A Mississippi River campus where Beverly Stadum's scholarship found its public voice.
Beverly's academic journey led her into social work and history, eventually bringing her to a faculty position in the Department of Social Work at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River. From this base she published Poor Women and Their Families: Hard Working Charity Cases, 1900–1930 (SUNY Press, 1992) and scholarly articles on child labor reform and Duluth's Travelers Aid services, establishing herself as a historian who listened carefully to the voices of marginalized women in the archives.
St. Cloud State gave Beverly an institutional home that matched the ambitions of her research. The Department of Social Work grounded her in both the practical and historical dimensions of social welfare — a combination that shaped the lens through which she read case records, charity organization files, and the personal testimonies of women who rarely made it into the official record.
Beverly grew up in Rugby, North Dakota as the daughter of Palmer and Signe Stadum, and carried that Plains upbringing into her understanding of poverty, labor, and community. Her academic career at St. Cloud State represents one strand of a life that also included family archival work and, eventually, a move to Norway.