Fall 2019 Course and Workshop Offerings*

This is a photograph of four people cleaning artifacts inside a historic courtroom. Photo take from balcony.
Participants in Cleaning Historic Interiors on a Budget for Beginners, a Spring 2019 workshop that included a collaboration with the Hunterdon County Cultural and Heritage Commission in Flemington, NJ.

*Course details subject to change.

Introduction to Historic Preservation

10-week course

About: This course is an introduction to the preservation of the built environment, examining the history and philosophy of historic preservation and how the discipline is practiced today. It will provide the historic framework of how preservation has emerged as a field of specialization and a foundation for understanding preservation issues, terminology, and public policy. Through discussions on the history and guiding principles of historic preservation, the class will explore the secretary of the interior’s standards, national and state register programs, preservation techniques, and the overall benefits of historic preservation.

Who should register: This course is a required course for the certificate in historic preservation. This course will be useful for anyone looking to broaden their understanding of current issues in historic preservation.

Instructors: Cory Kegerise
Date and Time: Wednesdays, September 4-November 6, 2019, 6:30PM-8:30PM
Location: Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, NJ
Cost: $275
Credits: 2 CEUs
Course Number: HP-101-F19
Agenda: View the fall 2018 syllabus here to get a sense of what the course is like.
REGISTER**: Registration is now closed.
Class Materials:

**If you want to register using a PO, please email nicole.belolan@rutgers.edu for instructions. 

Cory Kegerise is the Community Preservation Coordinator for Eastern Pennsylvania at the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office. He provides technical assistance on a wide variety of preservation-related issues to local governments, community organizations, and individuals in a region stretching from Philadelphia to Wayne County. Immediately prior to joining PHMC, Cory was the Administrator of Local Programs at the Maryland Historical Trust. Cory has also served as the Executive Director of the Elfreth’s Alley Association, worked as a consultant, and as a grants manager for a National & State Heritage Area. He lives in Germantown and holds a Master’s Degree in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor’s Degree in Historic Preservation from the University of Mary Washington.

Introduction to Online Historic Sources for Preservation Research – Registration closed.

1.5-day workshop

About: Are you telling the same old story at your small museum or historic site? Maybe you worry about whether it’s even historically accurate! Join us to learn how to improve your interpretive materials, grant application, or even your rack card so you can start connecting with visitors in new ways using historical materials. In this workshop, you will learn up-to-date techniques for researching historic buildings online and preserving and interpreting their histories for today’s audiences using digitized historic sources such as guidebooks, trade catalogues, maps, and museum artifacts.

Who should register: This workshop is geared toward participants who want to learn more about how to conduct historical research using free, digitized historic sources available online to conduct historical research on historic sites and houses where they work, volunteer, or live. This workshop will not focus on genealogical research but instead will help participants ask and answer good questions about everyday life at their historic site or home.

Instructor: Nicole Belolan
Dates and Times: Saturday, October 12, 9:00AM-4:00PM, and Saturday, October 19, 9:00AM-1:00PM
Location: Discovery Lab, Nursing and Science Building, Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, NJ
Cost: $65 (includes lunch on day 1)
Credits: 1 CEU
Course Number: Registration is now closed.

**If you want to register using a PO, please email nicole.belolan@rutgers.edu for instructions. 

Nicole Belolan is Public Historian at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers University-Camden, where she directs the Continuing Education Program in Historic Preservation and serves as Co-Editor of The Public Historian and as Digital Media Editor, both for the National Council on Public History. Belolan is a historian in of the material culture of everyday life in early America and specializes in disability history. She has been working in the region’s small museums and historic sites for over ten years, particularly in the areas of collections management an interpretation. She earned an MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and in History as well as a PhD in History, all from the University of Delaware. 

Taking Care of Buildings: Stewardship for Historic Structures 

1-day workshop

About: At museums and historic sites, the historic building has often been described as the largest object in the collection. How do you take care of it? Whether your organization is all volunteer or employs paid staff, this workshop will assist participants in planning for long term maintenance and preservation, identifying areas of concern, and minimizing building emergencies. Often, once a capital project has been completed, the organization files away project documents and forgets about the building until the next emergency occurs. This is not a cost effective or sustainable strategy to ensure that the significant and character defining features will be preserved for future generations. Developing a plan for maintenance will help you identify problems before they become major projects. In this workshop, participants will learn from seminar-style discussion and hands-on learning, including a tour of the 1796 Emlen House and surrounding neighborhood.

Who should register: This workshop is designed for staff, volunteers, board members, or others associated with small museums and historic sites, such as site managers or representatives from municipalities that manage historic structures.

Instructor: Annabelle Radcliffe-Trenner, RA
Date: Saturday, October 5, 2019
Time: 9:00AM-4:00PM
Location: Historic Building Architects, 312 West State Street, Trenton NJ 08618, and surrounding community
Cost: $85 (includes lunch)
Credits: .7 CEUs
Agenda: Click here for a draft schedule. Word Doc or PDF.

**If you want to register using a PO, please email nicole.belolan@rutgers.edu for instructions. 

Annabelle Radcliffe-Trenner, AIA, RIBA, founded Historic Building Architects, LLC, Trenton, NJ, an award-winning firm specializing in historic public buildings, in 1994. She was trained as a preservation architect in Scotland and then at ICCROM in Rome.

Annabelle has a keen interest in the long-term planning for and the ethics of intervention on historic properties. Eager to educate the public, she lectures on preservation issues internationally. One of her interests is the use of technology, and material and NDE science to supplement the visual understanding and planning for the preservation of buildings. She is a small Unmanned Aircraft Systems certified FAA pilot and for more than 6 years HBA has been using sUAS to document and survey historic buildings. HBA also specializes in Vision Planning for historic sites transitioning into the public heritage realm.

She has been interviewed on National Public Radio and NJ Television on historic preservation issues, and about restoration, following the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, by NBC and Fox Business News. She will be a preservation expert featured in a new TV show “If We Built It Today” airing this fall with a two-hour special on Notre Dame. Recently completed projects include: Bayada Home Healthcare Headquarters, Moorestown NJ, which recently received in awards from NJ AIA, Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, NJ HPO and Preservation NJ; Constitution Island at West Point NY, Saint Francis De Sales, Philadelphia, PA, and Cedar Bridge Tavern, Barnegat, NJ. Current projects include Batsto Mansion, Wharton State Park, MAST Naval Science Building at Fort Hancock, Sandy Hook, and the Museum of Early Trades and Crafts, Madison, all in NJ. For more information on her work and the HBA team, please review HBA’s website at www.hba- llc.com.

Costuming your Historic Site Interpreters on a Budget – Registration is now closed.

1.5-day workshop

About: Does your museum or historic site have costumed guides or docents who give tours or perform craft demonstrations, living history events, or reenactments? Would you like to learn about how to improve the historic authenticity and quality of what they are wearing and talk about why and how costume can be important tools for historical interpretation? In this workshop, Kimberly Boice and Tyler Putman, experts in costumed living history interpretation and hand-sewing, will introduce participants to historical fashions and give you the tools you need need to improve and enhance the preservation of your historic site’s history through the people who tell your site’s stories. Case studies will be related to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century costume, but workshop content, all of which will be offered in a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative learning environment, will be applicable to other periods of interpretation and tailored to participants’ interests and sites.

Who should register: 

  • Those who work or volunteer at museums and historic sites and oversee or participate in costumed interpretation.
  • Those who work or volunteer at museums or historic sites who would like to introduce costumed interpretation.
  • Those who work or volunteer at museums and historic sites and want to develop tools to evaluate the quality of costumed, outside contractors, and volunteers.
  • Independent living history interpreters and reenactors who would like to improve their costumes (or “impressions”).
  • Anyone who wants to learn more about what costumed interpretation can bring to historic preservation, broadly defined.

Access: Great news! Due to interest received from prospective participants who are not in the immediately vicinity, we arranged to offer a limited number of virtual participation slots for prospective participants who are about 130 miles or more from Camden, NJ. Internet connection, web cam, browser, and microphone required for use with Webex Video Conferencing. Virtual participants must register for each individual participating. In other words, if two staff are participating from ABC Museum of Living History in Los Angeles, CA, please pay for two registrations.

Instructors: Kimberly Boice and Tyler Putman
Dates and Times: Saturday, November 2, 9:00AM-4:00PM, and Saturday, November 9, 9:00AM-1:00PM
Location: Campus Center, Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, NJ
Cost: $65 (includes lunch on day 1 for those participating in person); fee is per person, not per site
Credits: 1 CEU
Course Number: HP-115-F19 and HP-115-F19VIRTUAL
Agenda: Click here for a draft schedule. Word Doc or PDF.
REGISTER**: Registration is now closed.

*If you want to register using a PO, please email nicole.belolan@rutgers.edu for instructions. 

Kimberley Boice has been active in the history and interpretation field beginning in her early teens and professionally since completing the requirements for a Master of Arts- History Museum Studies at the Cooperstown Graduate program in 2003. As a museum educator at a historic site, she supervised the overhaul of the period clothing collection worn by staff and volunteers and has also presented training sessions about women’s clothing of the Revolutionary War throughout the mid-Atlantic region. 

Tyler Putman is the Gallery Interpretation Manager at the Museum of the American Revolution and a PhD Candidate in the History of American Civilization at the University of Delaware. Tyler has worked in costumed interpretation for the eighteenth-twentieth centuries and as a reenactor and professional interpreter for 15 years.

Preserving Interior Woodwork:
Doors, Floors, and Trim – Registration is now closed.

Half-day workshop

About: Doors, floors, and trim make up a lot of your historic home. Do you know how to care for and repair these elements of your house? In this workshop, participants will learn about interior woodwork components and finishes, why and how they deteriorate, and the tools and materials you can use to preserve and repair them.

Who should register: This workshop is designed for people who own historic homes and want to pursue their own preservation work or for those who want to educate themselves to communicate more effectively with contractors who work on their homes or historic buildings where they work.

Instructors: Ray Tscheope & Tom McPoyle, Fairmount Park Conservancy
Date: Saturday, December 7, 2019
Time: 9:00AM-12:00PM
Location: Ohio House, West Fairmount Park, 4700 States Drive, Philadelphia, PA
Cost: $45
Credits: .3 CEUs
REGISTER**: Registration is now closed.

**If you want to register using a PO, please email nicole.belolan@rutgers.edu for instructions.

Ray Tscheope is Senior Conservator of the Fairmount Park Conservancy, Adjunct Faculty of the Bucks Co. Community College Historic Preservation Program since 2000, and Contributing Editor for the Old House Journal since 2006.

Tom McPoyle is the Director of Conservation of the Fairmount Park Conservancy. Both Ray and Tom have led popular hands-on preservation workshops for MARCH’s historic preservation program in the past.

If you would like step-by-step registration instructions, please click here!