Students in the UVM Historic Preservation Program regularly obtain full-time summer internships at top organizations and agencies in the U.S. and abroad. Some examples include the National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Historic American Building Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management Program, Savannah Landmarks, Historic New England, National Trust (England), Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, Santa Barbara Preservation Trust, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, Waterford Foundation, Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, Flynn Theatre, Vermont Historical Society and Vermont Division for Historic Preservation.

Graduate students may have the opportunity to take field study trips to observe preservation projects around the globe individually or in groups. In the HP 6304 Contemporary Preservation Policy and Planning course, research travel and lodging expenses may be subsidized with scholarship grants from the Historic Preservation Program's endowment or gift fund. Graduate students have taken field research trips to the Netherlands, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Italy, Scotland, England, Nicaragua, Austria, Cuba, and many cities across the United States and Canada.

To support research travel scholarships and other enhancements, the UVM Historic Preservation Program has received generous gift contributions from its alumni, supporters, and a number of foundations and agencies, including the Clara E. and John H. Ware, Jr. Foundation, National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, National Park Service, Eva Gebhard-Gourgaud Foundation; Cecil Howard Charitable Trust; Patrick Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts; U.S. Department of the Interior through the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation; National Trust for Historic Preservation; Vermont Council on the Arts; Vermont Council on the Humanities and Public Issues; New York Community Trust; New Hampshire Charitable Fund; Kellogg Foundation; Windham Foundation and other private and public donors. Some of these funds are invested in an endowment dedicated to program support and enrichment. 

Adrienne Dickerson  completed a summer internship with the project review team for the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation in Montpelier. She contributed to the Section 106 and Act 250 review process and attended site visits throughout the state of Vermont with the Division. She also assisted with historic research of properties under review, some of which she presented at a meeting of the Vermont Advisory Council on historic preservation. After graduation, she was hired as an architectural historian with the Louisiana State Historic Preservation Office.

Jacob Collins had an exciting summer with the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park as a National Council for Preservation education intern. He conducted research on Ashton Mill Village, 19th-century workers’ housing built for the adjacent Ashton Mill, in Cumberland, R.I., and the Captain Wilbur Kelly House in Lincoln, R.I., an early 19th-century superintendent’s house for one of the earliest mills in the state. The majority of his time was spent researching the alterations, from a late 19th-century renovation to a 2015 tax credit-funded restoration of the Ashton Mill Village. 

Gabrielle Fernandez spent a summer working as an intern with the Vermont Historic Sites Program. For her summer internship, Fernandez worked at the Justin Morrill Homestead (above) in Strafford, Vermont, studying the agricultural activities at the National Historic Landmark during Justin Morrill’s era. Justin Morrill, the famed “Senator from Vermont,” designed the landscape, farm buildings, and residence at the Gothic Revival site between 1846 and 1848. The purpose of Gabrielle’s internship was to delve into Justin Morrill’s activities at his farm, his level of knowledge, input, participation, yields, background, and more. 

Austin White completed his summer internship with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation at the Central Office in Harrisburg. His tasks included updating truss bridge records for the state’s Cultural Resource Geographic Information System, editing bridge assessments, documenting the removal and relocation of an extremely rare Henszey Bowstring pony truss, summarizing Transportation Agency Section 4(f) meetings, supporting archaeologists on project scopings, and assisting Preservation PA with the annual statewide preservation conference.

Emma Haggerty (pictured here) interned with the National Trust for Historic Preservation at the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, N.Y. Lyndhurst is a Gothic Revival mansion designed by Alexander Jackson Davis and completed in 1865. The house stands atop a hill, which overlooks the large property that provides beautiful views of the Hudson River, Palisades, and Manhattan skyline.  Haggerty’s role was to perform hands-on conservation to the building and its surrounding structures under the guidance of Project Restoration Manager Tom Richmond and fellow UVM HP graduate, Krystyn Hastings-Silver. Her duties included masonry, carpentry, painting, plastering, and living on-site in the Greenhouse Service Building.

Students in the 2023 HP6304 “Contemporary Preservation Planning and Policy” graduate seminar completed the following research projects supported with field travel expense scholarships funded through the generosity of UVM HPP alumni: 

• Denise D’Abramo traveled to North Elba, NY, in the Adirondack Mountains, to visit the John Brown State Historic Site and research the Black Farmer Settlements of the Adirondacks. Through interviews with State agencies, non-profit partners, and local stakeholders, D’Abramo studied the complex histories of the John Brown Farm and the lost settlement of Timbuctoo, a mid-19^th century farming community established for Black men by Gerrit Smith, a prominent social reformer. 

• Romano Ghirlanda studied the ongoing rehabilitation of the Hotel Bond in Hartford, CT. Built in the early 20^th century as a luxury hotel, the Hotel Bond fell on hard times in the 1960s, and for the past 30 years many of its premier spaces were closed off and hidden, including Turkish baths, a barbershop, and a radio station. Ghirlanda met with the property owner, project architects, and a local event planner to learn how they plan to rehabilitate the building and open it to the community once again. 

• Aidan Kyle made his way to Seattle, WA, to investigate how the 1889 Cadillac Hotel was saved from demolition following a 2001 earthquake. Despite significant structural damage, Historic Seattle purchased the property, stabilized and seismically retrofit the building, and rehabilitated it for continued use. It is now leased to the National Park Service, which uses the building as the headquarters for the Klondike Goldrush National Historical Park.  

• Keiran Reynolds headed to the Midwest, where he visited the Milwaukee Public Museum and its “Streets of Old Milwaukee” exhibit. Created in 1965, the “Streets of Old Milwaukee” is a walk-through diorama representing Milwaukee in the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries. In the 21^st century, the exhibit raises questions about representation and inclusion, and it is slated to be replaced by new exhibit, “Milwaukee Revealed” when a new museum facility opens in 2027. 

• Daniel Vasquez’s interest in the history and preservation of wooden covered bridges led him to Lyndonville, VT, where he learned about the current efforts to rehabilitate the 1869 Sanborn Covered Bridge. Daniel met with the project sponsors, covered bridge restoration experts, and the head of the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges, who shared their knowledge of covered bridge design, preservation planning, and community engagement to generate support for the project.