High impact student learning is crucial to the academic and professional success of our students. In UNCG Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA), we work closely with various academic departments on our campus to provide opportunities for students to gain real world experience as part of Capstone projects, practicums, and internships. During the Spring semester of 2021, SCUA staff oversaw and guided projects with two graduate students focused on exhibit making, Sarah-Esther Belinga and Matthew McCarthy. The skillset to create and mount exhibits is crucial to museum and archival work. Exhibits are a primary means of displaying and translating history and primary sources to the public in a manner that is informative and visually interesting. Even with small exhibit spaces, considerable effort is required to condense a topic or moment in history into one or two display cases.
Sarah-Esther Beligna is a graduate student in the Library and Information Science Department. Interested in learning more about textile and artifact preservation and archival description, she spent the semester working with the collection of Dr. James V. Carmichael, a retired professor of the same department whose research interests include gender and sexuality and the history of Southern librarianship. Dr. Carmichael’s collection contains not only his research material, but also a stunning collection of vintage women’s clothing and accessories. Sarah-Esther spent the semester processing the textiles and artifacts in the collection and building a finding aid for the collection. Her final project culminated with the creation of the exhibit, Part Times of the 1930s, which was on display to the public from April until June 2021 in the W.C Jackson Library.
Matthew McCathy was a graduate student in the History Department who also graduated in May 2021. Matthew’s Capstone project focus involved working with the PRIDE! of the Community, the first large-scale initiative to document the LGBTQ+ history of the Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point) area of North Carolina. He processed oral histories, writing transcriptions, indexing, and syncing the video and text to make the material more accessible. As the final product of his project, he collaborated with with the Greensboro History Museum to create an exhibit devoted to the Guilford Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Equality (GAGLE) in the Community Voices exhibit space. GAGLE was an early LGBTQ+ social justice organization in the Triad, founded in 1987. The material featured in this exhibit is derived from the Marnie Thomson Papers, the Triad Health Project Collection, and the David Gwynn Collection. This exhibit is on display from April until July 2021.
