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As the manager of technical and grant programs at the Preservation League of New York State (PLNYS), Fran (Gubler) Stern ’15 spent a lot of time on the highways and back roads of the state’s 62 counties, meeting with citizens and preservationists, and helping them navigate the process of protecting important pieces of the past. “The state is large and diverse, and the architecture reflects that,” she said. “What was historically significant at the tip of Long Island may have been very different in Buffalo.”

Stern studied art history at Skidmore College. After graduation, she landed a two-year fellowship in collections management at the Shelburne Museum, where she received professional training in museum exhibit preparation. She then moved on to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, N.J., where she worked as a museum and cultural resource technician. At the time, her career seemed to be headed toward museum studies. “My interest shifted toward the built environment,” she said. “It seemed like a good way to tell stories on a broader scale about the human experience.”

Stern also began to think about graduate school and was attracted to the ����̽̽ program, which emphasized practical skills along with preservation theory. “My cohort included people from all over the country, and I developed lasting relationships with students and faculty. The structure of the program did a lot to create a strong community.” Stern started as a preservation associate with PLNYS shortly after she graduated and moved into her position as manager two years later. She conducted site visits to grant applicants and provided technical assistance to individuals, organizations, and municipalities seeking solutions to preservation challenges. “I really loved my job. It brought me in contact with people who had the same passion for preservation.”

Caitlin Corkins ’08 believed she had the perfect job. Serving as the tax credits and grants coordinator for the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, she traveled across the state meeting with non-profit organizations and civic-minded volunteers who had the same goal—preserving another valuable piece of Vermont’s heritage. “It was a privilege to meet people around the state who were on the ground, doing a lot of the heavy lifting,” she said. “My role was to provide them with funding opportunities that could help them leverage their local assets into successful preservation projects.” As a teenager growing up in Bristol, Vt., Corkins helped her father, a local contractor, with restoration projects in Addison County. “I was his gopher, but I picked up a lot of insights about what made older structures so intriguing.” She graduated from Knox College in Illinois and went on to earn a museum studies certificate at Tufts University. After stints at Historic New England and the Bennington Museum, she thought she was headed into a career in collections management. Knowing she would need a master’s degree to advance in the field, she stumbled onto ����̽̽’s Historic Preservation Program. “I was looking for something complimentary to what I had done with museums and I discovered this wonderful blend of all the things I loved—the history of Vermont, and the built environment.” ����̽̽ was the only program she applied to. “It was at ����̽̽ that I discovered this was what I wanted to do all along.”

Matt Goguen’s job title at his employer, History Associates, a research firm in the Washington, D.C. area, read simply 'historian.' It reflected his wide-ranging interests and abilities, honed in part by his graduate training at ����̽̽. "Broadly speaking we were storytellers—we helped museums do background research on exhibits, or wrote institutional histories for organizations. I did a lot of litigation research for law firms," he explained. Goguen received degrees in history and secondary education from Fitchburg State University. He graduated with a certification to teach but didn’t want to be bound to a career in education. When he elected to attend graduate school, he did what historians do best—he kept an open mind and did his research. He was impressed that one of the pillars of ����̽̽’s Historic Preservation program, director Tom Visser, attended ����̽̽ as an undergraduate and came back to teach (Visser had directed ����̽̽’s program since 2005). He also discovered ����̽̽ was one of the oldest institutions to offer a master’s degree in historic preservation. "I knew ����̽̽ had deep roots. Going through the course catalogue, I realized I could find practical applications for the things I was interested in. It turned out to be 100% what I thought it would be," he said. After finishing his master's, Goguen worked for the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation in Montpelier, assisting with their Roadside Historic Marker program and State Historic Sites program. He collaborated with ����̽̽ professor Dr. Kevin Thornton, who spearheaded the effort to install a marker honoring ����̽̽'s first African American graduate, Andrew Harris, which now stands near the entrance of the Howe Library.

Adrienne Dickerson ’18 grew up in an old home in West Texas in a town small enough that children attended a one-room schoolhouse through the fifth grade. She grew to appreciate the “quirks” of living in an older house. “I didn’t learn about historic preservation as an actual field of study until my mid-30s. But since I was a kid, I loved looking at old buildings and seeing them getting fixed up.” Dickerson attended Texas A&M and joined Old Main, a group dedicated to conserving historic buildings on campus. She completed her undergraduate studies at Sam Houston State University. Later, she worked in real estate and property management in central Texas (Bryan/College Station), which gave her a deeper appreciation of the local architecture. When she realized she could pursue historic preservation as a profession, she decided to go to graduate school and settled on ����̽̽. “The program played to my strengths in science—I liked the technical aspects of preservation, the smaller class sizes, and the personal attention that came with that.” Burlington also provided a rich new “laboratory” of old buildings and neighborhoods to explore. While at ����̽̽, she completed an internship at the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation in Montpelier. Her background was perfect preparation for her current work in Baton Rouge as a tax incentive professional at the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development. She advises property owners on various federal and state tax incentives for rehabilitating buildings and making them commercially viable.