History Graduate Students Describe Their Summer Internships

Many of our History MA and PhD students spent the Summer of 2024 seeing new places and doing exciting, meaningful work. Here, four graduate students share with us stories about their experiences at summer jobs and internships.

Connor Barnes worked at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site (LIHO) as a seasonal Park Guide for the National Park Service. The site is responsible for preserving and interpreting the house that Abraham Lincoln and his family owned for 17 years in Springfield, Illinois, as well as the surrounding area. Connor gave tours of the home, worked the front desk, and ran the home’s Historic Toys and Games exhibit. Working on special assignment, he created new interpretive programs for LIHO , including a neighborhood tour focusing on Black history in Springfield from the Underground Railroad to the Springfield Race Riot of 1908. This tour took on special significance with visitors after a Springfield deputy sheriff killed Sonya Massey, and Connor said it was a powerful experience to work through this difficult history during such an emotional time. Working at LIHO merged the public history theory that Connor learned at Loyola with the complexities of practical settings, and he is excited to carry this experience forward in his studies, work, and research.

Connor Barnes, in NPS uniform, stands in front of the Lincoln Home.

Marin Burke worked as a collections intern at the Buffalo History Museum in Buffalo, New York. Marin catalogued and inventoried objects, and she also had experience with installing, de-installing, and cleaning objects on display in the permanent collection. She learned to work with PastPerfect software, card catalogs, and Nomenclature 3.0 standards; conducted research to help identify objects of unknown origin and function; and improved her photography skills by taking images of artifacts. At the museum, she was able to work with and research textiles, which inspired her to pursue a research project about quilts in her Cultural History Seminar course this Fall 2024 semester.

“Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society” by Fortunate4now is licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Eleanor Carter worked as a curatorial intern at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center (ILHMEC) in Skokie, Illinois. During her time at ILHMEC, Eleanor completed the cataloging of the museum’s largest collection of Hungarian survivor materials, which contained over 2,300 unique photos, documents, and ephemera spanning over 100 years. Working in the collections management software KEmu, she researched items and created executive summaries of the collection for future exhibition creation. She also attended trainings on teaching genocide for educators and gained familiarity with the museum’s virtual reality exhibitions. Eleanor was especially honored to lead a meeting with the collection’s donor, walking him through research conducted on the collection’s artifacts and hearing his family’s stories firsthand. The experience of working with such personal and powerful stories has cemented Eleanor’s interest in public history and remembrance as a community practice, and she is eager to continue understanding how memory and violence operate in the context of the U.S.

“Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center” by Eddau is licensed under  CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Anna Wilmhoff completed an internship at the Kawishiwi Ranger District of Superior National Forest, located in Ely, Minnesota.  Anna worked in the ranger station’s front office, where her responsibilities included issuing permits for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) and answering guest inquiries about the forest and its recreation opportunities. Over the course of the summer, she helped to serve the ranger station’s thousands of guests and explained wilderness rules and regulations to hundreds of BWCAW visitors. She accompanied multiple departments on field days, where she learned more about how the USFS manages public lands. Anna greatly enjoyed working for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS).  Among her favorite experiences were surveying a defunct logging camp with archaeologists, bird banding with forest biologists, and canoeing with the district’s recreation department. Working directly with the public provided her with new skillsets which she will use as she moves forward in her career as a public historian.

Anna Wilmhoff stands in front of the Kawishiwi Ranger Station sign.