North Carolina State University

MA in Public History prepares its students to work in a variety of public and applied history settings; archives, museums, libraries and other public history facilities. Public History is viewed as an approach not only to scholarship but to the practice of history and engagement with the world. Public history is the way in which they make history relevant to our communities, states, and nation. They promote the collaborative nature of public history, the importance of relevance over objectivity, and the civic role of the public historian.

The Museum Studies Program offers intense training in museology theories and methodologies, preparing students to work with public audiences in museums, historic sites, and other cultural institutions. The program introduces students to the tools that public historians use: material culture, shared inquiry and authority, weighing relevance against objectivity, and professional ethics. Through the development of public projects, students learn the benefits of collaboration and the responsibilities of leadership.

The Heritage Studies Program provides students with professional skills to work for local, state, national, and international organizations as well as private institutions in developing concepts and strategies for the conservation, rehabilitation and promotion of cultural resources and heritage sites. They will be able to design and implement plans for the protection and development of heritage properties, and create models for sustainable tourism around historic and heritage sites.

Archival studies is offered through a dual degree program with the School of Information and Library Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The dual degree program allows students to pursue an MILS degree in archival management as well as an MA in public history in museum studies, heritage studies, or a tailored curriculum to complement their archival degree. The dual degree program was created in response to today’s marketplace demands that archivists, manuscript curators, and records managers have both historical knowledge and advanced information management skills. The new archival workforce must both be able to appraise and describe historical records, and create World Wide Web sites and preserve electronic documents. ... Students must apply and be admitted to each graduate program separately, identifing their interest in the dual degree prior to admission.