when the College of Arts and Sciences was created and the institution committed to becoming a comprehensive university. In the 1990s Magnolia State began strategic planning with the idea of returning to the traditional land-grant curricula of agriculture and engineering. None of the decision makers considered the impact of such a decision on the number of women at the university, until this historical research was brought to their attention.