Partnership success story in Pennsylvania

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old booksOur public history program works to help students develop an understanding of the role that history can play in fostering a sense of community identity. We also train students to practice as responsible and ethical professionals. Service-learning opportunities provide the core pedagogical method for both these goals. As a supplement to courses that provide students with a firm grounding in the discipline’s methods, working in and with community institutions encourages them to recognize the importance of the public historian’s greater role to the community as part of one’s professional responsibility. At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, internship requirements have long been the proving ground for the success of such instruction.

Over the past few years, our graduate program developed a very important partnership to blend method and service-learning in a classroom instruction framework. Our partnership with the Historical and Genealogical Society of Indiana County, Pennsylvania, allows students the opportunity to receive hands-on instruction in archival methods as they learn of and practice the public historian’s obligation to a community.

Students work with unprocessed collections provided by the HGSIC and housed in our public history lab. They receive instruction on archival theory and practice as they process their collection. To provide proper finding aids students are required to spend considerable time at the HGSIC conducting background research on their collection. In the process they interact with the director, numerous volunteers, and community members which comprise the bulk of the HGSIC’s patrons.

This partnership has fostered a spirit of civic engagement in our students. Though their work they built relationships with the HGSIC staff. Through their research, often guided by staff, they became personally connected not only to the collection, but to the community and its history. Students gained perspective into how a community engages its past, and who is often responsible for preserving, presenting and interpreting that past. They walked away with an appreciation of the public historian’s obligations – not only to the profession or their given job, but also to the community in which they reside. As a result of their experiences, two students are pursuing an additional internship with the historical society in the spring semester.

Student reflections on their experience support this. One student noted that the public historian has a responsibility to “create a sense of place … a welcoming place for future residents and visitors, and a collective identity that the community can share.” Another student found the experience beneficial as he felt that their work “had meaning” not only to his own learning, but as valued by the HGSIC. He also found it to be a perfect blend of instruction and practice. He noted that the experience “harkened back to the readings about community and access. They [HGSIC personnel] were thrilled to have people looking at what they had, and I couldn’t help but be thrilled along with them.”

On a technical level all involved did benefit tremendously from the experience. Students received the hands-on experience of working with an historical manuscript collection in the controlled environment of a formal classroom and instructional laboratory. It is “real world” experience going beyond the initial “artificial collection” introductory model. The HGSIC received research-ready collections, which put a small dent in the (seemingly endless) backlog of accessioned materials. Our program and its faculty enjoy a relationship with a wonderful institution staffed largely by dedicated volunteers who care deeply for their community.

After much planning, the project was implemented in spring 2011. The class comprised first year graduate students. If there was any doubt that the success was temporary to the semester experience, it was allayed by the discussion of students’ summer activities. In addition to internships and summer jobs, a number of them volunteered at their local historical societies.

In all, we find this partnership to be a success. One student summed up what most had expressed in other ways when she said, “I knew I was doing something positive for both the historical society as well as the community of Indiana in general.” Knowing they will take this sense of civic responsibility with them is as important as knowing they have the proper technical training. For more on IUP’s public history program’s activities see our blog.

~ Jeanine Mazak-Kahne, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

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