History Student Internships

Loyolans were busy over the summer and last academic year with not only traditional coursework, but internships. Undergraduate and graduate students participated in internships to further their education outside the classroom at places such as the National Hellenic Museum, Illinois Humanities, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Read on to hear from some of our students on their internships and experiences outside Loyola’s walls.

Undergraduates

Maysie Richter interned at the Crystal Lake Historical Society. Maysie's largest project involved digitizing over 1000 birth and death certificates dating back to the early 1900s. She also organized information regarding Heritage Tours; rearranged, organized, and filed over 350 files detailing buildings and structures within Crystal Lake; and provided support in hosting the Midsommar Festival at the Colonel Palmer House. You can read more about Maysie experience at the Crystal Lake Historical Society on her blog!

Stephen DeCaluwe worked as a production assistant at the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. This internship allowed Stephen to blend his majors, History and Film, seamlessly. Stephen helped create weekly shows for WTTW including Pritzker Military Presents and Citizen Soldier. Stephen also worked on in-house programming, mostly with the Pritzker’s newest exhibit: D-Day +75. Stephen recommends the Pritzker Military Museum and Library as an internship opportunity for its wealth of hands-on experience.

James Rubino interned with Dr. Bucholz working on several different projects. James transcribed portions of Dr. Bucholz’s newly expanded Database of Court Officers: 1660-1837 into an Excel spreadsheet to create graphs of the data. James has continued his internship with Dr. Bucholz with research on primary sources as part of a new database. He has really appreciated this opportunity to improve on his inference and cursive skills! James felt his time with Dr. Bucholz “has really helped me better understand my strengths as a scholar on top of being part of something that I feel proud and lucky to be a part of.”

Graduates

Ella Wagner, PhD candidate, received a fellowship over the summer as part of the Humanities Without Walls collaboration through the Mellon Foundation. Ella took part in the three week long, Pre-Doctoral Workshop, which offers sessions for doctoral students in the humanities who are seeking careers outside of academia. The program had about thirty students from various universities and various fields like history, English, anthropology, and performance studies. Each session featured professionals working in the humanities, but outside of the academy such as think tanks, museums, foundations, and standardized test development. The program also offered hands-on workshops for building resumes, interviewing, and curating an online presence.

Ella appreciated the chance to be part of this program as she “has always planned on having a career outside academia, but it was really useful to broaden my picture of what that might look like, and to talk to the presenters and the other participants about how the mindsets we develop as humanities scholars are useful to the world beyond the university.”

Hannah Overstreet, MA in Public History student, served as the Daughters of the American Revolution - Fort Dearborn Collections Intern at the Frances Willard House Museum. Hannah’s main role over the summer included curating, designing, and installing a temporary exhibit in the front rooms of the Frances Willard House Museum. Hannah decided to center the exhibit around women and Prohibition as part of the centennial of the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment. The exhibit, "Women and Prohibition: 'A War of Mothers and Daughters, Sisters and Wives'" spans from the 1880s to 1920 and showcases items from the Frances Willard Archives and collections, including a pen used to sign the Eighteenth Amendment and some original Polyglot Petitions circulated to raise support for temperance. Hannah also wanted to focus on the house itself in the exhibit as Frances Willard’s home served as the headquarters for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

Reflecting on the creation of “Women and Prohibition”, Hannah found it “fascinating to do so much research on a topic people have such strong associations with. A century later, it's strange to think that people cared so much about this particular single issue, but in researching and writing for the exhibit, I discovered how much temperance had to do with other issues of its time, not to mention issues we still face today - immigration, public health, and gender, for example. Creating "Women and Prohibition" was also a great opportunity to connect Frances Willard's life with the political and social world around her as well as to explore the impact she continued to have after her death in 1890. This was my first time curating an exhibit solo, and I definitely learned a lot, including why exhibits are more often team projects! There are already things that I would probably do differently, but I hope that "Women and Prohibition" sheds a little light on a topic that is much more complex than it appears on the surface.”

Public History MA student, Austin Sundstrom, interned as a historical interpreter at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. Austin led a 30 and 45 minute interpretive walking tour at the Fredericksburg battlefield (Sunken Road) and Spotsylvania battlefield (Bloody Angle). In addition to these tours, Austin also staffed the visitor center where he conducted in-depth ancestor research for visitors helping them find ancestors who fought in the four battles that made up the park and where they were now.

“By far my favorite part of the internship was giving the tours and helping the visitors plan their trips and doing ancestor research for them because it allowed for me to deep dive into battles I was not used to studying. The internship was integral to my professional development because it allows me to gain a massive amount of hands on experience which will help me when applying for interpretive park ranger positions with the National Park Service.”