Jen Vos, '12
Have you ever visited a museum and thought to yourself, 鈥淚 wish I could touch the artifacts鈥? Well, you can! All it takes is a passion for public history... and preferably a couple of relevant degrees. I knew early on in my time at Calvin that I wanted to pursue a career that would let me be up close and personal with history. To that end, I focused my studies on topics like social history and material culture.
I spent the decade after graduation making the rounds of local museums and earning my master鈥檚 degree in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in upstate New York. That gave me a lot of great experience in collections management, curating, and exhibit design. In 2022 I returned to Calvin to work as an archivist in Heritage Hall.
Archival work combines two of my favorite parts of doing history: the scavenger hunt of finding sources in our collections and encountering first-hand accounts of historical events by ordinary people. Thanks to my training in research methods and curating, I can effectively analyze sources and draw out an interesting story.