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CURRICULUM
Northwestern State University's Heritage Resources curriculum is tailored to meet both the academic and practical needs of the preservation professional with a multi-faceted, integrated approach founded on experiential learning. Students complete the program in two years following the model described below.
FIRST YEAR FALL
Exploring Heritage Resources (3 credit hours)
Orientation is an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Heritage Resources. The course focuses on the practical experience of planning, preserving, and presenting heritage resources. Through discussions with heritage resource practitioners from the National Park Service, Office of State Parks, and others, the students are exposed to the breadth and challenges of the field. In addition to several short field trips to local heritage sites, the students participate in one overnight trip to a major heritage site, such as Poverty Point, Natchez, Mississippi, or Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Writing the Past: Heritage Writing (3 credit hours)
The heritage writing course provides hands-on practice with various types of writing projects, applying professional standards and guidelines from various disciplines to prepare the students for real-life projects and responsibilities. Both writing and non-writing activities are included, a number of which are related to field trips undertaken as part of the orientation course.
Heritage Resources Methods I (3 credit hours)
This is the first of a two-semester course designed to introduce the student to the distinctive research methods of each of the disciplines that can be used to study and preserve heritage resources. The student receives, through lectures and practical application, a basic working knowledge of research, documentation, and preservation methods such as documentary and archival research, oral history and ethnology methods, GIS and GPS technologies, spatial analysis, and cultural/heritage landscapes.
FIRST YEAR SPRING
Approaching the Past: Theory and Readings in Cultural Heritage Resource Management (3 credit hours)
This class uses a multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the interactive, many-directional relationships that humans have with their environments. These relationships are investigated by gaining a familiarity with a number of pertinent theoretical perspectives in history, anthropology, geography, and preservation.
Heritage Resources Methods II (3 credit hours)
This is the second of a two-semester course designed to introduce the student to the distinctive research methods of each of the disciplines that can be used to study and preserve heritage resources. The student receives, through lectures and practical application, a basic working knowledge of the research, documentation, and preservation methods such as archaeological survey and excavation techniques, building documentation and recordation, and material preservation methods. The course culminates in a multidisciplinary application of the methods learned to a specific problem.
Caring for Culture's Clutter: Heritage Resouce Management (3 credit hours)
In the Heritage Resource Management course, the student considers the value and ethics of heritage resource preservation, the development of the heritage resources movement and important legislative initiatives. In addition, the various groups involved in heritage preservation, and the programmatic methods and tools that are available to protect and preserve heritage resources are discussed.
SUMMER
Internship (3 credit hours)
The Heritage Resources Internship enables the students to apply their classroom learning to practical projects in a workplace, to experience professional working environments, and to build networks. The student completes a professional project working with a federal, state, local or private organization/agency in one of the following areas: historic preservation, cultural resource management, archaeology, archival resources, ethnology, oral history, folklife, historical research, or historic landscapes.
SECOND YEAR FALL
Time, Place, and Peoples: Integrated Seminar (3 credit hours)
This seminar provides an opportunity for the students to apply the knowledge and skills that they have learned to a specific project. The seminar has an overarching theme and each student is assigned a topic, which focuses on some aspect of this theme but also addresses a research, management, or interpretive need identified by one of the local heritage resource organizations. As part of this effort, each student develops a literature review, research design, methods, and expected outcomes for the topic. This topic becomes the student’s final Heritage Resources Project to be completed in the spring semester.
Elective I (3 credit hours) *
Elective II (3 credit hours)*
SECOND YEAR SPRING
Heritage Site Administration (3 credit hours)
This course provides an introduction to the wide range of duties encountered as an administrator of a heritage resource site. Administrators wear a variety of hats in their daily interactions with staff, volunteers, board members and the general public. While overseeing the daily operations of a site, the director must conduct long-range planning, ensure funding, educate the board, staff and public, market the site, and often find resolution to controversial ethical and legal issues. A variety of assignments and site visits explore these various roles.
Heritage Resources Project (3credit hours)
The project is the culminating experience for the student. The project requires the application of theoretical knowledge or methods to a practical problem. It is a significant undertaking and results in both a written report and an oral presentation to the class, the supporting agency, and the faculty.
Elective III (3 credit hours)*
* Electives may be selected from a number of courses with prior approval of the student's major professor
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