HISTPRES is the best online source for employment and internship opportunities for young and emerging professionals. We also post fellowships, grants, calls for papers, lectures/workshops + events. HISTPRES is the online community for young preservationists.
HISTPRES is more than a resource for employment posts, we offer a Career Consultation service to maximize your preservation resume. We get to know your preservation personality, your career goals, geographic preferences, and help you highlight your most desirable skills. In the case of HISTPRES, you get six extra sets (Meagan wears glasses), of highly trained eyes, on your most crucial application a materials. Because we spend our free time looking at employment opportunities and their most commonly requested qualifications, we know what employers seek in their new hires. We will also hook you up an email full of custom job suggestions.
HISTPRES readers find the site to be a vital portal to the many interesting and unique preservation opportunities available, personally selected by two young preservationists themselves. If you have comments or suggestions, or if we’ve helped you find a job, please use the contact page to let us know or email info@histpres.com.
Laura Burghardt
Welcome to HISTPRES! Prior to and after my graduation from the Master of Science program in Historic Preservation with the College of Charleston and Clemson University, I did some serious online job searching. After a few months of searching and applying to jobs daily, I had perfected the science of finding job opportunities online. When I landed a preservation job, I didn’t want my job search methods and research to go to waste. It is for this reason that Meagan and I decided to create HISTPRES. Historic preservation is such a broad field, which includes so many career paths. Here at HISTPRES we bring together opportunities from all of these fields so that you can explore and apply to jobs that you find interesting without having to go through an endless online search. Our site is tailored to young preservationists, so you won’t see job postings that require 10 or 15 years experience. Although online job postings are an incredible resource, do not discredit the importance of networking!
I grew up in western North Carolina and decided to make a big move to Tempe, Arizona, to attend Arizona State University in 2004. I started out in the architecture program, but quickly discovered that modern design was not my thing. I switched over to archaeology and enjoyed every class that I took, including my favorite class, Buried Cities and Lost Tribes. Summer of 2006 I had the opportunity to participate in a dig in North Carolina at the Berry Site with Warren Wilson College. That same summer, I worked as a Park Guide at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. I absolutely enjoyed working for the National Park Service, and it was one of the best job experiences I have had thus far. In college I worked in a lab at ASU with artifacts from Cerro Portezuelo in Mexico. While in Arizona, I traveled throughout the Southwest, increasing my passion for the landscape and history of the region.
Early in life I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in historic preservation, and Charleston, South Carolina, was the ideal location for study in this field. While earning my Master of Science in Historic Preservation through the joint Graduate Program in Historic Preservation with Clemson University and the College of Charleston, I worked on a wide variety of projects with historic resources of several periods and styles. Please see my online resume and portfolio of work of completed as a graduate student at www.laura-burghardt.com. My internship in 2008 was through the National Council for Preservation Education at Yosemite National Park. While in Yosemite I measured and documented the Yosemite Museum for the Historic American Buildings Survey.
My master’s thesis research focused on the salvage and reuse of historical building elements within Charleston, South Carolina. I researched and documented over fifty individual elements (iron balconies, mantels, doors, etc.) moved from one building to another within Charleston between the 1920s and the present. Analysis of this research focused on the motives behind salvage and reuse, as well as the effects this preservation practice had on the city and its architectural identity. I presented my thesis research in 2010 at the Urban History Association‘s Fifth Biennial Conference in Las Vegas.
After graduation, I worked as Preservation Specialist with Joseph K. Oppermann – Architect, P.A., a small architecture firm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The firm specializes in the research, documentation, analysis, conservation, restoration, and adaptation of historic buildings and sites. In this position, I worked with outstanding buildings of national importance, including the Napoleon Bonaparte Broward House in Florida and the William R. Davie House in North Carolina.
In January 2011, I decided to return to the Southwest and moved to Tucson, Arizona. I attended the University of Arizona’s Archaeological Field School at University Indian Ruin and once again fell in love with archaeology. That fall, I enrolled in the University of Arizona‘s Master’s program in Applied Archaeology, focusing on the historical archaeology of the American West. During my first year at UA, I served as Technical Editor of the Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series, and worked as an Archives Technician at the National Park Service’s Western Archeological and Conservation Center, processing and cataloging cultural resources records for national parks through the West. During my spring semester of my first year at UA, I had the opportunity to work as an Archeological Technician at Tumacacori National Historical Park in southern Arizona, a National Park unit that protects three Spanish Colonial mission sites.
Everything changed in September 2012, when I was offered a term Archeologist position with the National Park Service at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. What an amazing opportunity! I am currently on a leave of absence from the graduate program at University of Arizona as I start my NPS career. The permanent Archeologist at San Antonio Missions is working hard to coordinate the nomination of the missions as a World Heritage Site. During this time, I am serving as the park Archeologist, working with cultural resources above and below ground at the park’s four Spanish Colonial mission sites.
Meagan Baco
This is one of the many adventures that Laura and I have embarked upon since meeting in graduate school in Charleston, South Carolina. My path to obtaining a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Clemson University and College of Charleston began with a simple internet search for history related graduate programs in Charleston – a reason why online resources for preservation opportunities are so important. Charleston was the first city – other than Buffalo, New York, where I was born and raised – in which I lived. Since that fateful move, I have lived in Seattle, Washington and traveled across our great nation twice!
As so many people do, I entered college with only a slight notion of what I wanted to major in. I took several classes in environmental science, geology, geography, etc and in an attempt to get a degree in something with a particular skill set and career path I entered the School of Architecture and Planning at the State University of New York at Buffalo. While learning about urban planning, I slowly realized that my interest was not in laying out the new urban spaces of cities but in appreciating and studying existing neighborhoods. Once this light switch turned on, I strung together earlier life experiences, such as family Sunday drives to cemeteries and walks to local corner stores, within the context of historic urban design. It is these memories that I selfishly desire to preserve, but in doing so ensure the next generation has the same opportunities.
My thesis research in Charleston focused on the history and function of the city’s commercial spine, King Street, and identified one-way to two-way street conversions as a economically viable method of main street preservation and revitalization. Beginning in the 1950s, automobile traffic and transportation planning has decimated American cities and towns but we are now at the point of righting these wrongs with new perspective on livable cities. This is the complicated way of saying: historic urban design improves quality of life. I had the opportunity to present my personal research on the positive affect of two-way traffic on the property values of King Street at the International Association of Business and Public Administration Disciplines conference in Memphis, Tennessee. Also, an honor of which I am extremely proud, I presented similar research on traffic calming methods at the annual meeting of the Association for Preservation Technology (APT) in Los Angeles, California, as one of the organizations Student Scholars. I also presented my research at the Preserving the Historic Road 2010 conference in Washington, DC in September 2010 and at the Urban History Association‘s Fifth Biennial Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, in October 2010.
I am a former Historic Preservation Specialst at Clinton Brown Company Architecture in downtown Buffalo, New York. It’s a small firm with big projects. As the leading historic preservation architecture firm in the area, CBCA provides their clients with historic research, National Register nominations, tax credit applications, construction documents and the expertise to make their projects successful.
Preservation as participation and activism has pushed me to be a founding member of Buffalo’s Young Preservationists, a new group that recently hosted a bash the nation’s young preservationists attending the National Preservation Conference in Buffalo! I am also challenging myself to start plein-air painting at historic sites with Painting for Preservation. Our first exhibition ART + PRESERVATION also opening during the Trust Conference.
Off-topic, but I also have a 1977 Puch Maxi moped.
