This week’s Project 100+ memory comes from Mikaela Litchfield.  She was born and raised in Sparta, New Jersey.  Her mother worked at Nabisco when Mikaela was younger, and she now is an administrative assistant at Picatinny Arsenal in Jefferson, New Jersey.  Her father works in defense contracting and is currently Vice-President/Division Manager at ASRC Federal based in Alaska. She has one older sister who studied at Montclair University.  She attended public schools and graduated from Sparta High School in 2014.  She enrolled at Rowan University in the Fall of 2014 as a history and secondary education major.  She graduated in the Spring of 2018 with three majors: History, International Studies, and Africana Studies. She was also in the Honors program and had a minor in German and a concentration in Women and Gender Studies.  She won the Marius Livingston Award and was the College of Humanities and Social Sciences History Senior of Distinction.  After she graduated, she studied in Germany through a Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professional scholarship.  This one-year program included two months of intense language training, then a semester studying European history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and then two full-time internships at non-profits in Munich.  After her year in Germany, she returned to the United States and began working at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey.  After about two years, she moved to Philadelphia and worked at Share Food program, eventually serving as Grants Manager.  She recently left this position and is now the Senior Grants Manager at Eastern State Penitentiary. 

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History was always my favorite subject in school, and it was the thing that I was drawn to outside of school as well. I always enjoyed reading works of history.  So, when it came time at age 17 to decide what I wanted to study, history was a natural choice.  I didn’t really know what one could do with history other than teach so I applied for history and secondary education.

I applied to eight colleges and universities. Of the ones that accepted me, Rowan checked several boxes: not too big, not too small, on the East Coast (close to my family and, of course, the shore), access to a metropolitan area, in-state tuition.  After I was accepted, my family and I visited the campus and I realized I could envision the next four years at Rowan.

I wasn’t certain about being a history major until my first semester. However, I was in the CLIO program and your class, United States History to 1865, convinced me that I had made the right choice. I loved the way that you taught the course, focusing on bigger themes rather than specific details. The way you taught the Battle of Bunker Hill stands out to me in this way–you didn’t emphasize the number of soldiers or the date, but instead the way it shaped the larger struggle for American independence.  Another important moment in my realizing that history was the right choice happened when I received my first paper back. You had warned the paper would be a litmus test of sorts for the major’s academic rigor, so much so that students could re-write it up to seven times. I received an A- and a very nice note from you about the quality of my work. 

I really appreciated the way that I got to shape my academic studies at Rowan. I soon dropped my education major, admittedly in part because I wanted to study abroad. In doing this, it also made it a lot easier for me to add additional majors and minors. My combination of majors really worked well to bridge the gap between the history that I loved and the contemporary world and its pressing issues. 

One of the classes that made a great impact on me was Dr. Chanelle Rose’s History of Camden course.  It was the exact kind of class that I wanted to take.  We alternated between in class and out of class experiences.  During the first week, we read scholarship, and the next week, we visited sites in the city that were connected in some way to the work we had read. For example, we read about the history of environmental racism and then toured a waste management site in Camden.  I loved this approach to history and being able to see the real-world outcomes described in the academic texts.  I also really loved Dr. Rose’s class, “From Black Power to Ferguson.”  While it didn’t include the off-campus trips of the Camden class, it felt incredibly relevant to the larger world where tensions over police treatment of Black Americans remained high. 

The Honors program was great, too. I made a lot of friends, and they did a great job of building a community among the students.  The Honors requirement to do service hours helped me meet people and I really enjoyed the classes offered through the Honors program. One of them that stands out is “Biology, History, and the Fate of Human Societies,” which was co-taught by you and Dr. Luke Holbrook of the Department of Biological Sciences.  The course was very interdisciplinary, which is something that I valued and sought out whenever I could. 

I did several internships while I was at Rowan, including one for the Alice Paul Institute and another for Hopeworks N’ Camden. I did those both through the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) Match program. These complimented my academic focus greatly, and they helped me secure the fellowship that allowed me to travel to Germany, as the fellowship required a year of professional experience.  I was also a volunteer at the Refugee and Immigration Services at Catholic Charities in Pennsuaken. These internships illustrated the vast usefulness of a history degree beyond academia and teaching, and gave me a glimpse at a future career trajectory.

In the summer of 2017, I travelled to Berlin and studied at the Freie Universität as part of a study abroad program.  While it wasn’t run by Rowan, the Study Abroad office helped me plan this trip.  There were students from all over the United States, including individuals from Montana, Missouri, and Nebraska.  Of course, I enjoyed and gained much from meeting German and international students, but I also really appreciated the knowledge I gained about other parts of the United States from my fellow American students. I took courses on the history of Berlin and the history of the Holocaust.  Both classes, like that of Dr. Rose, involved both reading in class and field trips to relevant sites.

I felt really lucky to be at Rowan.  I was a quiet person and didn’t always volunteer to talk in class.  If I had been at a different University or even a different Department, I think I might have had a very different experience as a student.  In the History Department, however, I always felt mentored and supported by the faculty.  In addition to yourself and Dr. Rose, I must give special mention of Dr. Corinne Blake who was indispensable in my thinking about studying and travelling abroad.  Without her, I would never have found, much less won, the scholarship that led me to go to Germany.

I just began a job at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site. While my role doesn’t involve formal historical research, part of my job is demonstrating to the philanthropic community why the preservation of Eastern State is critical, and why the site’s educational programming around the origins and contemporary role of the American criminal justice system is worthy of investment. I use the skills that I learned in the history major all the time: the capacity to read and comprehend diverse materials, understanding how to do research in new areas, and the ability to write cogently are critical to the work that I do. I still remember something that you said during my very first semester about writing.  You told us that your ideal essay was one that, after the first draft, was 1000 words but, after revision, was 500 words.  This is exactly how I have tried to write ever since and how I write at my job today.  When I was deciding to go to college, I thought Rowan was the right place, but I did not really imagine how truly great my experience would be. I am extremely grateful for the decision my 17-year-old self made, and I will always look back at my time at Rowan with warmth and pride.  

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100+,” an ongoing collection of memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff that began as part of the celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Due to interest in the project, the number of interviewees continues to grow.  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 and Project 100+ entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/