The Collegian

Issue date: 4/3/08 Section: Features

After a year working for Wells Fargo Financial, Joy Thiessen '06 wanted to come back to Hillsdale College to study music in preparation for graduate school. But she needed a temporary job, and she got one.

But not just any temporary job.

Joy had worked with the President's Club office during her undergraduate years at the college, and she said she got in touch with one of her contacts there, who directed her to Mossey Library Director Dan Knoch.

Knoch needed someone to prepare the college's newly acquired Alwin C. Carus Coin Collection for display and use - a task that would take approximately a year and a half.

"There's so much symbolism going on," Joy said of working with the coins. "There's so much work going on to determine what type of image goes on the coin. It's also a unique thing. In general, you can't hold anything tangible from 300 B.C. I think that's something very unique about coin history, something that's so much more real than just reading about what happened."

Joy, hired in February 2007, is now the coordinating mastermind behind the coin collection. She researches each of the approximately 850 coins in the collection, catalogs and photographs them, then puts them in an online database, and sometimes travels to conventions with the coins.

"I guess the most interesting thing is, I've learned how much more history is shown through coinage," Joy said. "I guess you take it for granted, but it's interesting to see how many details are on specific coins and how much significance they have toward what was going on at that time - with ancient coins, they had the ruler or something going on the back of the coin that depicted what was going on at the time."

Joy's job also involved designing a case to display both sides of the coins, a task she found to be a unique challenge. The case she designed, which now displays approximately 100 of the coins, is in the library's Heritage Room.

Joy said she thinks her minor in classics has helped with the coinage research because of her interest in ancient history. Her sister, sophomore Emily Thiessen, said Joy is well suited to the job because of her detail-oriented nature.

Though she still plans on pursuing a career in music and not coinage history, Joy said she appreciates the opportunity to refine her research skills.

"It gave her a really good opportunity to work at a job she enjoyed with people she loved and loved her," Emily said. "And she figured out more what she wanted to do from there, even if it's not related to her job."


Click here to see the Alwin C. coin collection.

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