KEARNEY – The University of Nebraska at Kearney is offering a new master’s degree program in public history – available entirely online.
Launching this fall, the program provides advanced education and training for current and future professionals with a passion for history and a desire to share that knowledge with others. With a Master of Arts in public history, graduates are prepared for careers in museums, historic sites and battlefields, archives, digital media, state and national parks, historic preservation, cultural tourism and many other fields.
“What we’re training students to do in a public history program is not to write more papers and deliver more lectures in a classroom. We’re training them to share stories about the past that are meaningful to the public and to work with diverse audiences. The focus of this program is on interpretation, community engagement and working with different groups of people to protect and preserve the past,” said assistant history professor Will Stoutamire, a national leader in the field of public history and director of UNK’s new master’s program.
In the 36-credit hour graduate program, students will gain the expertise and research experience needed to be an effective historian while also developing the interpretive and communication skills that allow them to enrich the public’s understanding of important events, locations and people.
“The introduction of a full master’s program means there will be more faculty contributing to public history; there will be more course offerings in public history; and the core curriculum will be structured differently to be more focused on the skills that public historians need,” Stoutamire said. “Students will also benefit from being housed within a history department that already has a robust online Master of Arts program.”
The public history master’s program includes 15 credit hours of required core courses and two tracks – thesis and capstone project.
Students who choose the thesis track complete a traditional paper focused on public history, along with 12 credit hours of electives in their area of interest. In the capstone project track, students complete 15 credit hours of electives. All students can take courses at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln or University of Nebraska at Omaha that complement their interests.
Students are also required to complete an internship – it’s one of the core courses – but there are alternative options for people already employed in the field.
For more information on the program, contact Stoutamire at 308-865-8263 or stoutamirewf@unk.edu.
