Week 12: Reflections II

As I stated in my last post, the semester has quickly come to an end. These last two posts provide an opportunity for reflection on the internship, the semester, and grant writing. For one thing, it seems apparent to me now (even more so than at the beginning of the semester) how unique this opportunity was. Few interns get the opportunity to tackle an NEH grant, and this experience will hopefully serve me well in future endeavors.

One of the greatest challenges of the semester was understanding how to employ the right language at the right time. It is still something I do not completely grasp. What I mean, is that the NEH application asks for very specific content about our organization, our audience, our project, and our intended outcome. One of the challenges here was first understanding exactly how we defined all of these aspects. Many people had contributed to the PHC, and it was my job to familiarize myself with those contributions so that, in turn, I could articulate them to the NEH. The other challenge, though, is using the right language and lending the impression that you know something, even if you don’t. This is a candid confession, but the reality is that no organization or independent researcher has a 100% understanding of what their final product will be. It is not to say I, or anyone else who helped me, was being disingenuous about our project, but the ultimate goal, after all, is to receive funding. When selling your idea to the NEH (or, presumably, any other funding agency), you need to articulate it confidently, lending appearances that you have a complete mastery of the many moving parts related to any project. It is this language, inspiring confidence in the reviewers that you, more than your competitors, have a unique project and a competent strategy for its development, which takes practice.  It is striking a balance between your goals for your project and the funding agency’s intentions for their grant money. It is using a subtle language that appeals to the exact criteria the reviewers are searching for. If I am struggling to explain clearly this subtle balancing act, it is reflective of my novice experience with grant writing. In all, I have gained first hand exposure to skills and expectations unique to grant writing.

And that is what will serve me in the future. As I suggested, grant writing is a unique act: you need to communicate clearly, employ your greatest persuasive tact, and know your audience (and what they want to hear). I am still learning how to internalize all of these demands; during the semester is became easy for me to revert back to my original sensibilities and forget the intended audience and the priorities of the funding agency. The next time I approach grant writing, though, (and there will be a next time!), I will be that much better at tailoring my language to the needs of the funding agency. Thanks to this internship, I’ll be better for it.  

Week 11: Reflections I

It is with amazement, and some disbelief, that I am writing my final blogs for this internship. I truly cannot believe how quickly the semester went; twelve weeks of constant triumphs, struggles, revelations, and surprises. I can say without a doubt that I learned a lot, and on so many subjects! After this semester, I can now hold my own in conversations about public history, the NEH, grant writing, Sanford history, and the Public History Center. To be sure, I’m not an expert, but I now have a grasp of so many ideas and topics that I otherwise would not have considered.

To give a brief overview of my last ten days in the internship. The first order of business was to get a budget worked out. I met with Kristin Wetherbee of the UCF College of Arts and Humanities. She is a budgeting whiz and the college’s departments turn to her for the final submission of the grant applications. I met with her to describe our project and all of the components. Within a few quick minutes of explanation, she whipped up a shining and precise budget. Before meeting with her, I had read over the NEH’s budget instructions and tried to grasp the basic terms and categories. It was all for naught. To this day, I’m still as befuddled by the budgeting as I was (let’s not forget, my love of history is balanced by an equal disdain for mathematics). Fortunately, Kristin knew what she was doing. Factoring percentages of the contributing faculty’s salaries, allotting money for graduate student project team members, and figuring out a number for our consultant’s travel, housing, and meals, quickly enough Kristin came up with an amount that we should request from the NEH. Even more impressive, she came up with money from a number of sources on our end to demonstrate that the PHC was kicking in almost half to the total project cost. I was relived to get that part of the application out of the way. I was also glad to be able to leave it to the experts.

In the last week I also finalized the project team. As of this moment, three of our four humanities consultants have sent their letters of commitment. On Friday I spoke with the museum consulting firm Remer and Talbott about coordinating our NEH project and they too seemed receptive and interested in the project. After I submitted a completed first draft to Dr. Beiler and Bethany, an office assistant in the History Department, and they both made some revisions to the grant application. Now, through our joint efforts, the application is looking better than ever. I sent the draft to Barbara Bays at the NEH for additional review. Looking back with everything winding down, it is a satisfying feeling to see everything come together.

Week Ten: Contacting the Potential Project Team

After getting positive responses from a handful of scholars, I scheduled phone conversations to chat with each of them at greater length the following week. That Monday I had four phone calls lined up. After my first conversation, the other three went very smoothly, without any hiccups. I had perfected my sales pitch and had a rhythm and ready-made response for any of their questions or reservations. The only one of any interest to this blog was my first conversation – the one before I perfected my talking points.

 

The conversation was with Dr. Clarence Mohr, the department chair of the History Department at the University of South Alabama. Admittedly, I was a little intimidated. Stammering along, I managed to make my pitch. At first, he sounded unimpressed and uninterested. “What is the name of grant?” he asked. Amazingly, shockingly, I couldn’t remember! I knew the essence of the grant, I could say things like “it’s an NEH Planning Grant,” but I had forgotten the full name (if I ever actually knew it anyway). I had gone outside into the park opposite of the PHC’s entrance to make the phone call. I figured it would be a nice, quiet spot to make a few phone calls, giving me an opportunity to stretch my legs a little in the process. I brought the draft of the grant narrative, should he ask specifics of the humanities themes we wanted him to interpret. I brought his CV, should I need to reference something he had done in the past. But I didn’t think to bring the application! And suddenly, I found myself far away from my desk and serving up a jumbled collection of possible names. I’m sure the first few minutes of our conversation inspired confidence in Dr. Mohr regarding the project. How good our grant will be when the grant-writer can’t even remember the name of the grant he’s been working on! Strike one. (Just to set the record straight, it is the America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations: Planning Grants with the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Public Programs).

Next came discussion of what types of stipends or honorariums we were planning to pay our humanities consultants. The number Dr. Beiler and I had discussed, and which was recommended to me by Laura Keim per our earlier conversation on the matter, was $1,500 per scholar, not counting travel, housing, and meals. And that’s what I told him. After I conveyed the number we had in mind he informed me that he had done legal consulting in the past, sometimes at $150 dollars per hour. So, in essence, our offer was peanuts by comparison. Strike two. But that’s the humanities, there wasn’t much we could do about the size of our stipends.

After a rough start, I rebounded. I dove into the tenets of our plan and the uniqueness of our historic site. Mohr seemed interested by the way we sought to use education as an interpretive theme with which to contextualize other aspects of history. I told him that not many museums made education central to their interpretations of American history. He agreed. The first five minutes were rough, but the next twenty-five minutes of the conversation went smoothly. His biggest concern after the initial reservations was committing to a project that was still about a year away. As chair of his department, he was reluctant to make a hard-and-fast commitment, not knowing what else might come up before then. He asked me to contact the NEH and ask how firm the “letters of commitment” had to be this early.

I contacted the NEH and, again, like the time before, they answered promptly and were extremely helpful. The person I spoke to said that the letters did not need to be very “committed” but instead just needed to convey that 1.) the project was worthwhile and 2.) that they would be interested in participating. That was all. I relayed the information to Dr. Mohr and he agreed to be tentatively on board. And so the project team began to take shape. 

Week Nine: The First Attempt to Contact our Potential Project Team

Though much of my time was spent making further strides on the grant narrative portion of the application, the most important piece of the week was making the initial contacts to our potential project team. The groundwork for these initial contacts was laid weeks ago. Following the group tour, I had a clear sense of what type of consultants we should try to find. I also had a better sense of exactly what we would need consulting for. So the search began. Some of the names came from recommendations from Dr. Beiler and Laura Keim, the curator at the Stenton House Museum in Philadelphia. I met with relevant UCF faculty to figure out other recommendations as well. In this effort, Dr. Lester proved especially useful. Lastly, my own (extremely limited) knowledge of scholars in Southern history came in handy. The extent of my exposure came from my copyediting experience during my tenure at the Florida Historical Quarterly in Spring Semester. During my time there, I had the opportunity to copyedit book review sections for two issues of the Quarterly. From there, I encountered names of scholars in both Florida history (no surprises there) as well as historians of Southern history topics more broadly.

From there I was able to compile a list of potential humanities scholars who would be ideal consultants for our project. The list was by no means extensive, and with more time I would have liked to come up with a lengthier group of names. But I did not have the luxury of time, given how quickly this semester is flying by, and though not extremely long, the list did have a number of well-known and qualified scholars. I promptly submitted the list to Dr. Beiler for review, and the following week she returned with the consultants she found most appropriate.

I composed the politest email I could, explaining in one long breath the purpose of the PHC, the NEH grant, our goals for the future, and where they fit into the picture. Concision and succinctness are not my two greatest strengths and, frankly, the email was a bit verbose considering these scholars were being contacted by a complete stranger. But it’s hard to say everything briefly! I sent the email out to a number of scholars, the ones Dr. Beiler wanted most, and crossed my fingers for a positive reply.

Quickly enough, responses started filtering in. To my relief, most replied. There was one who never replied, and another scholar replied with reluctance, stating that she was too busy to consider such a project. The others, though, they were receptive and proceeding to set up times to set up phone meetings. The other consultant, the one that was too busy, offered recommendations that would provide acceptable substitutes for her presence. So, on the whole, everything worked out well. All of this happened very quickly, and by Friday afternoon I had scheduled three phone meetings for the following Monday.

Week Eight: Connection in High Places (well, not really)

Week eight was mostly a short and uneventful week. Week eight just so happened to fall on the week of July Fourth. So, that meant that only one day was spent at the Public History Center. Most of the day, as with most days at the PHC, was devoted to working on the grant narrative, adding and removing sections, tweaking sentences, and obsessing over word choice. At around noon, I decided to take a short respite from the endless gazing into the computer screen. I left the PHC to buy lunch and then (so I thought) promptly return. While I was out, I figured I would take the opportunity to call the National Endowment for the Humanities to speak to a representative regarding the planning grant. Pulling into a parking spot alongside Sanford’s Main Street, I called the NEH with a brief list of questions about the grant.

I was pleasantly surprised to be immediately put through to a representative (who says government bureaucracy is slow and inefficient?). Her name was Barbara Bays, and she was as helpful as I could have asked for. What was supposed to be 5-10 minutes of questions and answers turned into just under one hour of conversation. As my car idled in the Florida heat, struggling to blow cold air into the cabin, I sat and discussed our project at great length with Barbara.

The conversation yielded both good news and bad news. The good news was reassuring. The NEH representative sounded genuinely interested in the PHC and its goals, the historic building it was housed in, and even the quirks of Sanford I so eagerly described. She told me that our project sounded truly worthwhile and that we had all of the requisite components to craft a (potentially) persuasive grant application. Our conversation also clarified many other aspects of the project for me. For an entire hour, I received an inside perspective on what makes a grant stand out. The exercise was invaluable, and it became immediately clear to me that it was useful to have a representative at the NEH who was familiar with our project. Of course, I guarantee that any grant-writer worth their salt contact the funding organization well in advance of the due date. What I did was certainly not unique. But this is the first grant application I have ever drafted, and as I stumble through it, encountering new and unexpected hurdles, it is enlightening to have that initial conversation with the funding agency.

But there was bad news too. The bad news was that our original goal – to have consultants come in to develop an institutional interpretive plan for us – was not the best use for NEH money. Sure, we could submit the application. But she warned that it would not be a very competitive application in that form. Why? Because it lent the impression that we really had made no progress at the museum and had no clear sense of our future goals. The reviewers, she noted, wanted to get the impression that organizations and museums had a clear sense of what they wanted to do with the museum. So, she advised me to change the phrasing to “interpretive strategies” instead of “interpretive planning.” The humanities themes were already in place, we just need scholars to help us come up with strategies to effectively interpret them. It was clear that, even with our vocabulary slight-of-hand, we would be walking a very fine line regarding appropriate usage for NEH funds. Even now, it is cause for unease.

But I won’t dwell on the negativities. No, it was a useful exercise to talk with the NEH representative. Her advice has since lent a much clearer and confident focus to my grant writing.          

Week Seven: Taking Tours

For week seven of my internship, Dr. Beiler and I visited several local museums. I wanted to see how these museums interpreted local history. What were their interpretive strategies? How did they communicate their narratives to their audience? What lingering ideas or questions were visitors expected to leave with? It was important for me to understand the goals and focus of the other local museums. For one thing, I needed to know how these museums positioned themselves within the community. It was imperative that we find ways to differentiate the Public History Center from other area museums. Why? Well, because – and though this is just a hunch, of course – I cannot see reviewers for the NEH roundly proclaiming “Hey, let’s give money to this museum, the one that wants to create something that already exists in the same city.” Indeed, for the purpose of writing a persuasive grant application, it will be vital for me to demonstrate how we are something new, how there is a need in the community, and how we will offer something different from other museums in central Florida.

Dr. Beiler and I ended up going to two museums on Friday afternoon. The first was the Sanford Museum, located in downtown Sanford looking out onto Lake Monroe. The museum was small – we were only there for fifteen of twenty minutes – but it had many intriguing artifacts. The museum touted Sanford businesses of yesteryear quite well. It also highlighted the entrepreneurs of Sanford as well as all of the pro athletes who emanated from there. Perhaps most interesting though, the museum had a room that recreated the personal library of Henry Sanford, founder of the city and U.S. ambassador to Belgium. The room was striking, and the thought of a nineteenth-century diplomat, back from Washington, Europe or perhaps even sub-Saharan Africa (the Belgian Congo), retiring to his reading room to perusing his collection (in seven languages, no less) is enough to capture the imagination.



Our first stop, the Sanford Museum

The second museum we visited was the Museum of Seminole County History. The museum was bigger, and we spent about thirty or forty minutes there (on a self-guided tour that was supposed to take about an hour and twenty minutes). The museum had many interesting exhibits. The room devoted to the “three lakes and three forts of Seminole County” conjured images of early American settlement in the region. There was a room that explored education – fortunately not too close to what we are envisioning for the PHC. There was also a large facility in the rear of the museum that explored Seminole County’s agricultural heritage. Altogether, the museum was a worthy visit, though I did not leave with a clear sense of their intended message. To be sure, the museum highlighted the development of the county, but there could have been more cohesion between the exhibits.

Altogether, it was an excellent exercise. I am confident that our museum will not simply repeat the narratives of other local museums but instead compliment them by offering a fresh perspective.    

Week Six: The Group Tour

Finally, after several weeks of planning, we held our group tour on Thursday, June 20. My goal was for the group to brainstorm some major general themes that were evident in the museum. As has been mentioned earlier in this blog, I am writing the NEH Planning Grant with the goal of acquiring the requisite funding to bring in expert consultants to help the PHC staff develop an institutional interpretive plan. But who do we want to do the consulting? What do we want consulting for? The goal for this preliminary tour was to answer those questions. Once we had established a consensus – in the most general of terms – I would begin the task of compiling a list of potential consultants, based on areas of expertise.

The group assembled in the front hall entranceway. The participants included Drs. Long, Murphree, Clark, and Lindsay, and Tiffany Rivera, all from the UCF History Department, Andy Sandall, the Executive Director of the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts and Sciences, and the staff, including Dr. Beiler, Cyndi, and Regina. Kristen, our docent, gave the group a tour of all of the exhibits, as well as the gardens outside within an hour. In some of the rooms, the group was noticeably intrigued (the 1902 classroom exhibit, as well as the Crooms Academy exhibit, for instance) while in other rooms there was a sense of underwhelmed confusion (the geography room, the “American Ingenuity” room, and even the Native American room, shorn of interpretation or actual artifacts).  

Following the tour, we convened in the “Global Village” classroom to discuss the themes that emerged. The most obvious theme that everyone agreed upon was “education.” The building and its collections were especially well suited to tell a compelling story about the history of education in Florida. After that, however, consensus became a little more elusive. Many good ideas emerged, but none that had the support of the entire group. Eventually, we settled on themes that, while conveniently flexible in their definitions and usages, were also somewhat vague. The group decided that the museum was well positioned to engage narratives about “community” and “local” history. While very true, these themes don’t lend themselves to identifying nationally-recognized scholars as potential scholars. While there are obvious choices for scholars specialized in Twentieth-Century Southern education history, who is an expert in “local” history (as a humanities idea, not as a type of public history). Some of the participants thought we were getting ahead of ourselves; that the museum was nowhere near ready to begin thinking about large themes. Still, we needed to start somewhere.

Overall, the day was very productive. The input from all of the participants was invaluable, and it gave us a more coherent focus moving forward.