History Department Alumni

Since 1997, WMU alumni were employed at the following institutions:

Studebaker National Museum, South Bend, Indiana
Fort Miami Heritage Society, St. Joseph, Michigan
Star Spangled Banner Flag House, Baltimore, Maryland
Northern Indiana Center for History, South Bend, Indiana
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum, Baltimore, Maryland.
National Park Service, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia
Mackinac Historical Parks, Lansing, Michigan/ Mackinac Island, Michigan
Gerald R. Ford Museum
Monroe County Historical Society, Bloomington, Indiana
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan

WMU alumnus Jason Aikens is currently working as the Collections Coordinator at the Pro Football Hall of Fame located in Canton, Ohio. Jason states that "the WMU public history program provided me the research skills and practical workplace experiences to become both a curator and an historian." Jason is a 1997 graduate of the Public History Program.

WMU alumnus Matt Anderson is currently working as curator of collections at Fort Miami Heritage Society. Matt previously worked at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Matt is a graduate of the Public History Program.

WMU Alumnus Hallie Brignall graduated with a B.A. In Public History in Spring 2000 for WMU and is currently completing her Masters at San Francisco State University in Museum Studies. So far, she has completed an internship at the Cohen-Bray Historic House. She also has interned at the California Historical Society where she worked on the exhibition, California Labor that opened in September 2003. For Hallie’s thesis, she is curating an exhibition on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 for the National Park Service that will be showing in the Presidio in 2004.

WMU Alumnus Calvin (Cal) Carter was a History Major, graduating from WMU with a Bachelor in Arts in 1963 and a Master of Arts in 1969. Originally intending to teach history but upon graduating in 1963, Cal spent almost four years in the Army fulfilling his ROTC obligation. Cal then returned to WMU and pursued a Masters of Degree in International and Area Studies with a focus on Asian Studies. Cal pursued several careers prior to his retirement several years ago. For fifteen years he worked for the American Red Cross as a Field Director on military installations around the world, including Vietnam. For the last fifteen years he worked in Business Travel including with American Express as their VIP Travel Agent at Stanford University.

WMU Alumnus Fred M. Holycross has been professionally involved in historic preservation since 1987, having held positions in the public, nonprofit and private sectors. He is a Midwest native, spending his formative years in southwestern Michigan. His academic accomplishments include a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public History from Western Michigan University and Master of Arts degree in American Studies from the University of Notre Dame. His scholarly interest in American material culture studies led to a broader appreciation of the historic physical environment and its value for perpetuating habitable and dynamic communities. Historic preservation soon became a both a personal environmental advocacy concern, as well as a profession. Fred’s preservation career began as Director of the Historic Preservation Commission of South Bend-St. Joseph County (Indiana), followed by almost seven years as Director of the Eastern Regional Office and the Huddleston Farmhouse Inn Museum for Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, one of the country’s largest state-wide preservation groups. Among his notable projects there were the creation of two nonprofit advocacy groups devoted to the protection and promotion of the historic National Road that runs from Maryland through Illinois. One of those groups, the National Road Alliance, remains today as the country’s only five-state Scenic Byway advocacy group and is responsible for advocating protection of what is one of the country’s longest and most significant historic highways. His tenure in Indiana also included a stint as Assistant Professor of Architecture at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he taught introductory historic preservation courses. Fred later helped develop an emerging regional initiative as Director of The Preservation Resource Center of Northeastern Ohio, a program of the Cleveland Restoration Society. He has worked in Maryland since 2001, first as a cultural resource management consultant for the URS Corporation in Bethesda, where he held the position of Senior Architectural Historian and Architectural Team leader, until joining Preservation Maryland in April, 2003.

WMU Alumnus George D. Jepson received a Master of Arts degree in early American and modern American history from WMU in 1970. His most memorable experience was working under the “tenacious” mentorship of Dr Peter Schmidt, whose influence has remained with him over many years. His study of history has served him both professionally and personally. The discipline of conducting research and then expressing the results in writing provided the basis for much of my career in journalism and corporate communications. Virtually every project in which he was involved required skills learned during his time in the history department. Though he also has an MBA degree in management from WMU, he regards his time in history graduate studies as the most influential and helpful in his careers. Personally, history has always been an avocation for George and he has a specific interest in maritime and naval history. As a result of this influence, George and his wife, Amy, purchased a small Internet/catalog bookshop called Tall Ships Books five years ago and specialize in nautical fiction and maritime/naval history. Their monthly newsletter, Bowsprit, is published in print and online, and contains interviews with authors in both fiction and history. George feels his history background allows him to interact with authors more knowledgeably.

WMU alumnus Cindy Olsen is currently working at the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana. While a staff member at the Star Spangled Banner Flag House in Baltimore, Maryland, Cindy headed a committee to pick the dresses and write and fabricate the labels for a Women's History Exhibit at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. The exhibit featured women's traveling dresses of the 19th century. Cindy is a graduate of the Public History Program.

WMU alumnus Dr. Dale H. Porter received his B. A. (cum laude) from Western Michigan University in 1963. While an undergraduate at Western, he spent his Junior Year abroad at Allahabad University in India (1962-63). He completed his Master’s degree at Stanford in 1964 and his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon in 1967, specializing in British history. He was appointed Assistant Professor of History at Bethany College in Bethany, West Virginia in 1967. In 1970 he returned to WMU as an Assistant Professor of Humanities in the College of General Studies, where he taught until 1989. He also served as Assistant to the Dean and Chair of the Faculty, in addition to pursuing an extremely active career in research and publication. In 1989 Dale joined the Department of History as a Full Professor, the rank he had gained in Humanities in 1984. He retired from the History Department in 2000. He continues to serve as the dissertation director of two Ph.D. students. One of his M.A. students completed her degree this year. He is author of four books and numerous articles. His books are: The Abolition of the British Slave Trade in England, 1784-1807 (1970), The Emergence of the Past: A Theory of Historical Explanation (1981), The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology, and Society in Victorian London (1997), and The Life and Times of Sir Goldsworthy Gurney: Gentleman Scientist and Inventor (1998). Since his retirement, Dale and his wife, Betty, reside in Nederland, Colorado, where Dale is active in lending his expertise to local history organizations. He is an excellent example of a WMU alumnus who successfully pursued an academic profession and spent an entire career helping shape the institution from which he earned his undergraduate degree.

WMU Alumnus John W. Sampson graduated with a Bachelor in Arts in 1965 and majored in history and political science. He received his Master of Arts in history in 1967 at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and majored in American Colonial History. John states that professors stand out as having an influence on his course of study. Dr. Ernst Breisach was his advisor and an outstanding person and teacher. Dr. Willis Dunbar taught him the love of the history of Michigan and the importance of knowing about state and local history. Dr. Nicholas Hamner was and encouraging teacher who had an impact of his pursuing an MA in history. John taught history for five years at the high school and junior high level in Bloomfield Hills Public Schools, MI and retired in June of 2002 as a high school administrator in Kentwood Public Schools, Kentwood, MI.

WMU Alumnus Steve Vance is a 2000 Public History graduate. Steve is currently working at the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, MI as the Volunteer Coordinator and Educational Assistant. Steve feels that the education he received during his years at Western has given him the ability to make valued decisions throughout my career. Currently, Steve is back at WMU working on a Master's in Education.

Who Are Our Alumni ?

We would like to hear from our former students! Please send us by mail or e-mail (hist_wmu@wmich.edu) your responses to the following questions, and inform us of anything else you would like us to know.

When were you a student of History at Western?
What was one of your memorable experiences?
How has your study of history at Western served you professionally or personally?
What could the History Department have done to enhance your educational experience?
What can the History Department do now to serve you (and other alumni)?

In order to offer present and prospective students concrete examples of what our graduates do, may we add a statement about you to our website. Give us a link to your professional or personal web page if it is relevant, and suggest what we might say about you.