Pursuing Historic Preservation in the Classroom and in Life
March 28, 2025 | Dr. Steven Hoffman & Bridgette Kelch
Historic Preservation is at the core of Missouri Main Street Connection’s strategy for the economic revitalization of our state’s historic commercial districts; It is also a field that employes a significant amount of people in a growing workforce (Historic Preservation & Conservation. Data USA. datausa.io. February 20, 2025). While it is called historic preservation in the United States, other countries often refer to it as cultural heritage preservation.
Looking at the broad field of historic preservation, a whole world of career opportunities with multiple pathways emerges. Each pathway offers rewarding careers from museums and archives to historic sites and cultural heritage organizations like historical societies and preservation advocacy groups such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The field also includes technical disciplines like appropriately rehabbing or restoring historic buildings and designating our historic buildings and districts.
Missouri is fortunate to have one of the few undergraduate historic preservation programs in the nation at Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO). Students in the Historic Preservation (HP) program at SEMO, select courses in museums, archives, and historic site administration in addition to a core of historic preservation courses. These courses provide students with the opportunity to learn through community engaged projects, benefiting both the students and heritage organizations in the region and throughout the state, including Missouri Main Street Connection (MMSC).
The range of community engaged projects SEMO students participate in include documenting a historic building on campus slated for demolition, writing National Register of Historic Places nominations for communities across the state, helping a local church archive its historic documents, and writing a furnishing plan for a local historic house museum. One example of the impact of these projects facilitated through SEMO’s Historic Preservation program is the collaboration with the university’s Bollinger Center for Regional History where SEMO HP students assist several regional museums in design, development, and installation of museum exhibits, including helping stage a traveling exhibit from the Smithsonian Institute.
The program recently obtained a grant from the Missouri Humanities Council to help communities in the region develop Historic Preservation Month activities to call more attention to this important celebration. These projects, as well as many others, offer students in SEMO’s HP program the opportunity to learn valuable skills in a real-world setting, while helping the community organizations with which they are working.
Beyond the community-engaged experiential learning woven throughout the curriculum, cultural heritage organizations throughout the state and nation offer SEMO’s HP students annual internships including local Main Street organizations in Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Chillicothe and Washington as well as Missouri Main Street Connection for Missouri’s Premier Downtown Revitalization Conference.
Graduates of this program are employed across the country in important preservation-related organizations and businesses including MMSC, Main Street Oakland County in Michigan, multiple State Historic Preservation Offices across the country, Missouri Department of Transportation in cultural resource management, consulting firms across the country, National Park Service, Missouri and other state historic sites, Missouri Preservation, Federal and State Emergency Agencies, the US Forest Service, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and countless other preservation and heritage organizations nationwide. SEMO’s influence in the world of Main Street and preservation that extends state-wide can be seen through the work of SEMO’s alumni, Katelyn Brotherton, Staci Cox, and Ben White, at MMSC.
In many ways, SEMO’s undergraduate HP program is unique, not only in the skills it imparts to students and its community-engaged focus, but because most academic programs in the United States that prepare students for careers in Historic Preservation and Public History settings are at the graduate level. SEMO additionally offers a Master’s in Public History with an emphasis in Historic Preservation degree. This program provides many of the same opportunities for students and heritage organizations as their undergraduate program.
Although it has excellent, robust programs, SEMO is not the only place in the state where students can take classes in historic preservation and public history. The University of Missouri-St. Louis offers a Master’s degree in Public History with an emphasis in Museum Studies, Northwest Missouri State University offers a minor in Public History and Museum Studies, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City has a certificate in preservation as part of their architecture degree. To see a listing of historic preservation programs from around the country visit the National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE) website at: https://www.ncpe.us/. Public history programs and degrees can be found at https://ncph.org/.
Despite the strong need for preservation trades programs in both the state and nation, Missouri does not have such a program. There are several two-year schools with a historic trades focus listed on the NCPE website, with the closest one to Missouri located at Belmont College in St. Clairsville, Ohio. Often, people learn to work in the historic trades through apprenticeships or short-courses, such as the ones offered by Bob Yapp as part of the Belvedere School for Hands-On Preservation Education, or through volunteer programs like HistoriCorps (https://historicorps.org/). Whether learned “on-the-job,” through an apprenticeship, or through various hands-on courses and experiences, individuals skilled in one of the historic trades are much in demand. Many window repair shops in Missouri report having a two-year wait list and demand for these types of skills is only growing.
When you consider the bountiful careers available to people interested in cultural heritage preservation, there are seemingly countless opportunities available. In the most recent Occupational Outlook Handbook, the US Bureau of Labor reports job growth between 2023 and 2033 for historic preservationists, archivists, museum curators, and historic site administrators is expected to be faster or much faster than average (6-11% faster than average).
Whether you are looking to have a career in Main Street helping communities preserve and revitalize the places that are important to them, or want to work in a heritage organization to help preserve, promote and interpret our nation’s heritage—or just want to volunteer and lend a hand in this important work—there are many opportunities right here in Missouri to help you do just that. Let’s go to work!
