Hear from our Successful Alumni
Master of Arts in History Program
Ursula VanWart graduated from the Master’s in History Program in 2002, receiving the departmental award for Outstanding Thesis. In 2023, she retired from teaching high school Social Studies at Middlesex County Magnet Schools in New Jersey, where she was very active in the local teachers’ union, serving as Treasurer, Head Building Representative, and member of contract negotiations teams. After a 20-year career in education, Ursula currently enjoys being a realtor. In her free time, she likes to read, listen to podcasts while on her daily walks, visit museums and historical sites, and solve crossword puzzles. After raising two wonderful adult children, she and her husband Rob are happy empty nesters who live with their rescue dog, Bailey.
Mariam Ahmed: What was your experience like just in the program as a student? What stands out to you when you think back about that?
Ursula: My experience was very positive. I graduated in 2002. I entered the program in 2000 and there was very limited Googling at the time. So you physically had to go to the library, and you either had to find information in print, or you had to use the college computers to access scholarly articles. There was definitely no chat GPT to help you. So, there was none of that to help you write papers. So, I thought that was challenging when I look back on it and compared to what it's like today doing research.
Mariam: Looking back on your career as a high school social studies teacher, how did the program help you?
Ursula: It absolutely helped me, and I use those valuable skills that I learned to actually make me a better social studies teacher. Just learning how to digest different perspectives and viewpoints and how to present them. Each of the professors we had really had a different way of teaching. I think I took something away from each of them to use in my own classroom.
Mariam: So, tell me about your thesis. What was the process like? Is there anything that stood out to you?
Ursula: The process was that you had to choose your own topic, which was challenging because you had to come up with something that was somewhat original. So, there was an incredible amount of research, obviously, and then we would have a professor or two be an advisor to us. They were really great. They gave us great feedback and suggestions on what to do. I actually had two thesis advisors, and I just looked them up and they are both still with the college. My thesis was called “Beyond the Household, Quaker Women's Expanded Sphere in Colonial America” which compared early American Quaker women’s agency and influence with their Puritan counterparts.
One of the biggest challenges was doing the research. I actually had to drive down to Swarthmore college in Pennsylvania because none of these Quaker women’s business monthly meetings of the church were actually online. So, I had to go there and search for things on microfiche which were little film strips of information, and you had to go on a special machine to make copies of it. Again, you couldn't just grab your cell phone and take pictures of things. I had to bring a whole bunch of coins. I think it was five or 10 cents to make copies of it. So, it was really challenging. I actually spent a couple of days at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, writing out my research by hand.
Mariam: Do you have any advice you'd give to prospective students?
Ursula: I would definitely encourage them to take advantage of the program. It was such a wonderful experience to me. It was rigorous, it was very challenging, but I really did learn so much, and I treasure my time in the program as a lifelong learner. I was 38 years old when I entered the program. And I think I would just like to say it's never too late to go for it. Doesn't matter your age. I still ended up having 20 years in education. So, I would encourage that, just go for it if you're interested. Never say to yourself, “I'm too old” or “Why would I do that?” just do it. So, I'm really glad I did it.
Debbie-Ann Paige is a public historian specializing in local African American history, a co-president and founding member of the Richard B. Dickenson Staten Island Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) and professional genealogist. She is a community history strategist that leads engaging public history forums exploring the historical aspects of race and race relations.
Yesenia Rivera: How did you go about finding a job?
Debbie-Ann Paige: I had a job while I was in school and it was a pretty decent job. I was working as an administrative assistant and office coordinator at an organization called the Council of State Governments. But I love history, that's why I got these history degrees. And so, there wasn't really anything here in terms of African American history and so I decided that I was going to make a job for myself and I think that's one thing that students, whether you are undergrad or graduate, don't necessarily think about a lot and that they're looking to be hired somewhere as opposed to I'm going to make this work for me however the best I can, so I'm going to create my own place.
Yesenia Rivera: That really sounds amazing and did the degree help you find your path?
Debbie-Ann Paige: I have been a genealogist since 1995 and I realized that I needed to know the history of a place in order to find the records that I needed to uncover the genealogy that I was looking for. So, the short of it, I would say yes, understanding historical perspectives was necessary for me as a genealogist but the degree, the master's degree that I got, opened doors. When you have a history degree, you can do a lot of things with it. But if you're going to do history work, then the graduate degree really opens up the door for you.
Yesenia: Have you applied the knowledge you gained in the real world?
Debbie-Ann: Yes, that's the short answer. As an example, I took a course when I was in school doing the master’s program. There was a course on European modernity, and I wrote a paper on Afro-Germans and I have since used it to discuss the Holocaust from a different perspective. And so, as I do presentations in the public, I'm able to take the information that I've learned or gathered from that particular course and transition it into using it in public history. At the Staten Island Museum, in one of the exhibits, one entire panel in the exhibit is based on my master's thesis. There are several tools of the trade in the historiography course that I've been able to leverage and put the history of the history together so that so that lay people, non-scholars, can understand it. So, there's a lot of things that I do, a lot of ways that I approach the work that comes directly out of those degrees.
Anthony Schiuma: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Ann Treadaway: I am Ann Treadway. I am the Director of the Office of Veteran Military Programs and Services at Rutgers University. I have been here since 2015. Before that, I was the Director of Veteran Services at the College of Staten Island. I also completed my master’s degree in history at CSI. I am an army veteran. I served for five years in the United States Army and deployed to Iraq twice.
Anthony: How did you go about finding a job with your degree? How did it help you find your path with that job?
Ann: It definitely made me more marketable. I found that it made getting a doctorate afterwards a lot easier, and it makes me very good at my job because I’m good at research. I can go through a text, and I learned how to go through texts because of the master’s degree in history. I think not only having a degree makes you marketable but having that degree and that ability is unique. It makes doing my job easier. I have a lot to do with federal regulation and compliance when it comes to veterans in the military and MOUs with the Department of Defense or the VA to make sure we’re in compliance with things, so I have to go through the law; I have to find where the law generated from and being able to apply that research skill has made that a lot easier for me.
Anthony: Do you have any advice for anyone joining the program?
Ann: If you’re thinking about going on to do a PhD in history and you want to be a professor, find what part of history you have passion for, find who you would want to work with and start to cultivate that type of relationship throughout the master’s program because if you’re heading in that direction, you want to have someone you’re going to work with right for your dissertation and then, also look for something. You don’t want your thesis to be something that’s a burden; you want it to be something that you enjoy writing, so I would say make sure your topic is something you’re really interested in.
Arbian Smailovic: How did you go about finding a job as a curator for the National Museum of the US Army?
Paul Morando: Yes, well…I worked in many Army museums before I came here to the National Museum of the US Army and, simply, it was a job announcement, and I applied and was lucky to be interviewed and then of course lucky enough to be chosen for the position as curator. So, I started my job as museum curator here in 2017 and I’ve been working here for about 6 years.
Arbian: Did the degree you graduated with help you to find your path?
Paul: Yes, I graduated with a master’s in history at the College of Staten Island in 2003 and about that time is when I was able to get my first position in a museum. It was at a small Museum in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn and it’s called the Harbor Defense Museum. So, my degree certainly helped me get into the museum profession.
Arbian: During your time at the College of Staten Island, what courses did you find the most helpful?
Paul: I think that the courses that helped me the most were ones that got me to look at history from different perspectives. A lot of times, especially when you are studying history, you often think that there’s only one or two perspectives, depending on what books and articles you read. So, a lot of the professors I had in college would bring in alternate historians or different types of books that had different interpretations of the same event, so I always thought it was interesting that history is not necessarily black and white, that there’s always going to be different perspectives that you should be aware of. It just taught me that sometimes you got to dig deeper to find answers. It taught me to kind of do my own research and to come up with more well-balanced conclusions
Arbian: How have you applied the knowledge that you have gained into the real world?
Paul: A big part of my job is obviously developing new exhibits on Army history, so the skills that I got from my college and the professors I have taken are just things that you cannot take information out of one book alone and present that as sort of public history. You have to be very diligent in the story you are representing, or the artifact that you are representing, or the soldier you are presenting, that the story is as accurate as possible. When you are putting out something that the public is going to read and engage with, you have a responsibility to make sure it is as accurate as possible. The experience, training and skill sets that I’ve learned in my graduate work, I’m able to apply today what I’m developing or writing or producing here in our exhibits.