A Professional Home in Minnesota

Beverly Stadum — daughter of Palmer and Signe, born in 1945 in Rugby, North Dakota — built her academic career on the faculty of the Department of Social Work at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Her academic journey led her into social work and history. From her faculty position at St. Cloud State, she established herself as a social welfare historian and scholar of women, families, and poverty — a historian who listened carefully to the voices of marginalized women in the archives.

The era connects the family's North Dakota roots to a Minnesota academic life: research grounded in Minneapolis charity case records, Duluth Travelers Aid programs, and the practical structures of family and community survival in the early twentieth century.

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Beverly's St. Cloud State career connected North Dakota origins to Minnesota academic life and the Midwest cities at the heart of her research.

St. Cloud sits on the Mississippi River in central Minnesota. Her research reached north to Duluth — where she studied Travelers Aid programs — and south to Minneapolis, where she drew on early-century charity case records for Poor Women and Their Families. Rugby, North Dakota anchors her family origin.