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Interns

The Oberlin Heritage Center has a vibrant and thriving internship program. Undergraduate and graduate students from area colleges and universities contribute a variety of skills and interests to the work of the Oberlin Heritage Center, and in return learn many new skills, such as public speaking, collections management, and research skills. Feel free to browse the profiles of some of our current and past interns: you can see what our interns do while working at the Oberlin Heritage Center, as well as what activities (jobs, graduate schools, etc.) they pursue after completing their internships.

Current Interns

• Ondrea Keith
• Philip Parsons
• Jonathan Morales
• Sarah Schaffer
• Brittnei Sherrod
• Andrew Watiker

Oberlin Heritage Center Intern Alumni

• Dean Bein
• Amy Brown
• Dawnya Chavis
• Rachel Clark
• Gideon Crevoshay
• Sarah Fisher
• Michael Friedman
• Katharine Healy
• Jillian McFarland
• Mary Moroney
• Mark Partin
• Andria Ryall
• Laurie Stein
• Maria Surovy
• Darrin Tate
• Chris Tomazic
• Nat Tuohy

Joshua Aerie, OC '99
Josh Aerie was Scholar in Residence in the Jewett House for the 1999-2000 academic year, which was his 5th year at Oberlin. After graduating from Oberlin in May 2000, he headed to the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he pursued a Master's of Music in Cello Performance. He has played in string quartets all over the world. Currently, he is living in Riverside, California, and freelancing in the Los Angeles area. He plays with various orchestras, ensembles, and as a soloist, and teaches cello. "I have fond memories of all of the [Oberlin Heritage Center] folks, the 'grounds,' and of course the Jewett House. Shoveling/plowing snow in the early winter mornings, emptying the trash in the Monroe House in the late evenings, and vacuuming around the fantastic gingerbread house displays at Christmastime. My experiences at [the Oberlin Heritage Center] are among my fondest Oberlin memories."

Rachael Blake, OC '01
Since graduating from Oberlin in 2001, Rachael Blake has been working in Davis, California as a marine ecology research technician for the Environmental Science and Policy school at the University of California. She manages many aspects of the day to day research on a project studying the ecological effects of invasive species. Most of her work is in San Francisco Bay, with another field site in southern Washington state. In the fall of 2004, she entered a PhD program in Marine Ecology at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, part of the College of William and Mary. In addition to work, she still pursues her interests in music and history, and in anticipation of her move to Virginia, she says, "I'll be in a prime location to continue my study of 18th century history."

Last updated April 30, 2004

Anita Buckmaster, OC '95
Upon graduation from Oberlin College, Anita was invited to serve on the Oberlin Heritage Center's Board of Trustees for a one-year-term while she remained in Oberlin to work as a staff writer in the College's Office of Communications. After leaving Oberlin, Anita worked for the Sempervirens Fund, California's oldest land conservancy. She returned to Ohio in 1998 to pursue graduate studies in Historic Preservation at Youngstown State University. She next worked for a time as the Volunteer Coordinator at Carriage Hill Farm, a living history metropark outside of Dayton, Ohio. Most recently, she was named Director of Alumni Affairs at Purchase College in New York. She married Michael Klingbeil (OC '96) in the summer of 2005, at her parent's 1850s home, which was recently restored.

Last updated December 18, 2004

RoseLee Bovell, OC '03
RoseLee Bovell volunteered at the Oberlin Heritage Center from 2001 to 2003 while she completed majors in Latin American Studies and Hispanic Studies and a minor in African American Studies. After graduating from Oberlin College in 2003, she went to Massachusetts and taught social studies, West African dance, and Spanish to middle school children from the Boston/Cambridge area at a summer sleep-away program. She has been accepted to the Peace Corps, and now she is doing an internship at the Metropolitan Washington Area Restaurant Association, gaining some more non-profit experience while she awaits the start of her Peace Corps placement.

Last updated April 30, 2004

Maggie Callahan, OC '98
Maggie Callahan now lives in New Mexico, where she runs her own thriving practice as a licensed massage therapist. She is going back to school to study exercise physiology this year. She enjoys volunteering at her local co-op and the local animal shelter.

Stacey Carter, OC '99
Stacey Carter worked for several years as a high school social studies teacher for the New York City Board of Education. "I work with at-risk students in Brooklyn, teaching world history, American history, economics, and government. I also teach art. This past year I had the opportunity to create a curriculum for a class on the African American experience in the Americas. I incorporated an entire section about Oberlin and its contribution to the history of Africans and African Americans. Everything I learned at [the Oberlin Heritage Center] (including all the books, posters, and postcards) has helped a great deal in telling the story of Oberlin." She joined the Oberlin College Admissions Office staff as Assistant Director of Admissions in 2005.

Victoria Ford, OC '01
Victoria Ford worked for the Oberlin Heritage Center during 1997-1998, her freshman year at Oberlin. After that year, she transferred to the University of Minnesota and completed a BA in geography. After finishing her degree, she took a job managing a research team at the University's School of Public Health. After that, she spent about half a year backpacking solo through the Mediterranean and northern Africa. Now she is in graduate school at Georgetown studying international public policy and democratic development.

Morgan Franck, OC '01
Morgan Franck started working at the Oberlin Heritage Center as an intern while she was a senior at Oberlin College. After graduating in 2001, she became a Museum Fellow. Morgan left us a lasting legacy by creating this website and serving as our technology wizard. She also authored the award-winning "Biking Tour of Historic Oberlin", coordinated the digitization of our Oberlin Oral History Project files, and portrayed a character for our Living History Open House. Morgan worked at the Oberlin Heritage Center until 2003, when she moved to New York City to go to grad school. She is earning a Master's in Medieval Studies at Fordham University, and plans to continue for a Ph.D. in Medieval History.

Last updated January 15, 2004

Stacey Gerson, OC '03
Stacey Gerson volunteered for Oberlin Heritage Center in 2002-2003, her senior year at Oberlin College. She organized and expanded our obituary files, helped with the Ohio Historic Inventory, and created an informative display about the Burrell-King House for the dedication of the Ohio Historical Marker at the house. After an internship with the Newport Historical Society in Rhode Island during the summer of 2003, Stacey moved to Chicago and took a job with the prestigious Newberry Library. She is currently enrolled in a one year history MPhil program at the University of Cambridge in England.

Last updated January 4, 2005

Jack Heaton, OC '01
As an Oberlin Heritage Center intern from summer 1999 to spring 2001, Jack Heaton developed the computer database that we use for our surveys of Oberlin buildings for the Ohio Historic Inventory. He graduated from Oberlin College in 2001 and now works in Washington, DC.

Last updated May 7, 2004

David Henry, Baldwin Wallace '02
David Henry interned at the Oberlin Heritage Center in the summers of 2000 and 2001. He graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College with a BA in Political Science. He then moved to Indiana, where he worked as a membership coordinator for a YMCA while earning his Master's in Public Administration from Indiana University. David then worked briefly for an Indiana Congressman before moving into county management. He notes that "Mrs. Jewett might have influenced my choice in a new job," as he is now the Public Health Emergency Coordinator for Monroe County, Indiana. He has maintained an interest in history and is currently working on writing a history of Baldwin-Wallace College.

Last updated September 22, 2006

Hyun-Jung Kim, OC '96
Hyun-Jung Kim graduated from Oberlin College in 1996. After spending some time teaching and traveling in Asia, she returned to her home in New York City. She graduated from Cornell Law School in 2003, and is currently working at a law firm in New York City (Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, in their public finance department). She says, "I loved working for Pat Murphy. She was always kind, patient and trusting with me. She gave me projects to do which involved research, creativity, initiative and encouraged me to use skills I enjoyed the most. She trusted me with the the Oberlin Heritage Center houses and even with her kids! ...One more memory: it was building gingerbread houses with many others in the Monroe House living room or in Pat's living room. I never did that growing up and I loved it; not just making those edible houses but making them as a group. One could almost imagine the Monroe family doing something similar...the house was the happiest when there were people around.
"When I was in college, sometimes it felt really hard to go into work because I often found college life mentally and emotionally exhausting....Therefore I'm very happy I had the opportunity to do work in a very nurturing, low-stress environment that encouraged initiative and creativity....I'm also glad I got to see and participate in a side of life at Oberlin I would not have had access to had I only maintained a life within Oberlin College itself. I also had the luck of having positive adult role models like Pat, and I'm very proud of the fact that she and I have somehow still kept in touch after 7 years."

Adina Langer, OC '06
Adina Langer worked as a collections volunteer at the Oberlin Heritage Center during her senior year at Oberlin College, 2005-06. She began an internship at the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation in New York City in August of 2006, assisting the chief curator and marketing director with projects related to creating a World Trade Center Memorial and Museum. The collections experience she gained at the Heritage Center has been very valuable to the work she is now doing with 9/11-related art and artifacts. Currently she is in the process of applying to Public History graduate programs. She hopes to continue working with the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation while she pursues graduate school (most likely at NYU).

Sarah Lariviere, OC '97
Sarah Lariviere worked for the Oberlin Heritage Center during the fall of 1993. She is currently a student at Hunter College in New York City; she will receiver her Masters Degree in Social Work in May, 2003. "I so enjoyed giving tours of the mansion ('notice the Italianate design') and compiling a book about the history of 'little red schoolhouses' for Oberlin's own. Spending time with both the books in the schoolhouse and memoirs about people's one-room schoolhouse experiences really ignited my imagination. I sometimes think about it in comparison to my work today, as a social worker at an elementary school in downtown Brooklyn, NY. Given the limited resources available to NYC public school students, perhaps some of the children with whom I work would benefit from the intensity of a one-room schoolhouse environment, complete with walking miles and miles to school and drying wet wooly mittens on the stove!"

Laura Previll, OC '01
Laura Previll graduated from Oberlin College in 2001 and worked for Ecocity Cleveland as a graphics/web intern. She later met one of the preservationists at Sandvick Architects in Cleveland who offered her a job working on Historic Preservation Certification Applications that permit for 20% rehabilitation tax credits. The research she does about buildings now is very similar to the research she did while she was an intern with us, only now it is in a consultant capacity to ensure that the rehabilitation work done to a building meets the Secretary of the Interior's standards. The tax credit incentive drives the work so more buildings can be rehabilitated. The firm is principally involved with adaptive reuse projects in northeast Ohio with a few in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee. Laura enjoys her job and owes much of her preparatory experience to the Oberlin Heritage Center. "I sought a place to work while I was a student at Oberlin where I could learn the fundamentals of preservation. With the help of Pat and Marilyn, I did just that. Now I am taking those skills further and eventually hope to obtain Master's degrees in Preservation and Planning. I am having a great time and learning a ton!"

Tom Reeves, John Carroll '04
Since Tom left the Oberlin Heritage Center, he's kept busy working on the house that he and his wife recently bought. He has also been working in the "business world," but is contemplating a return to the non-profit sector. In the meantime, he continues his involvement in the museum field by helping out at the Cleveland Grays Armory Museum, where he's undertaken the task of writing their new docent manual.

Victoria Solan, OC '94
Since leaving the Oberlin Heritage Center and Oberlin, Victoria Solan has studied architectural history: She is currently finishing up a Ph.D. in the History of Art at Yale. The focus of her graduate work has been architecture: her dissertation project is titled "'Built for Health:' American Architecture and the Healthy House, 1850-1930." "My [Oberlin Heritage Center] internship provided me with important research, writing and public speaking experience -- all of which came in handy at grad school."

Laurie Stein, OC '06
After completing her year as a Museum Fellow at the Oberlin Heritage Center, Laurie began pursuing an M.A. in Historical Administration at Eastern Illinois University. She has already had ample opportunity to use skills gained at the Oberlin Heritage Center and has sent her thanks! She has been busy writing grants, conducting historic site surveys, presenting programs, and developing exhibits!