Today’s Project 100 entry is from Melissa Ambricco Schwartz.  She was born and raised in Marlton, New Jersey.  Her mother was a homemaker, and her father was a firefighter in Marlton.  She went to public schools and graduated from Cherokee High School in 2000.  In the Fall of 2000, she began college at Temple University, where she possessed a lacrosse scholarship and was an architecture major.  The sport and the major each demanded much time, and she could not do both.  So, she decided to quit the team during the Fall season, which meant she lost her scholarship.  After completing her first year and being able to focus on her architecture major, however, she found that the major was not for her.  She did not return to Temple for her sophomore year, and she took two years off, working various jobs in Philadelphia.  During this time, she began to return to one of her earlier ideas for a career, namely teaching.  In 2003, she returned to New Jersey and enrolled at Burlington County College, planning to study history and secondary education.  She transferred to Rowan in the Fall of 2005 and graduated from Rowan in the Spring of 2007.  After graduating, she began working in development at the National Constitution Center.  In the Spring of 2010, she enrolled in the Master’s program at Villanova University, completing her degree in December of 2011.  That same year, she moved to a new position, still in development, at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  In 2020, she began her current position as Associate Director of Research and Prospect Management at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. 

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I had always enjoyed my history classes from high school. One of the teachers that I enjoyed very much was Mr. Dietz, who was also a football coach.  He was a passionate, enthusiastic, and energetic teacher.  When I decided that I wanted to become a teacher as well, history was a natural choice for me.

I never considered transferring to any other place than Rowan University after I began at Burlington County College.  I knew that I did not want to go to a large university with big classes.  Rowan’s small class size and proximity to my home were pivotal. 

The first history class that I took at Rowan was Historical Methods.  I took that class with Dr. Heinzen.  I remember one of the very first assignments that we had to do was a library scavenger hunt.  Something about that assignment clicked.  I enjoyed doing this type of research, much more than I had enjoyed the work in my architecture classes.   

I had never taken a class on Russian or Soviet history, and I got hooked on that subject in Methods, since Dr. Heinzen’s readings and assignments were often from that area, his specialty.  I took every class that I could with Dr. Heinzen after that, including Russian History since 1914, Stalinism, and Senior Seminar.  I really enjoyed Dr. Heinzen’s teaching style. He was so passionate about his subject, and he delivered his content with great humor, almost always very dryly delivered.  He also gave great feedback on your writing.  I ended up becoming his research assistant in my senior year, working on the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, a set of interviews conducted with Russian immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1950 and 1953. 

I really enjoyed your class, Civil War and Reconstruction, Dr. Carrigan, which I took in the summer.  The amount of work that you had us do in that class over a short period of time really helped prepare me for the massive amount of reading required in graduate school.  I also had a great experience in Dr. Melissa Klapper’s classes.  My interest in the Progressive Era became clear after taking her course on that time period.

My time in the Student History Association and Phi Alpha Theta were important parts of my undergraduate experience.  I loved getting to work with other students outside of the classroom who were passionate about history.  In some ways, my career in development began there, as we had to raise money for those organizations. I remember bake sales and designing a T-shirt to expand our finances.  While I was at Rowan, we hosted the Eastern Regional Phi Alpha Theta conference in James Hall.  I presented my own research for the very first time, and my hands were shaking behind the podium.  My paper was on the origins of the Cold War.   

I always loved going into the History Department in Robinson Hall.  Denise was always so helpful, and I remember that I always thought something good was going to happen after I walked through that door.  I was very honored to receive the Gary Hunter Excellence in History Medallion Award in my senior year.

I have very fond memories of my two years at Rowan.  I wish I had been there for four years. Many of the things that I learned there I now use every day in my job.  I do lots of research, and those skills I learned first there.  Another important aspect of my job is being able to synthesize vast amounts of information into something comprehensible and readable.  My ability to do that well stems directly from what I learned in history classes at Rowan.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/