• Williams Hall, a majestic three-and-a-half story red brick building, was erected in 1896 to provide space for science education. Prominently located along University Row between Billings Library and Old Mill, Williams was designed by Wilson Brothers, architects and engineers of Philadelphia. Today it provides classroom and office space for numerous departments in the humanities and social sciences.


     

Most graduate students in the UVM Historic Preservation Program elect to complete an internship in lieu of a thesis. In addition to being employed as an intern with a preservation organization agency, business, or organization, the graduate students prepare term papers that document their internship experiences and make a formal presentations at an annual event.

Working Internships

Historic Preservation Interns 2013

Students in the UVM Historic Preservation regularly obtain full-time summer internships at top organizations and agencies in the U.S. and abroad. Some examples include the National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Historic American Building Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program, Savannah Landmarks, Historic New England, National Trust (England), Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, Santa Barbara Preservation Trust, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, Waterford Foundation, Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, Flynn Theatre, Vermont Historical Society and Vermont Division for Historic Preservation

Field Study

Students on a research boat

Graduate students may have the opportunity to take field study trips to observe preservation projects around the globe individually or in groups. In the HP 304 Seminar in Contemporary Preservation Policy and Planning course, research travel and lodging expenses may be subsidized with scholarship grants from the Historic Preservation Program's endowment or gift fund. Graduate students have taken field research trips to the Netherlands, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Italy, Scotland, England, Nicaragua, Austria, Cuba and many cities across the United States and Canada.

Support and Enrichment

View from Ira Allen Chapel

To support research travel scholarships and other enhancements, the Historic Preservation Program has received generous gift contributions from its alumni, supporters, and a number of foundations and agencies, including the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, National Park Service, Eva Gebhard-Gourgaud Foundation; Cecil Howard Charitable Trust; Patrick Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; U.S. Department of the Interior through the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation; National Trust for Historic Preservation; Vermont Council on the Arts; Vermont Council on the Humanities and Public Issues; New York Community Trust; New Hampshire Charitable Fund; Kellogg Foundation; Windham Foundation and other private and public donors. Some of these funds are invested in an endowment dedicated to program support and enrichment.

 

Internships provide hands-on experience in preservation projects

Adrienne Dickerson  completed a summer internship with the project review team for the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation in Montpelier. She contributed to the Section 106 and Act 250 review process and attended site visits throughout the state of Vermont with the Division. She also assisted with historic research of properties under review, some of which she presented at a meeting of the Vermont Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. After graduation she was hired as an architectural historian with the Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office.

Jacob Collins had an exciting summer with the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park as a National Council for Preservation education intern. He conducted research on Ashton Mill Village, 19th century workers’ housing built for the adjacent Ashton Mill, in Cumberland, R.I., and the Captain Wilbur Kelly House in Lincoln, R.I., an early 19th century superintendent’s house for one of the earliest mills in the state. The majority of his time was spent researching the alterations, from a late 19th century renovation to a 2015 tax credit funded restoration of the Ashton Mill Village. 

Gabrielle Fernandez spent a summer working as an intern with the Vermont Historic Sites Program. For her summer internship, Fernandez worked at the Justin Morrill Homestead (above) in Strafford, Vermont, studying the agricultural activities at the National Historic Landmark during Justin Morrill’s era. Justin Morrill, the famed “Senator from Vermont,” designed the landscape, farm buildings, and residence at the Gothic Revival site between 1846 and 1848. The purpose of Gabrielle’s internship was to delve into Justin Morrill’s activities at his farm, his level of knowledge, input, participation, yields, background and more. 

Austin White completed his summer internship with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation at the Central Office in Harrisburg. His tasks included updating truss bridge records for the state’s Cultural Resource Geographic Information System, editing bridge assessments, documenting the removal and relocation of an extremely rare Henszey Bowstring pony truss, summarizing Transportation Agency Section 4(f) meetings, supporting archaeologists on project scopings, and assisting Preservation PA with the annual statewide preservation conference. 

Emma HaggertyEmma Haggerty (pictured here) interned with the National Trust for Historic Preservation at the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, N.Y. Lyndhurst is a Gothic Revival mansion designed by Alexander Jackson Davis and completed in 1865. The house stands atop a hill, which overlooks the large property that provides beautiful views of the Hudson River, Palisades, and Manhattan skyline.  Haggerty’s role was to perform hands-on conservation to the building and its surrounding structures under the guidance of Project Restoration Manager Tom Richmond and fellow UVM HP graduate, Krystyn Hastings-Silver. Her duties included masonry, carpentry, painting, plastering, and living on site in the Greenhouse Service Building.

Students in the field

Students in the 2019 HP 304 Contemporary Preservation Planning and Policy graduate seminar at UVM's Historic Preservation Program completed the following research projects supported with field travel expense scholarships funded through the generosity of UVM HPP alumni:

  • William Floyd travelled to Cleveland for his preservation planning and policy research project where he interviewed leading preservationists, architects, residents and city officials to study social and physical impacts of zoning changes and local preservation efforts in the historic Ohio City neighborhood.
  • Joseph Cava's research project centered on the preservation challenges facing the Episcopal church in contemporary American society with interviews and case studies in the Philadelphia diocese, including some that have come about in response to legal challenges to the Church's decision to allow women and gay clergy to be ordained.
  • Christopher Rizer's preservation planning and policy field research project titled, "Climate Change, Historic Preservation, Life Safety, and Overdevelopment in Ellicott City, Maryland," examined critical issues relating to impacts of climate change on the preservation of a historic community where a series of unprecedented floods have prompted a debate over calls to demolish a section of the historic downtown core of this small city west of Baltimore.
  • Kristi Bodine's preservation planning and policy research project included interviews and site visits that focused on the operations by nonprofit organizations of important historic archaeological and architectural properties in Virginia, including George Washington's Ferry Farm, Evergreen Cemetery, Fairfield Foundation, Rosewell Foundation, Battersea Foundation and the Menokin site.
  • Greg Socinski researched the history and planning being done for the preservation of Florida Southern College's remarkable Frank Lloyd Wright-designed campus in Lakeland, Florida. He looked closely at the technical approaches being taken to develop appropriate conservation treatments for the deteriorating concrete textile block construction features of these 20th-century modern buildings and structures built from the 1930s into the 1950s.
  • Samantha Johnson went to Edinburgh, Scotland, for her field study project titled, "Sustainable Preservation Practices: Three Areas of Heritage Preservation in Scotland." There she interviewed representatives from three of Scotland's national heritage preservation organizations: Historic Environment Scotland, the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust and the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland.