Joining Forces: Seven Take-Aways from a Biennial Meeting Roundtable

 

Many of us love the idea of close cooperation with the National Park Service (NPS), and of forging ties between academics and public-facing historians more generally, but we are not always sure how to put those ideas and intentions into tangible, sustainable practice. At the Society of Civil War History’s Biennial Meeting in Raleigh in June, a roundtable brought together academic historians at all career levels with National Park Service professionals to consider what makes the most productive collaborations work, and what can get in the way. Three current NPS employees, one Organization of American Historians public programs professional, an advanced graduate student, and four professors all shared their personal experiences and perspectives, each of which contained its own important and useful particularities. In addition to these unique views, seven common themes emerged from the conversation as a whole.

 

Local Community Involvement is Crucial. Successful collaborations depend upon building relationships with local residents, local schools and colleges, and local institutions. Part of good relationship building is being careful not to discount efforts that are underway. Nobody likes to work hard at something and then hear criticism for its absence, as though their efforts never existed.

Begin by asking what parks need. Collaboration is far more likely to be productive if it begins by academic historians finding out what would be of help to parks rather than simply assuming that they have a great idea and a National Park should implement it. Two specific suggestions stood out. First, professors have the time and resources to do research, far more than NPS personnel do. Making findings available to parks for programming is a clear way that academic historians can offer something beneficial to parks, but academics need to be open to NPS input on accessible ways to present research findings. A second thing that the NPS could really use from academic historians is advocacy around specific park needs. For example, interpretive rangers (the rangers who design and offer tours and programs) are currently most likely to be Park Guides at the GS 4/5 pay grade, which is not at all a fair compensation level for the work of interpretation, and also is not permanent and does not have promotion potential. Parks really need interpretive staff to be hired as Rangers at the 7/9 pay grade. Park staff themselves cannot advocate for that change, but professors from the relative security of their academic positions can.

Recognize that collaboration can be mutually beneficial. Well-intentioned academic historians can be so eager to share what they know with parks that they come across like nineteenth-century missionaries secure in the knowledge that they are saving people who can’t help themselves, which does not make an ideal foundation for collaboration. Professors will benefit themselves and parks if they recognize that academic historians have as much to learn from parks as the NPS does from them, and if they notice and acknowledge the ways in which they, their students, and their work benefit from interaction with the NPS.

Be good neighbors. Conversation with each other is going to lead to better results than calling out. Tours and interpretive signage based on dated or even discredited scholarship might well exist and need to change. A temptation might be for an academic historian to write a critical Op-Ed or in some other public facing way call out the issue. Putting an agency on the defensive, however, is almost never the way to change things expeditiously. More constructive results come more quickly if instead an academic historian approaches NPS staff as fellow professionals, expresses the concern collegially, and then asks if they can think together about ways to move forward.

Be mindful of each other’s constraints. Professors working in universities and NPS staff working in parks share a dedication to history, but they also work in professional environments with their own demands, limits, and expectations. Each side can sometimes discount or lose sight of the other’s responsibilities, realities, and obstacles. The NPS is working with chronic funding limitations and the reality that some changes, such as monument removal, can only come with an Act of Congress rather than on the Park Service’s own initiative. At the same time, professors operate in a world where specificity and nuance are demanded and they cannot always say or write exactly what would fit most easily within NPS conventions. Additionally, the “more time” that professors have for research is usually their own time, often unpaid; they don’t operate in a world that gives “comp time” for weeks that exceed forty hours (in other words, every week.) Moreover, each answers to multiple, but different, constituencies. Park historians and interpretive rangers answer to NPS superintendents, the Department of the Interior, Congress, and most of all the public in a very direct and daily way. Professors answer to other scholars in their field, university administration, intensifying public scrutiny of their work, and the many needs and demands of students. Those differing constraints are here to stay, but we can at least remember that they are there when working with each other, and extend a little grace.

Partnerships can help a lot. Great things happen through good personal relationships but at the same time, working to build formal partnerships that go beyond individual relationships can help a lot. Participating in a “Friends of the Park” group or other existing partnership, or working together to create such a group if one does not exist, can help ensure consistency and navigate unexpected circumstances, even if particular individuals move on or retire. Pairing a professor and an NPS professional on specific projects can also provide a reliable vehicle for translating different conventions for each other, ensuring that work products like reports and studies comply with needed format and language.

The SCWH and other historians’ organizations can elevate the value of collaboration with the NPS (and public historians more broadly) in some concrete ways. Some steps that that SCWH can take include:

• Ensure an NPS presence at every biennial conference by allotting at least one panel or roundtable to NPS related issues and offering at least one workshop on some practical aspect of working with the NPS
• Create a regular award for excellent historical interpretation at an NPS site
• Work with the NPS to offer professional development opportunities at SCWH conferences and events, including for seasonal rangers
• Systematize pathways for history students to apply for and take seasonal ranger positions with the NPS
• Add an NPS liaison to the SCWH

 

Each of the participants in the roundtable discussion had more to add, and I hope some will speak up here by commenting on this overview! But these seven themes arose as good possible starting points for collaborating productively. While not exhaustive, we hope that they mark a beginning for ongoing conversations about how academic historians and National Park Service professionals can work together for mutual benefit and for the good of history.