Public History major reveals different opportunities

Many people don't understand the importance of a public historian. Most don't even know what a public historian does. A relatively new public history program at UW-Whitewater is helping promote the interesting side of history to students across campus.

In 2001, Associate Professors of History Tony Gulig and Nikki Mandell formed the public history program at UW-Whitewater, the only such program in the state. The program began as a minor, but strong student interest allowed it to become a major in 2002.

Many students in the public history program are education majors, but there are lots of different routes graduates can take from the public history program. Archival management and hands-on work like a museum curator are careers related to public history.

"It's a small but growing program at UW-Whitewater, and the recent addition of Rebecca Shrum to the public history program will help the growth," Gulig said.

Rebecca Shrum brings a lot from her background as a public historian to the UW-Whitewater program. While working on her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina, Shrum also earned a graduate certificate in museum management and gained public history experience by working as a museum curator.

"The most important part of being a curator is helping people understand how what they're seeing fits into larger historical stories," Shrum said. "It's about crystallizing the critical information and telling stories with objects, visual images and text."

At the Hampton-Preston Mansion in Columbia, S.C., Shrum curated the exhibit, "Home to Many People: The Story of the Hampton-Preston Estate." The exhibit examines the culture and institution of urban slavery, establishing the importance of the lives of enslaved people of African descent in early Columbia, and incorporates their stories into the mansion's presentation of its history.

She also was an exhibit script writer for the traveling exhibit, "Pets in America: The Story of Our Lives with Animals at Home." It situates American pet keeping within wider historical and cultural changes and encourages visitors to evaluate their own relationships with and responsibilities to animals.

Shrum is a member of organizations such as the American Historical Association, American Studies Association, National Council on Public History, Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association, among other professional organizations.

While she is teaching a number of classes this semester, Shrum is planning to develop an introduction to public history course for the 2008-09 school year. The goal of the course will be to introduce students to the work of and issues faced by historians working in the public arena (museums, historic preservation, archives, oral history, digital history and film).

"The largest misconception about majoring in public history is that there aren't many career opportunities," Shrum said. She plans to introduce more students to the many career paths open to students interested in the study of public history.

This idea of limited career opportunities is indeed a misconception, as students at UW-Whitewater have no trouble finding internships in different areas of public history. While many departments encourage students to complete an internship before graduating, the public history department requires an internship. Students have interned in locations such as Milwaukee, Rock County and Whitewater.

"The site supervisors at these internships are always impressed with our students," Gulig said. "This helps with admission to graduate school and future employment."

Amanda Brzinski, a senior public history major, spent her summer working at Old World Wisconsin as a costumed interpreter. Located in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, Old World Wisconsin is the largest outdoor museum of rural life in the United States and showcases the lives and times of Wisconsin pioneers with 65 historic buildings.

As a costumed interpreter, Brzinski worked mainly with the public and informed visitors of the history of the different buildings and about life in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

"I cooked on a wood burning stove, made butter, sewed, washed and spun wool, and I even got to make my first pie from scratch there," she said. "Cooking on a wood burning stove was one of the activities that I did the most. It is a lot easier to cook on a wood burning stove than a modern day one!"

As a public history major, Brzinski's internship at Old World Wisconsin was beneficial to her in many different ways. She learned more about working as a public historian and learned about the problems outdoor museums face.

"The job of a public historian is to try and give people a better understanding of life in the past," she said. "At Old World Wisconsin, we allowed people to step out of the 21st century and into the past. We cooked with random measurements, kept the fire going, watered the garden can by can and allowed people to view these activities and to join in. We all got a better understanding of how tough, yet oddly simple, life used to be."

Mike Hickey, also a senior public history major, spent his summer working as an intern in Library Archives in the UW-Whitewater Library. During his internship, Hickey researched information on campus life during the 1960s and 1970s to report on how students, professors and administration shaped the way campus life is today. This included looking through old issues of the Royal Purple student newspaper and local newspapers and interviewing people who were on campus during the 1960s and 1970s. After he conducted the necessary research, Hickey wrote a paper that brought together everything he found.

The main project Hickey researched was "The Whitewater Four." According to Hickey's research, in the late 1960s, some professors did not want the ROTC present on campus and voted to have them removed.

"These professors felt that a university was to train the mind and not to train students to fight," Hickey said.

The professors who voted against the ROTC didn't receive salary adjustments that year. These professors were also very sympathetic to African-American students on campus and faced problems from other faculty and administration about this. Among these professors was the English department chair who spoke openly about these problems and was later dismissed as the department chair.

"This was done unfairly, and much of the campus conducted protests in response to this," Hickey said. "There were four professors that helped the students out, and then they were all suspended."

Ultimately, one professor was fired, one quit and the other two were put on research assignments for the next year and did not receive any salary adjustments for the next two years. This information, along with other information Hickey gathered, will be kept in Library Archives for future use.

Hickey left his internship with benefits to his public history major and to his personal life. "The thing I got most out of my internship was the ability to go out and interview the people that were involved with my research," he said. "I was nervous about being able to conduct interviews and have them work out. I had never done that before, and now I know that I have that kind of ability. The next time that I interview someone, I will feel more confident and prepared."