Marianne Babal is a corporate historian and assistant vice president with Wells Fargo and Company at its headquarters located in San Francisco. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara’s graduate program in public history, she leads research and exhibit projects for Wells Fargo Historical Services and the Bank’s nine museums. Over thirteen years with the company, she has produced many museum exhibits, numerous state and regional historical publications, and contributed to many public history projects. Active in the community, she received a company service award for her work on the Board of the Women’s Heritage Museum in San Francisco and is currently a Director of the Mill Valley Historical Society.

In addition to currently being Vice-President, Marianne served as NCPH's Secretary-Treasurer and on the Board of Directors, and chair of the Endowment Committee. She believes that NCPH can succeed in bringing together historians and an interested public in meaningful, thoughtful explorations of history. That is what public history is all about, and what makes our study of history meaningful and relevant.

Vice President: Marty Blatt, Boston Historical National Park

Secretary-Treasurer: Patrick Moore, University of West Florida

Patrick Moore is the director of the Public History program at the University of West Florida. Since first joining the NCPH in 1990, he has watched the field mature from sub-discipline status to being accepted and embraced both inside and outside academe. After years of working in field, he accepted the challenge of developing the program at UWF where he integrates teaching and practice in training the next generation of professionals. As an educator, he teaches not simply what public history is as an applied discipline, but more importantly how public history professionals use their methodologies, skills, and abilities on a daily basis. Building on this, he intertwines practical application, community-based projects, internships, and even comprehensive cross-country travel courses to fully develop his students’ portfolio of capabilities to bridge the academic-professional divide.

Focusing on 20th century U.S., urban, community, and public history, Moore earned his M.A. at New Mexico State University and his Ph.D. at Arizona State University. Before leaving the southwest for Florida, he worked as the Oral History Program Director for the Arizona Historical Society and completed numerous projects, exhibits, environmental surveys, and legal studies for the Soil Conservation Service, Chase Manhattan Bank, the City of Phoenix Historic Preservation Office, and others.

Once in the southeast, his professional production continued alongside those of his graduate students. Beyond a myriad of projects for the people and organizations throughout the gulf coast, he directed a Florida Panhandle community impact assessment for the Minerals Management Service, a study of Cuban exiles and commuters at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for the United States Navy, and in 2005 a study for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on Gulf Coast communities.

Professionally, he served as an American Society for Engineering Education Faculty Fellow at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where he completed a series of history and knowledge preservation initiatives in anticipation of the transition from the Shuttle to the Orion (CEV) programs. Stemming from these endeavors, he works closely with the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in developing history-based approaches to knowledge-elicitation protocols through Cmap Tools for preserving, presenting, and using institutional memory.

Moore believes that the professional strides of the last few decades combined with the growing awareness of history’s value and the technological resources of the 21st century position public history as among the most dynamic and invaluable of any field. As Secretary-Treasurer, he strives to help situate the NCPH as the centerpiece of these opportunities for the benefit of our members and the public.

Past President: Bill Bryans, Oklahoma State

Bill Bryans is director of the Applied History program at Oklahoma State University. Bryans has been a member of NCPH since 1988 and has been a witness and willing participant in its evolution over the last sixteen years. Bryans’s direct contributions have included serving and chairing the curriculum and training committee; sitting on the program committee for the 1995 annual meeting; and appointment to a recent self-study team to assess NCPH’s current status.

Bryans’s public history career began in graduate school, working both in Colorado and Wyoming. Since 1988, Bryans has directed the Applied History program at Oklahoma State University. In that capacity, he has prepared historic preservation context documents, conducted preservation surveys, supervised the preparation of National Register nominations, and worked with numerous museums. According to Bryans, his greatest accomplishment has been directing over thirty students to completion of their degrees and seeing most of them launch their own careers as public historians.

Of all the professional organizations to which I belong, NCPH is the one in which I believe most fervently. The strength of NCPH, and frankly its challenge, rests in its status as an umbrella organization for all those practicing public history, whatever their specialized discipline and wherever they ply their craft. Individually, we tend to work in a wide range of professional environments. Yet, we have a common ground that centers on the professional practice, presentation and advocacy of history in the public realm. NCPH provides an essential foundation for this common ground. It also provides a much-needed collective voice for public history, especially within the discipline of history generally. By continuing to build a diverse and active membership, coupled with thoughtful and effective long-range planning, I believe NCPH can continue to serve these significant purposes, even as the field evolves and our organizational needs change.”

Contact Bill Bryans 

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