The successes of the progressive movement in early 20th-century America will be recounted at Pennsylvania College of Technology on April 9, when Dr. Susan Leighow Meo, a Commonwealth Speaker for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, presents "Crusaders of the Progressive Movement."
The Focus Semester 2002 program, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 8 p.m. in Penn's Inn at the Bush Campus Center at Penn College.
Meo, an associate professor of history at Shippensburg University, will speak about a turbulent era in which Americans dealt with governmental corruption, poverty, pollution and many other problems.
She will describe how, within a decade, the efforts of progressive reformers helped clean up municipal governments and establish worker's-compensation laws, a system of national parks and a City Beautiful Movement, among other accomplishments.
Meo, who earned doctoral and master's degrees form the University of Pittsburgh and Kutztown University, was a "scholar in residence" at the Pennsylvania State Archives in 2001.
Previously, she served the Pennsylvania Humanities Council as a discussion leader for the "Homefront USA" book program in 1997-98 and as a member of the Commonwealth Speakers Program in 1996-97.