Every spring, as part of the public history practicum (HIST-730), students and faculty work alongside American University’s partner institutions to develop new educational programs, future exhibits, and other interpretive works. These projects provide students opportunities to learn public history in the field, honing project management skills and practice working as a team. With every project, AU’s partners benefit from the valuable, professional assistance of talented scholars trained in the best practices of the field.

Public history students at AU recently collaborated with curators at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History museum to build the institution’s first pre-exhibition website. Working in collaboration with staff from the museum's New Media office, the students launched their website in January of 2011, complete with a curator blog, visitor surveys, and a tour of the possible objects featured in the upcoming exhibition. Learn more about their work here, or visit the American Enterprise site.

Historical interpretation comes in all shapes and sizes, and in the spring of 2010, American University students were given the chance to work in one of its most challenging forms—museum theater. Students worked alongside the staff of the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and the National Museums of American History to develop two original pieces of museum theater based on the lives of two path-breaking women inventors—Margaret E. Knight and Marion O’Brien Donovan. With the help and guidance of faculty and actors from American University’s own Performing Arts Department, students wrote scripts based on original research into these inventors' lives.

Utilizing contemporary readings on historical interpretation, exhibit design, and African American studies, American University students developed a comprehensive furnishing plan for Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial’s north slave quarters and winter kitchen. The plan broadened the popular site’s historical narrative to include free and enslaved people of color, emphasizing themes of enslaved resistance, contested living spaces, and local, regional, and international mobility. Visit the website students developed to accompany the proposed furnishing plan.

Over the course of two semesters, American University students partnered with the National Park Service to develop an interpretive plan for Arlington National Cemetery. Combining archival research with lessons in graphic design, students created a series of wayside exhibits that educate visitors about the important, though often unmarked, sites and memorials scattered across the cemetery’s 624-acre campus. Learn more about the Arlington Waysides project here.