History BA Alumni (send us your news!)

Katie Egan, ’94 B.A. History, is co-founder of HowGirlsCode, an organization that offers computer science instructional programs to elementary school girls in Howard County, and they are partnering with UMBC Training Centers to offer a coding camp for girls.

Emily Oland Squires (MA Historical Studies, ’96) has received the 2017 Victoria Irons Walch Leadership Award from the Council of State Archivists. Emily is Director of Research and Student Outreach, Research and Student Outreach at the MD State Archives.

Michelle (Margolis) Chesner, ’06 B.A. History (past president of the History Student Council), received an MLIS from Long Island University, and an MA in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at NYU in 2008, worked as a Judaica Reference Librarian from 2008-2010 at the University of Pennsylvania, and then started in 2010 as Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies at Columbia University where she is responsible for the general collections as well as for a significant Hebrew rare book and manuscript collection.  She writes it all started with Dr. Grubb’s 497 Capstone Course, as he encouraged her to work on Hebrew incunabula!

Elise Hoffman, ’08 B.A. History, is an 8th Grade Social Studies and Language Arts Teacher, Lindale Middle School, in Linthicum heights, MD. She received a Master of Arts in Historic Preservation from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2012 and drafted the recently approved National Historic Main Street application for the Waverly neighborhood in Baltimore, MD.

Kristina Gaddy (’09) is making a living as a history researcher and writer. Here is a segment from a June 2017 Marc Steiner show, along with the website Gaddy co-created, on the history behind the Lee-Jackson monument in Baltimore. http://leejacksonmonument.weebly.com/

Kyle Bacon, ’12 B.A. History, is a Digital Preservation Specialist at JHU Special Collections AND the owner/operator of DigiPreserve, helping people preserve family photographs. He previously worked for Ancestry.com, after spending 10 months as a historical research intern at the Maryland State Archives, and working with Baltimore Heritage and the Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County.

Robert Bennett, ’12 B.A. History, was Executive Director of the William Brinton 1704 House & Historic Site, near West Chester, PA.  He credits his paper in Prof. Kars’ 201 class for getting him that job! Now he has moved on to the National Archives and Records Administration, where he works as an Archives Specialist.

Kelly Jordan, ’13 B.A History, is Education Coordinator at the Universities at Shady Grove and getting an MA in HR Management at the University of Maryland University College.

Marissa (Dalgetty) Wood, ’13 B.A History and GES, with a Certificate in GIS, is a Cartographer at International Mapping Associates in Ellicott City, MD 21042.  Whenever possible, she hires UMBC interns!

Meghan Gilbert, ’13 B.A. History, taught for Teach for America for two years.  She is now getting a BS in GES at UMBC, and she will intern for Marissa Wood (BA ’13) at International Mapping Associates in 2016.

Erin Butler, ’13 B.A. History, will receive her M.D. degree in May 2017 and will take up a residency in emergency medicine in York, PA. Congratulations to Erin who credits her History degree and Prof. Grubb’s letter of recommendation for getting her into med school.

Sandra Delaney, ’14 B.A. History, recently promoted to speechwriter for Senator Ben Cardin, credits the writing and research skills she learned in her history courses with her career success, and writes that her experience with the Shady Grove History program completely changed her life!

Mark Latanishen, ’14 B.A. History, is a writer for Ink•Bird Content Development.  He recently finished an internship with them and now creates web pages, blogs, product descriptions and other similar materials.  He credits his experience with the Department of History with helping him hone his writing skills to make this line of work possible.

Leslie McNamara, ’14 BA, will be attending UMCP’s Masters of Public Policy Program with a concentration in health policy in the fall of 2015.

Rachel Rettaliata, ’14, is the Communications & Advocacy intern for Preservation Maryland.  She writes: “Currently, I am creating a StoryMap for them (with skills that I learned from Dr. Meringolo’s class), blogging on their website, and assisting with preservation advocacy in Annapolis and Capitol Hill.  It has been a great learning experience and it is a paid position.”  She will start College Park’s Masters of Historic Preservation program (with funding!) in August 2016. She used her HIST 201 paper with Dr. Kars as her writing sample!

Matthew Wilson, ’14 B.A. History, worked at the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum.  After six months, he left to become a director at the Baltimore Humane Society where he runs the entire cemetery and funeral department along with bereavement and counseling    He writes that “the skills I learned from my time as a history major have proven to be incredibly valuable. I have to manage a database, deal with presenting to large groups of investors, and I have to be able to organize information and write on a daily basis.”  As a student, he interned at the  Holocaust Museum which provided him with valuable work experience.

Jennifer (Jen) Wachtel, ’15 B.A. History, is enrolled in the UMCP Masters of Library Science Program with a concentration in Archives and Digital Curation, Jen interned in Special Collections, among other places, which helped her decide on this career path.

Molly Bradtke, ’15 B.A. History and Asian Studies, will be entering American University’s Master’s Program in Global Environmental Policy with full funding in Fall 2016.

Andrew Holter, a graduate student in the M.A. in Historical Studies program, wrote the cover piece for the Feb. 15, 2017 issue of Baltimore’s City Paper. His article is entitled, “Our Town: What the Rise of Nazism looked like in Baltimore During the 1930’s”.

 

Send your news to Professor Froide at froide@umbc.edu – we love to hear from you!