Developing a Public History Program
by Cynthia Brandimarte
At the recent joint meeting of the Organization of American Historians and the National Council on Public History (along with the Missouri Conference on History), which took place in St. Louis from March 30 through April 2, participants had their choice of a good variety of presentations and sessions on the topic of public history. One panel titled "Developing a Public History Program" attracted those people whose departments are
thinking of launching such a program, and provided a checklist for those whose departments already have one.Jon Hunner of New Mexico State University's Public History Program organized the well-attended session, inviting presenters from both new and long established programs to talk about their experiences. As the beginner in the group and director of a public history program established in 1998, I led off with a description of Southwest Texas State University's new program, sharing the success of some of our early projects as well as a cautionary word about trying to do too much in any one course. As is true in most places, the Public History program in my department is led by only one faculty member, but one strategy for enlarging a one-person program is to identify allies in other departments and in nearby public history institutions – people who can teach related courses, supervise internships and independent studies, and otherwise support the program’s goals -- and to cultivate those connections. While trained as historians, public historians working in an academic setting will always have a policy function in addition to teaching loads. I also addressed the kinds of professional experiences in the public history sector -- contract work in environmental and archeology firms, museum and historical society responsibilities, and historic preservation and cultural resource management work, plus a good publication record, including technical reports, journal articles, and books -- that help to qualify an historian to lead a public history program.
Next, veteran Barbara Howe of West Virginia University in Morgantown described her method of teaching the introductory public history class: in her program, students work together in teams; they conceptualize their projects themselves; and they meet with the clients involved with the project. Samples of some of her students' work included preparing site interpretation plans, documenting an historic site at a 4H Club, and designing waysides for a rail trail. One of her Historic Preservation classes created a website of recommended design guidelines for the community’s owners of early 20th-century houses. Her program also has a successful internship program whose guidelines have been refined over the years, and Howe distributed those to the audience.
Connie Schultz and Robert Weyeneth represented the University of South Carolina's Public History Program, which began in 1975. One of the earliest such programs, it is also among the largest. Unlike the many programs that have one public history staff member, USC's History Department has three faculty positions: Schultz teaches the Archives track, Robert Weyeneth leads the historic preservation track, and Katherine Grier directs the material culture and museum studies track. Each year the program accepts approximately 15 students, and has a total of 30 students with both first and second year classes. USC's History Department also offers a Ph.D. and some doctoral students select one area of public history as part of their course work.
Jon Hunner followed. He has been New Mexico State University's Public History Program Director for five years, a program started earlier by Joan Jensen. He spoke about the merits of generalist public history training that equips his graduates with many skills adaptable to the broad field of public history. In addition to the introductory class, Hunner teaches courses on oral history, historic preservation, and historical editing. NMSU's Anthropology Department also offers courses in Cultural Resource Management and in museums, which the public history students may take. The university has just hired another history faculty member who will teach historic preservation courses.
Noel Stowe, the final panelist, profiled his large program at Arizona State University in Tempe. He advised any department considering beginning a public history program to ask themselves a series of questions: what is your niche – what role will you fill in your local, state or regional public history community? How healthy are your networks within that community? are you up to date on relevant historiography? what are the philosophical underpinnings of the new program? and how does the public history program relate to the needs, strengths and priorities History department? How does it benefit the department? Stowe further recommended bringing public historians to campus to teach short courses and to write grants to benefit the program.
After the informal presentations, panelists welcomed questions from the audience. Questions probed the nature and operation of public history teaching in an academic setting. Schultz and Weyeneth stressed that any department hoping to establish a program consider the need for adequate library resources pertaining to public history fields, travel to conferences, professional development, and administrative support for the public history faculty, plus the necessity of offering fellowships and graderships and funding fieldwork and travel to conferences for the graduate students. In response to Hunner’s observation that public history projects don’t always generate products that one might publish in an academic journal, which can pose problems for pre-tenure faculty, audience members raised the subject of tenure and promotion guidelines that recognize the special requirements of those teaching in public history programs; in reply, Schulz described USC’s effort to address those issues, including, for example how to evaluate technical reports or museum exhibitions vis a vis publications. The panelists also described what they termed "the extended work week" of a public historian in academics -- writing grants, nurturing networks, locating internships, advising graduate students – all part of the programmatic function. Howe summarized that in her program, she strives to teach them that there is a value to what they know whatever course they pursue in life; she aims for students to learn to be good citizens and good volunteers, as well as (if they pursue careersi in public history) good historians.
The substantive and lively Friday morning session proved an excellent introduction to the topics and issues that would be raised over the remainder of the weekend.
Cynthia Brandimarte
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos
Originially published in the CCWH Newsletter, Summer 2000 (volume 31, number 2).