HOPE Crew successfully completed a second year of Touching History: Preservation in Practice, a six-week summer program geared towards HBCU students working towards architecture degrees and related career path. Touching History is a joint effort of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s HOPE Crew. The program was created to raise awareness about the importance of historic preservation and conservation while engaging a new generation of preservation professionals in completing urgent preservation work at America’s HBCU campuses.

In addition to a second year working with Morgan State University students from Baltimore, 2019 included the first Touching History practicum with students from Tuskegee University in Alabama. As one component of this six-week program, the six Tuskegee students had an opportunity to perform window restoration work on the Willcox E building on the Tuskegee University campus. The students worked under the expert direction of Jim Turner of Turner Restoration LLC, a Detroit-based firm Turner founded in 2001 to specialize in repairing historic steel and wood windows.

Through this partnership program, Tuskegee students also had the opportunity to participate in a historic preservation training at the Western Center for Historic Preservation in Grand Teton National Park to learn about the National Park Services’ guiding principles for field-based historic preservation and a training program at the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training in Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Here's a short video, developed by Tuskegee University, that highlights the student’s HOPE Crew experience.