NPS Celebrates Centennial With the Help of SCAD Alumna
The National Parks Service (NPS), founded under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson to preserve the United States’s national parks and monuments, will celebrate its centennial August 25 across all of its over 412 unit locations. The NPS has deep roots along the Creative Coast with Fort Pulaski and Fort Sumter National Monuments drawing thousands of visitors annually. It’s no surprise the NPS looks to SCAD for its next generation of historic preservationists and NPS leaders like Margaret O’Neill.
SCAD alumna, O’Neill, is a Landscape Preservation Associate at the Historic Landscapes National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT) at the National Parks Services in Louisiana. She initially applied to SCAD with an interest in photography, and her intended major was advertising. Ultimately burnt out from her senior year of high school, O’Neill decided to pursue an alternate path.
“One day I was talking to my AP art history teacher about SCAD and how I loved the school but wasn’t sure if it was the best choice for me anymore,” O’Neill said. “She knew how much I loved art and architectural history and encouraged me to check out the HP [Historic Preservation] program. Once I took my first HP class, I fell completely in love with the subject. I had always loved history, buildings, politics, and design, and HP was the perfect combination of them all.”
SCAD’s Historic Preservation program is unique in that the curriculum integrates itself and its students with projects separate from SCAD, according to O’Neill. “Almost every single class I took [involved] working with groups or community members outside of SCAD, giving us so much real world experience,” O’Neill said. “SCAD also give HP students a lot of opportunities to take courses outside of HP that will diversify their skill sets. For example, I took cultural landscape and urban design classes, which helped prepare me for my current job.”
O’Neill first got involved with the National Park Services (NPS) through an internship opportunity. In February of O’Neill’s senior year, Jason Church, an alumnus of SCAD’s Historic Preservation MFA program, came to speak to the department as an Alumni Mentor.
“He and I talked for a little bit before he presented, and he mentioned a 6 month internship at NCPTT in Historic Landscapes,” O’Neill explained. “SCAD’s HP program is buildings-based, but I had taken an interest in cultural landscapes a year earlier during my preservation law class, so I thought I may be a good fit depending on what the project was. It turns out I was, and I accepted the job around the time of Spring Break.”
O’Neill extended her contract from an intern position to a contractor position in September of 2015. Today, she is a training developer, focusing on an e-learning program for historic landscape maintenance. Ironically enough, she also works with Church, a materials conservator for the Materials Conservation department at the NCPTT.
During O’Neill’s time with the NCPTT, she has produced podcasts for the NPS’s preservation technology podcast series, taken on some graphic design projects, and assisted in planning and implementing a 3-day symposium called, “A Century of Design in the Parks.” The goal of the program is to provide information on historic landscape preservation for field workers at NPS sites as well as state and privately owned historic sites.
With regards to this year’s centennial, the NPS has launched a major campaign, “Find Your Park,” focused on promoting regional NPS sites to the locals in that area.
NPS has also hosted a series of conferences and symposiums for the centennial. O’Neill was involved with the planning and implementation of one called CDIP, or, “A Century of Design in the Parks.” This 3-day symposium in Santa Fe, NM focused on issues related to the preservation of park features, ranging from CCC-era construction to Mission 66 initiatives, modern-day preservation and documentation. The symposium ended with field sessions at Bandelier National Monument, which features CCC and Mission 66 structures and is celebrating its own centennial this year.
O’Neill’s career with the NPS shows not only how much opportunity the century-old institute offers, but also how her invaluable training at SCAD prepared her for special projects like the CDIP.
“NPS does so much within preservation itself and has always been at the forefront of the preservation movement, so working for them was always something I had in the back of my head,” O’Neill said.
To learn more about the NPS, planned centennial celebrations near a local park, or further education opportunities, visit their website.
Written by Emilie Kefalas.
