It's in my blood...

Hello internet peoples!

I'm Skye Tryon, 4th year Museum Studies student. I grew up in the ROC and I've been around history my whole life, as my grandmother (Nonnie) is a genealogist and can tell you what clans I'm from in Ireland and Scotland, among other things.

Around 2005 my grandparents retired to Williamsburg, VA, which is a hotbed of historical research and scholarship. My family goes down for a week pretty much every year (2013 is the only year I remember not going) during the summer, and I try to make it to at least one of the Historic Triangle sites while we're there; last year (2017) I managed to make it to all three sites, which is a personal record. This year I met up with my pen pal Morgan (who is the sweetest person ever and just as much of a history nerd as I am) in real life for the first time. She's double majoring in a make-you-own-major of Historical Costuming and History at William and Mary, and she gets to LIVE AT COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG! I am so incredibly jealous, but hey, I have an open invitation to visit over winter break. Morgan is doing the exact thing I want to do, which is work at CW doing costumed interpreting. My ethos for teaching history is that we need to learn from and about the mistakes of the past in order to avoid them in the future, and I find that making history fun get kids engaged and living history creates a link from past to present in their little brains.

Military history has been a passion of mine for many years, with a focus on modern military history, meaning from the American Revolution onwards. Recently I've been getting into Scottish history (I blame Outlander) and engaging with my heritage in the British Isles. I'm looking forward to working on my thesis this year, and learning even more about the history I'm so passionate about.

*Thesis progress will be posted on my personal blog MuseNerd*

Tryon Palace in NC - I'm related to Gov. William Tryon

Museum Studies and Hulabaloo

I've loved museums since I was a young kid. Coming from the Philadelphia area I grew up being dragged around center city from the Liberty Bell to the Philadelphia Art Museum. Colonial history and living history museums never interested me as a kid, I grew to love them as an adult. However I always loved my trips to Art museums and Natural History museums. Those were always my favorite trips growing up. My grandmother and I would always take one annual trip to New York when I was growing up and we would always visit at least one museum. So I was fairly accustomed to the idea of museums from a young age and the importance of them. Now as an adult (student) I moved 2,000 miles away to pursue a degree pathway to working in and around museums and museum environments. I'd say that move was worth it. Now on my birthday every year I visit a different museum, So far that has been going well!
As for living history interests, well that ended up becoming a hobby. While in Texas I joined the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and took up archery and fencing. After two wrist surgeries I stopped fencing but I still to archery! Back to my point, the group that I did archery with used to do demonstrations and workshops on medieval society and would teach families archery at them. I got to participate in a couple and they are very fun! Attached is not a photo from the event, but from practice. :)

Why Museum Studies?

When I was in elementary school, the teachers every year would ask us what we wanted to be when we grow up? My response was not the typical career choices like a doctor or a fireman. Instead, I told my fourth-grade teacher that I wanted to be a historian and scientist working for a well-established museum. Funny how life turns out. From a young age, I was fascinated by how museums transformed history into an interactive and educational exhibition for people of all ages to enjoy. Museums are a place where history comes alive through illuminating stories from artifacts. These stories associated with ancient artifacts is where I fell in love with museums. 

Recently, I had the unique opportunity to work abroad for the National Museum of Ireland for the summer. I was assigned to work with the Natural History and Archeology Collections. My boss and I organized, updated, and in some cases reassigning accession numbers to objects hidden in the crypt. Towards the end of my time in Ireland, my boss had me perform a Collections Audit, where a museum personnel goes through the collection and randomly picks out artifacts to see whether it has been updated into the database system. I loved learning about Ireland’s ancient history through the museum’s tremendous collections through performing the audit.

Museum Studies?

I struggle to type the typical, "Hello, this is who I am..." opening to blog posts but here I go. I am Anna Vernacchio, a 4th year museum studies major at the Rochester Institute of Technology. I had never really thought about college until the start of my junior year of high school. I was interested in art and history so I began looking for potential degree paths that would apply my interests to a practical job. I stumbled upon the museum studies program at RIT, visited once and fell in love. I saw so much opportunity if I just started here.

After four years, I don't think I could see myself anywhere else in any other degree program. Since my first semester at RIT, I have worked in the various institutions related to museum studies on campus: as a circulation and resource assistant at the Wallace Library, a student employee at RIT's institutional archive, and a student employee, now student manager, of the newly renamed City Art Space (or Gallery R). This constant application of coursework along with hand-on curriculum provided me with a level of experience I would not have achieved at another institution.The museum studies program has fostered my love of history, social movements, and art, providing me with a practical application of my interests.

This summer I worked at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The breath of the Newseum's newspaper collection provided me with a special look in to modern social activism, from the birth of the suffrage movement to the growth of the civil rights and gay rights movements. I found myself immersed in everything from iconic Life magazine covers to alternative press from various social movements, further sparking my interest in the sociopolitical climate of contemporary culture and how it has been impacted by our choices throughout history. I hope to carry some of the inspiration I received from cataloging historical news publications in to my development of my own thesis.

This semester I have also been tasked to develop the employee handbook for the new staff of the City Art Space and assist in hiring a new staff for the new space. I will also will be supporting the RIT archives in its celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Henrietta campus.

[Jet magazine, December 22, 1955, featured story about the start of the Montgomery bus boycott.]

My Journey Thus Far

Hello there. My name is Mason and I am beginning the quest for the perfect thesis and like many of my fellow students, I am excited for this journey. I took quite a circuitous route to get here. I started my college career as a Packaging Science student. I realized after my first year that Packaging Science was not the path for me. I switched into our School of Individualized Study and started taking some museum studies courses to see if I really wanted to do Museum Studies. I had heard about museum studies a long time ago, when I was in High School. My school offered a tour to RIT and two of the options were Packaging Science and Museum Studies. Though I opted for Packaging Science I still had a lot of interest in the museum studies major. After a semester of taking some museum studies courses (big shout out to both Professor DeRoo and Professor Brown for piquing my interest) I decided to buy in and switched my major to Museum Studies.

My big interest in museums has always been in using technology to bridge the gap between the museum and its visitors. I think that museums can educate a wider audience and reach more people through the use of technology. Last year I was involved with a project that involved creating a website to host a bunch of scanned primary sources and it was a very rewarding experience. Bringing users knowledge through the use of technology is a major point of interest for me and I hope to continue work of this type.

My final step in making it to where I am today as a Museum Studies student was the internship I completed this summer working at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. It allowed me to get more exposure to what work in a museum could entail for me one day and I truly enjoyed the work I did cleaning, categorizing, and packing a variety of artifacts. I also got to get experience with the process of receiving a gift to the museum which you can see in the picture of me with the bear. The eagle was a part of a major project that I was involved with where the entire taxidermied bird collection of RMSC needed to be moved. All in all I truly enjoyed my experience as an intern and it reinforced my interest in a career in the museum field.

 

Why I chose Museum Studies and Biology

Hello, my name is Katherine Hensel, and I am beginning my thesis journey, aka beginning the end of my college experience. Even while applying to colleges I knew I wanted a career as an Interpretive Park Ranger. This goal led me to choose to major in Biology and Museum Studies with a History minor at RIT. I have always been passionate about history and the environment. Hiking and camping have been a constant in my life, first with family and friends, and then later with the RIT Outing Club. I have been visiting National Parks for as long as I can remember and I want to contribute to "America's Best Idea," as Ken Burns put it. At RIT, the Museum Studies program have enhanced and developed my interest in education and interpretation. The faculty have pushed me from just wanting to understand and share, to pursuing the best educational methods in order to communicate ideas with the public.

2008 Bryce Canyon National Park

2010 Arches National Park

2013 Yellowstone National Park

2014 Grand Canyon National Park

2015 Jewel Cave National Monument

2015 Mount Rushmore National Memorial

           

Beginning my thesis journey...

Hello everyone! My name is Felicia Swartzenberg and, like most of you readers, I'm starting out on a journey that ends in a brilliant, well-polished thesis (hopefully with minimal hair pulling and mental breakdowns). It took me a while to realize what I wanted to do with my life. I started out as an English major at my old school and when I transferred in I picked the degree that most aligned with my interests, journalism. However, I found I didn't quite fit in or even like the hard news environment. Then, I happened across Katie Curran, the person who started my museum studies journey. She told me about the program and I contacted Tina about it because it finally seemed like I found something I would enjoy. Thankfully, she approved my double major and I'm the first student at RIT to major in journalism and museum studies.

My background is leading me to work more in the marketing and engagement department of museums. I've spoken with and had a small shadowing experience with a member of the marketing and engagement team at the Memorial Art Gallery downtown and I think that working in programming and public engagement would best suit my interest. I want to generate interest in new audiences and expand programming to include these new audiences that the museum will, hopefully, be able to attract through my work in an ideal world. As far as other experiences, I'm fairly new to the program so that's about it aside from personal experiences.

I am doing an internship creating a permanent memorial exhibit at House of Mercy homeless shelter, but that's not technically within a museum space. To give a brief explanation, I'm creating a "tree of life" style wall sculpture with hand painted and decorated chickadees "standing" on the branches. Each of these birds represents a resident of the homeless shelter who has passed away. 

   

This is just a small sample of all the birds that were decorated (and yes, that's me decorating on the right!).

Congratulations if you made it to the end of my post! I know it's long, but it's fun to talk about yourself and your interests! If you're interested in anything I've done and want to learn more don't hesitate to reach out. My inbox is always open! :)

First Blog Post

Hi everyone! My name is Lizzy, and I'm super nervous excited to be starting my senior thesis project.  I'm a third year Museum Studies and Digital Humanities and Social Sciences major at Rochester Institute of Technology, and I'm mainly interested in collections, as well as how museums are adapting to the digital world we're becoming more immersed in.  I'm not sure yet what I'd like to do my thesis on specifically, but I'm hoping to do some sort of project that combines the Digital Humanities with my Museum Studies knowledge.

So far, my experience in the Museum Studies field has been limited to a handful of internships I've done over the last few years.  During the summers of 2014, 2015, and 2017, I held an internship at my local Town Hall's archives.  It was in this position that I began to really explore and fall in love with curation, and I'm grateful for the experiences I was able to have at this job.  This past summer however, I held two different part-time internships at small museums near my hometown.  The first, at the Heckscher Museum of Art, was an education position that ended up involving me working at a summer camp, so that unfortunately wasn't really the internship experience I was hoping for.  At my other position, I did development for the Whaling Museum and Education Center of Cold Spring Harbor, where I helped with social media growth, advertising, and soliciting donations for the museum's annual benefit in October.  Even though this position wasn't what I hope to do for a career, I still enjoyed my experience, and felt that I learned a lot from it.  They also gave me a nice Facebook shout out (pictured below) when I left at the end of the summer.

Overall I've enjoyed my time so far working in the museum field, but I'm excited to learn more and do more work in this field, including on my senior thesis!

A post on the Whaling Museum and Education Center's Facebook on my last day of my internship this past summer.