Alumni

Our alumni work throughout the region and the United States. Not only do most our alumni go on to find jobs in the field, but they also build successful lifelong careers. Many continue to give back to the program through mentorship, internship, and teaching. To get to know the alumni that teach graduate courses in the program, please visit the Meet Us page.

Alumni Spotlight

Kara Brunzell, Owner and Principal of Brunzell Historical

After completing the master’s degree at Sacramento State University, I established my own historic preservation and cultural resource management consulting firm, which specializes in the recordation, inventory, and evaluation of historic resources. Like many traditional graduate history programs, Sacramento State provided a solid grounding in academic history.At the same time, their Cultural Resource Management and Historic Preservation courses offered an introduction to both professional practices and working public historians, resources that would not have been available in a traditional program.

The Sacramento location was an important advantage: students were familiarized with research institutions such as the California State Library and California State Archives that are essential to working public historians statewide. We also got to know the Office of Historic Preservation and its personnel, probably the most influential group in California’s preservation community.

Friendships I formed in the program are the foundation of my professional network. The program’s professional, academic, and location advantages created a synergy that launched me into an extremely rewarding public history career.

Brittani Orona

He:yung! I graduated from Sacramento State with my Public History Master’s Degree in 2014, and the program has helped me advance both my professional and academic career.After a series of internships focused on indigenous communities during the program, I became increasingly interested in public policy.

My background in Public History and interest in policy helped me gain a spot in the highly competitive Capital Fellows Executive Fellowship Program. After I completed the fellowship, I accepted a position as an Environmental Justice and Tribal Affairs Specialist with the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

From there, the academic interests nurtured at Sacramento State led me back to school. I am currently a Ph.D. student at UC Davis in Native American Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Human Rights. My academic study focuses on policy, memory studies and public history as it relates to environmental, social, and economic justice in tribal and disadvantaged communities.

Westby Mize, MA 2016, Cultural Resources Specialist, Planning Division, Denver Service Center, National Park Service

Much of what I do as a cultural resources specialist ties back to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.Whether I’m helping park staff reach out to local American Indian tribes or ensuring that a proposed parking lot doesn’t disturb a park’s archeological resources, it all comes back to this critical law.

The Public History Program at Sacramento State helped me develop the knowledge necessary to work in this field, both through coursework in historic preservation and cultural resource management and through hands-on internship experiences. I love what I do, and I give the public history program much of the credit for helping me learn to love it.