> For those who are looking for a Directory of Museum Studies
Programs, I
> suggest the website:http://museumstudies.si.edu/TrainDirect.htm.
It's the
> most complete to date, and will respond to most of the questions
posed
> regularly.     Jane Glaser

Well, perhaps this *is* the most comprehensive website on the subject,
but it still managed to leave out my degree program.  So I now feel
obligated to speak up on behalf of the benefits of the Public History
program at Middle Tennessee State University.

You can get the specifics straight from the official source at the
following site:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~history/history/public_history.html

The short of it is that this program is a degree in Public History
where students can specialize in four different areas: museum studies,
historic preservation, archives, and cultural resources management.

We are probably most well known for our Center for Historic
Preservation.  Recently Dr. Van West took over the directorship there.
If I am remembering correctly, they are the administrators for the
Tennessee Civil War Heritage Area and their other big projects are the
Tennessee Century Farms Program and the survey of Rural
African-American Churches in Tennessee.  You can read up on what they
are doing at:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~histpres/

For the archives people, we have two archives on campus: The Gore
Research Center and the Center for Popular Music.  I'm currently a
graduate research assistant at the Gore Center and I'm loving it.  I'm
not only receiving training in archives management, but I'm involved
in educational outreach programs and other sorts of public programming
(developing exhibits, adding our finding aids to our website, etc).

Gore Center:  http://janus.mtsu.edu/
Center for Popular Music:  http://popmusic.mtsu.edu/

One of the students in the program developed a site on his own as a
resource for jobs and educational institutions in the field of Public
History.  Aaron Marcavitch was active on this list a few months ago,
but I think that working on his thesis and his career have seriously
eaten into his online time.  Hopefully he won't mind me sharing the
resource that he created:
http://members.tripod.com/~RWUHP/job/edu.html

For those of us in the museum studies tract, we currently don't have
any centers on campus that focus solely on that.  Instead we have a
large network of MTSU graduates in museums both in the nearby area and
across the nation.  Because of this we are able to involve ourselves
in a wide variety of internships and practica.  We are also lucky
because the museum consulting firm of LaPaglia & Associates is here in
town and they are more than happy to work with students in the program
(as I am doing this semester).

And just an extra few points to add about our program (if this is
short, wouldn't you hate to see the long version?)...Dr. Rebecca
Conard, co-director of the Public History program, is currently the
president of NCPH.  Those of you who went to the joint NCPH/OAH
conference in Washington, DC, this past Spring would have seen the
group of students from MTSU.
http://ncph.org/

Also, we have a very active graduate student organization in the
History department: Association of Graduate Students in History.
While our activities are meant to include both the traditional
historians and the public historians, the public historians seem to
take more initiative and get more involved.  All four officers are in
the Public History program and that may be the reason why our
activities are of more interest to the public historians. We hold
get-togethers with the faculty, workshops, field trips, and social
events just for us.  We recently co-sponsored the Stones River
Conference held on the MTSU campus this past weekend.

I'm afraid that the AGSH website is a work in progress, but I welcome
anyone to take a look at it:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~agsh

For anyone wanting a more personal take on the program, (other than
what you can find on these websites) I'd be more than happy to answer
some questions.  I'm in the middle of my 3rd semester of the Master's
degree and I'm concentrating in museum studies.  I'm also the current
treasurer for AGSH and in my spare time I'm supposed to be updating
the AGSH website.

Heather Bailey

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