Internships

The purpose of the Public History internship is for the student to gain training and working experience at a museum, historic site, historic battlefield, or interpretation center, supervised by a staff member with public history training or significant leadership experience.

The internship awards 3.0 hours course credit for this apprenticeship experience, which means it will show up on your transcript (but will also be billed as a course for tuition purposes).

Requirements for the internship

  • Contract: The internship requires a contract, set up between an ECU Public History faculty member (Dr. Prokopowicz or Dr. Dixon) and the supervisor at the site of the internship. Often this is the director of the museum / site or the director of a department within larger museums.
  • Assignments: The intern should contract to work 140 hours during an ECU semester. Usually, that means 8-10 hours a week over 15 weeks, not including the final exam period (when the student is writing a 4–5-page paper to submit to the ECU Public History faculty member). Your actual working schedule can be negotiated with your site supervisor. If the student can pay summer tuition, intensive internships during Summer I or II are possible.
  • Planning ahead: You cannot self-register for the internship class. Instead, you need to start the semester before to identify your ideal internship sites, and to make sure you begin working with one of the ECU Public History faculty members (Dr. Prokopowicz or Dr. Dixon) to set up your contract. See the recommended steps, below:

To set up an internship

  1. Contact a Public History faculty member (Dr. Prokopowicz, prokopowiczg@ecu.edu) or (Dr. Dixon, dixonhe19@ecu.edu) to begin your internship search. Ideally, you would come to this meeting with your first choice of an internship site, and a few backups. Think about how your course load, how you would get to this internship reliably, when they are open, and your career goals when identifying ideal sites.
  2. One your site has been approved, reach out to the contact person you and the faculty member have identified at your proposed internship site with an email like this one (edit as needed):

“Dear Dr./Ms./Mr. [name of potential supervisor],
My name is [x] and I am a [junior undergraduate / first year graduate student] at East Carolina University. I am training in Public History, which requires that I complete an internship as part of my degree. Would you be open to hosting me for 140 hours over the course of the [Fall/Spring/etc.] semester, [dates of the semester: Jan – May or August – December, etc.]? My goal is to work in a Public History field like archives, museums, and historic sites, so I am open to tasks like collections management and data entry, digitization of collection records, collections care, writing labels or education materials, and other projects. If you are open to this, I can put you in touch with an ECU Public History faculty member, to set up a contract.
Thank you for your consideration,”

  • One you have a positive response, email your site supervisor and the ECU faculty member to put them in touch and to initiate the contract with a list of the tasks you’ll be undertaking in your internship.
  • Your ECU faculty + site supervisor will sign the contract, and then a section of the internship course will be created for you during registration. For undergraduates, this will be HIST 4940 “Public History Internship.” For graduate students, multiple course numbers exist. You can complete multiple internships as long as your institution / department / tasks change, teaching you something new each time.

Internship sites we have already worked well with

On Campus

  • Joyner Library Special Collections (including Archives, Digital Collections, the North Carolina Collections, etc.). **They require an application submitted 1-3 weeks before registration opens (due date changes slightly each term) and then notify you early in the registration period if you have been accepted.
  • Laupus Health Sciences Library (working on their exhibits and historical collections; 500 Health Science Dr).

In Greenville

  • The Greenville Museum of Art – with interns working on the history of the collections, collection database information, and website development (802 Evans St).
  • Queen Anne’s Revenge Maritime Conservation Lab (ECU West Research Campus, 1157 VOA Site C Road).
  • A Time for Science: NC Museum of Natural Sciences (226 West 8th St.).

Beyond Greenville

  • The Country Doctor Museum (Bailey, NC).
  • Tryon Palace / NC History Center (New Bern, NC).
  • Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site (Visitor’s Center in Four Oaks, NC).

Many other sites are possible, but this might get you started!