- Well, I've been drawn to
ancient history and archaeology
since I was a kid, as many students do,
who come in and find out about our program
and then eventually enroll as students.
So we have that in common.
- I would bury bottles
in the back of my garden
and then dig them up after a few days,
and it just really made
me interested and excited
for studying archaeology in the future,
and then UE just sort
of strengthened that.
- I've always been interested
in art and history,
and so the fact that they
had an art history program
was perfect.
- So, our program is already unique
because we are in the
Midwest, we are a great deal,
and we offer archaeology,
coupled with art history.
So we have these two great
fields together in the Midwest,
offering the Peters-Margedant House
as an experiential opportunity.
- The Peters-Margedant
House is a great way
to kind of have a classroom setting
but have that practical
experience as well,
and it's actually physically on campus,
which is really cool.
- So, it really makes us stand out
even more than we already do.
One of the things that our department
is really well-known for
is experiential education
and experiential education
wedded to liberal arts education,
and I think that's significant
because experiential education
is gonna help our students
stand out from their colleagues
who were just going through
your standard archaeology
and art history classes.
- The archaeology and art history degree,
they have you take an engineering class
that talks about techniques
that you're gonna use in a field school,
which made you understand
how you had to work
with other people in the field.
When I'm here working at Angel Mounds,
I have to work with maintenance guys.
So being able to talk to different people
and understand what their needs are
and what your needs are and
where to come to a good solution
just goes beyond just being able
to take a test and pass with an A.
- So, we have a couple of
excavation opportunities.
We have an opportunity on campus
through the Tin City Project.
So, this is an on-campus excavation
that we run in the fall as a course,
and so students actually get to learn
archeological field techniques
here on campus on Wednesday afternoons.
- It's a site that was destroyed in 1961,
which previously held
veterans and their families.
So we're basically just
looking where they lived
and just trying to figure
out as much as we can
about the people that lived
there and their families
and what they were doing.
So being able to do this as an undergrad,
right on your doorstep,
is just a huge bonus
'cause most people have
to travel away from campus
or pay extra costs or do it
during the summer or free time
to get that field experience,
whereas here you can do
it during your semester.
- And then I have been the co-director
of the Jezreel Expedition in
Israel for the past six years,
and I've been taking UE
students and students
from a number of other
schools in the US and abroad
to work on this fascinating
site in Israel's Galilee.
- They go to Jezreel or
they go to work with me
on the Tin City Excavation,
and they practice it.
They actually start to remove the dirt.
They start to go back further in time.
By the time they graduate,
we start to see them grow up,
start to be professional,
start to not look
like the green freshmen
they were when they started.
- It's a very close-knit department,
so Dr. Ebeling and Dr. Kaiser,
they will all come together
and try and assist you for
post-grad opportunities
and getting jobs after graduation.
- In a lot of big schools, I
actually have a friend who,
she's going back to
graduate school and said,
"I don't know that my professors
will remember who I am
"because the classes were so big."
So I think that really sets UE
above every other school I've seen.
- I think UE and the department
does a really fantastic job
of preparing you for your later
career, whatever it may be.
