My deep interest in place-based history began with a landscape architecture course and a subsequent internship with National Geographic in 2003. Upon receiving English and Geography degrees from UC Berkeley in 2004, I joined the working world as a Managing Editor for a talented group of freelance marketing writers. In my free time, I moonlighted as a freelancer and quasi-historian - nights at San Francisco State University gaining an academic background, weekends volunteering at historic sites in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. In 2011, our volunteer group of 11 received the George and Helen Hartzog Volunteer Group Award by the National Park Service.

In 2011, I published my first book, Grossinger's: City of Refuge and Illusion, which explored the unique microcosm of a Catskills resort in the early 20th century. History has also inspired my photography: Richard Nickel, Edward Burtynsky, and New Topographics have played a significant role. Occasionally, these photos appear on my website.

I feel privileged to be part of the UMass Public History program, which is ideally located for my interest in 20th-century American History, particularly the landscapes of consumption in the early 20th century. I plan to pursue a career writing for the public or teaching.

I came to the UMass Public History Program all the way from Valdosta, Georgia. As a history major at Valdosta State University, I wrote an honors thesis examining the role of nostalgia in modern German film. This project introduced me to the powerful role of memory and its function in engaging the past from a present perspective. In the course of the project I also discovered the DEFA Film Library on the UMass campus and grew curious about the history program here. My interest in the field of public history grew when I began volunteering at the Valdosta State campus archives and got experience in digitization and display preparation. While a student in the program I worked as the program assistant for the partnership with Hanckock Shaker Village. I hope to focus my public history training on archives and to continue pursuing my interest in memory. I will also continue studying German history, especially the history of modern Germany and German film, and plan to work with Jon Olsen.

My interest in museums has roots in a childhood filled with family vacations to historic sites, national and state parks, and museums. The summer before my junior year at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, I began working at the Titanic exhibit for the Science Museum of Minnesota. This experience solidified my decision to pursue a career in museums. Later that year I worked as an exhibit design intern for the Northfield Historical Society. I researched, wrote, fabricated, and installed an exhibit on the Carnegie Library in Northfield, MN. That summer I interned for the Washington County Historical Society, where I worked at the Warden's House Museum, giving tours and developing a coloring book designed to teach fourth graders about local history. As a senior, I worked with the Northfield History Collaborative, a project that helped community partners to collect and digitize local history in a single online database.

I came to UMass because I wanted to study traditional history as well as public history, and this program offered me the opportunity to do both. While here, I continue to study the sectional conflict in nineteenth-century America, which has been a long-standing interest of mine, but I have been able to explore other interests, such as sense of place. I have also had the opportunity to work on an oral history project for the Music Department. In the summer of 2012, I worked as an intern in Development at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

I majored in American Studies at Wheaton College. During my senior year, I struggled to formulate a plan for life after graduation. Everything changed when I attended a non-profit job fair in the spring of 2006. A representative from the Nantucket Historical Association was there, recruiting historic interpreters to work for the upcoming season. On a whim, I decided to apply for the position. I had never worked at a museum or historic site before. However, I had experience in the performing arts, had studied history academically, and thought that leading interpretive tours (and living on Nantucket no less!) would be an interesting experience.

I was hired, and spent the summer leading tours at the Whaling Museum and several other historic properties. Towards the end of the summer, I was offered a permanent position as Senior Interpreter and Schools Coordinator. This proved to be an amazing opportunity, as it introduced me to the field of historic administration. I managed a staff of 35 interpreters, developed educational programs, recruited new staff, and managed the daily operations of several historic properties, including the Whaling Museum. I loved the job, and stayed for the next four years before coming to UMass.

The UMass Public History Program is a perfect fit, because it allows me to study twentieth-century American history (particularly the Cold War), while also doing coursework that will help prepare me for a career in historic administration. There is a great emphasis on learning both in and outside of the classroom, and a welcoming atmosphere that encourages collaboration among students.

In 2011, I collaborated with two colleagues to produce an exhibit titled "Becoming a Son of Great Barrington: W.E.B. Du Bois." The exhibit was displayed in the lobby of the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington until the spring of 2013. In the summer of 2011, I was an intern for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. I'll be working with the Curator of History and Research to help develop future exhibitions.

Currently, I'm working at the Mystic Seaport Museum as a Supervisor of Interpretation. I will be hiring, training, and evaluating the job performance of a portion of their guide staff. I'll also be developing some new initiatives to evaluate and improve the visitor experience, and make exhibits more accessible and visitor-friendly.

Stephania Villar received her B.A. in History from Pitzer College in California. At UMass, her academic interests were numerous, but her chosen fields were in Spanish Borderlands, World History, public memory, and perceptions of history. In the Spring of 2011, she conducted a semester long project for the Skinner Museum in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she and two other grad students helped create a Civil War exhibit which will remain on display throughout the sesquicentennial anniversary of the conflict. In the summer of 2011, Stephania interned at the Museo Casa Carlos Gardel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

After graduating from the UMass Public History program, Stephania accepted a position with the San Diego Air and Space Museum as an Assistant Archivist of Special Collections, where she will be processing and prepping Special Collections for digitization, developing finding guides for greater public access, and raising awareness of the collections through social media.

Elizabeth Bradley received her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in History and English. At UMass, her academic interests were in U.S. religious history; folklore; American regional identities; and the intersections of public history and community activism.

Upon graduation from the public history program, Elizabeth accepted a position as School Programs Educator at Wave Hill in the Bronx. There, she works with the Environmental Educator and the Forest Project Manager on creating and delivering programming for Pre-K to high school kids.

I am interested in museums for their ability to interpret history and culture to the public. I believe that objects can be particularly powerful in doing this, and my interest in material culture is rooted in that. My core interests are Early America and cultural history as well as American slavery. I am also fascinated by the ways that history is invoked over time in different ways, so historical memory and particularly the Colonial Revival are compelling subjects for me.

Before coming to UMass, I held jobs or internships at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the Powel House through the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, the Montgomery County Historical Society, and the Pearl S. Buck House.

My field work during the first year of the M.A. program included web exhibit on Omeka about the Second Pan-African Congress, which made use of the University Special Collections and Archives' valuable holdings in the W.E.B. Du Bois papers, as well as exhibit panels for an activity in the History Workshop at Historic Deerfield on local silkworm cultivation in the 19th Century. In summer 2011, I was awarded the Elizabeth Perkins Fellowship in Museum Practice and Research at Museum of Old York in Maine. While working at Old York, I cataloged and created a finding aid for a recently donated collection, held in the museum's archives. I also assisted with research inquiries in the library.

In late 2012, I accepted a position with the UMass, Amherst Office of Information Technologies as Security Communications Coordinator.

I first became interested in museums when I spent the summer after my freshman year of college working in the Furniture Study of the Yale University Art Gallery. I was already planning to be a history major, but I added material culture to my list of interests, taking several classes on American architecture and decorative arts and spending a summer as a Summer Fellow at Historic Deerfield. I also developed my love for archival research and writing while completing my senior essay on nineteenth-century American missionary children who were sent back to the U.S. to live, based on a collection of family papers at the Yale Divinity School Archives.

After graduating, I knew I wanted to continue doing history. I spent a year working at the New Haven Museum and Historical Society creating an online guide to their library's manuscript and photograph collections, as well as digitizing a large portion of their collections. I then moved down to Virginia to work as a researcher at Montpelier, the home of James and Dolley Madison, which is undergoing a massive restoration and refurnishing project. In these positions I gained valuable exposure to the world of archives and museums, seeing the challenges and excitement of the field firsthand. I discovered that I still love the process of historical research and finding ways to make history more accessible to the general public.

I chose UMass because I am interested in both traditional academic history and public history, and this program provides excellent opportunities in both areas. During the first year of the program, my field work included a women's history audio walking tour of the UMass campus for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and an exhibit on Elizabeth Freeman, a formerly enslaved woman whose 1781 freedom suit effectively ended slavery in Massachusetts. In the summer of 2011, I interned at the Newport Historical Society, giving walking tours and curating an exhibit on samplers.

Upon graduation I accepted a position as assistant curator George Washington's Mount Vernon, where I am researching the Washingtons' furnishings, developing exhibitions for our museum, coordinating the conservation and acquisition of eighteenth-century prints, assuming the persona of a room on Twitter (@MVNewRoom), and performing a multitude of other tasks related to Mount Vernon's collection.

I came to UMass to study early American history, and found that the study of Public History and the study of early American history worked very well together. I had already done some museum work years ago at the Astors' Beechwood Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and I found myself eager to do more. I also have an ongoing fascination with popular history, and the ways that the general public learns about history through theater, television, and the movies.

While studying at UMass I was involved in several different projects. In the spring of 2011, I collaborated with two colleagues to write a permanent exhibit for the Trustees of Reservations. This exhibit, which opened in August 2011 at the Ashley House in Sheffield, is on Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved woman from Massachusetts who won her freedom in court. During the summer of 2011, I led a program at the William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington, Massachusetts, in which local teenagers studied historic interpretation and then wrote a new landscape tour for the site. In the late spring and summer of 2012, I assisted in piloting a program called "Artifact Stories" in the Amherst area. During this program my partner and I took artifacts from the Amherst History Museum to several local senior centers and assisted living facilities. There, we gave the seniors a chance to learn about and examine the artifacts, and then asked them to reflect on what sorts of ideas or memories the artifacts brought up for them.

I am currently at Boston College as a PhD candidate in the History Department.

My introduction to public history came in the form of an undergraduate museum studies internship at Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea. As a history and secondary education major at Salve Regina University in historic Newport, RI, I was no stranger to museums and their potential to educate and inspire students of all ages. However, after my summer by the sea, I realized I wanted to pursue a graduate degree in public history as a means of blending my interests in education, history, and museums. I've been a public historian ever since. Over the past several years I've had the great privilege of working with museums and historical institutions across New England including Mystic Seaport, The Preservation Society of Newport County, The Newport Restoration Foundation, Historic Deerfield, Strawbery Banke Museum, and most recently, the Springfield Museums. I chose the UMass Public History Program for both for its reputation of combining theory and practice as well as its picturesque location in the heart of the historic Pioneer Valley. After completing the Public History certificate at UMass, I enrolled as a PhD candidate here, and I continue to work at the Springfield Museums as School Programs Assistant coordinating field trips, outreach programs, and teacher workshops, in addition to developing new educational programs.I hope to continue my work as a public historian working to bridge the gaps between K-12 education, academia, and museums through public programming, museum education, and curriculum development.

I entered the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA trying to decide between a major in either History or English. I chose History, but always kept English close. The intertwining of these two components became the basis for my undergraduate thesis, where I examined the role the written word played in the development of the political consciousness of Northern women during the Civil War. Upon graduation I wanted to maintain a focus in history, and an internship at Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, MA the summer before my senior year opened my eyes to all the opportunities museums offer to involve the public, from education and community outreach programs, to archives, to exhibits.

While looking for grad schools, I stumbled upon a program called Public History that actually focused on areas such as writing for all audiences and museum studies. The decision to apply to the well-established Public History program at UMass was an easy one. Here I could study the synthesis of history, literature, and culture that I found so fascinating, and learn more about how I can bring history to the public in an educational, engaging, and relevant way.

I now work as an Education Coordinator at the American Antiquarian Society and contribute to the AAS Blog, Past is Present.

When I graduated from college, I wanted to change the world.  I directed a program that provided housing for people with HIV and AIDS and worked to find creative funding solutions for nonprofit affordable housing for several years in central Connecticut.  A passion for education and community engagement led me to become involved in service-learning and campus community partnerships.  While working as service-learning coordinator at Berkshire Community College, I began taking courses in the UMass Public History program in 2002.  It was fun, stimulating and challenging; the faculty were (and are) interesting and engaged scholars and public history practitioners.  I ultimately entered the program full time with the intention of working on New England histories of deindustrialization.  Fate had a different agenda and I found myself in Northern Ireland, a place that has been important to me for many years, documenting memorial landscapes as a Public History intern.  When I finished my M.A., I decided to pursue a doctoral degree, exploring Irish history, urban history and the study of memory and historical consciousness.  I got to spend a lot of time in the complicated and wonderful city of Derry, Northern Ireland, which was the subject of my dissertation, “Once Again It Happens: Collective Remembrance and Irish Identity in Catholic Derry, Northern Ireland 1896-2008.”  After completing my degree, I accepted a position teaching public history at Salem State University.

Upon completion of the Public History program, I worked as Collections Technician for the Maine Historical Society, cataloging and assessing the Central Maine Power Company collection. CMP, which maintained its own museum until a recent corporate merger, donated the collection to MHS in 2002. The collection contains a little bit of everything relating to the development of the electrical power industry in Maine (and in general) during the 20th century, from a full hydro-electric generator, to early electric consumer goods such as washing machines and toasters, to meters and transmission-line equipment, to objects and ephemera relating to the internal life of the company. My job was to perform an object-level inventory, update the MHS databases, and assess the condition context of the objects with an eye towards consolidating this extensive and technical collection and shaping it to fit more fully within the Maine Historical Society's interpretive scheme.

In November of 2012, I accepted a position with the University of Alabama Museums and its Office of Archaeological Research.

Rich Colton entered the National Park Service as an historian hardly a month after completing a Masters in History with a Certificate in Public History from the History Department at UMASS/Amherst in May 2000. Springfield Armory National Historic Site, the museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, housing the national collection associated with the national armory production at that site of military rifles and muskets from the late 18th century until 1968, allows Richard to work in public history with an important national focus. His work is also extended to area school systems in both outreach and aiding curriculum (Richard received a Masters in Education just prior to entering the History Department). Within the museum, one of his major objectives is to bring before the public the many historical narratives of the people and times of this historic site that formed one of the earliest successful manifestations of American mechanized industrial production. As a National Park Service historian, Richard is also one of a close cadre of Park Service historians at sites throughout the nation. He recently had an industrial history of the Springfield Armory published [December 2008] as editor. The 350-page history, The Forge of Innovation, was originally a detailed study made for the NPS in 1989 by four of the best current industrial historians, Bob Gordon and Carolyn Cooper of Yale University, Pat Malone of Brown University, and Michael Raber. The volume remained at the Springfield Armory only in hard copy until Richard scanned, edited, and got Eastern National [the NPS publications and research arm] to fund publication. The volume is the most comprehensive history of the Armory for its full period of production.