Dual-Degree Grad Student Plays Her Part in Addressing Controversial Monuments

Nicole Ursin headed the team that wrote the proposal that helped the United States National Committee of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) win a $1M Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to develop a Monument Relocation, Removal, and Reinterpretation Toolkit. 

In October 2020, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced that it would commit $250 million to support efforts to create new monuments, contextualize existing monuments, and/or remove others. Thanks in part to Nicole Ursin, a master’s in applied anthropology and historic preservation dual-degree student, the United States National Committee of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) was recently awarded a $1 million slice of the "Monuments Project" pie.

Ursin started working as the US/ICOMOS membership coordinator just over two years ago, after hearing about the opening through the historic preservation listserv. 

"I wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with (US/ICOMOS) if it hadn’t been for UMD," said Ursin. "When they were opening up the membership coordinator position back in 2019, there was limited advertising, but UMD was one of the places they were looking for applicants."

Since being hired to run US/ICOMOS’ membership program, which involves helping U.S.-based heritage professionals engage in international heritage , Ursin has taken on other projects and responsibilities. In summer 2020, as part of the internship required by her program, Ursin surveyed US/ICOMOS members during non-staff hours about what they felt the organization’s top priorities should be, and shared a summary of those results to enhance the organization’s strategic planning. She also took up grant writing, ultimately writing the grant that would lead to US/ICOMOS being awarded the $1 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to develop a Monument Relocation, Removal, and Reinterpretation Toolkit for public use.

"The goal of the toolkit is to create a group of resources that can be used by stakeholders to address controversial monuments in the U.S. and internationally," explained Ursin. "Ideally, if there is a controversial monument in someone’s community that they want to address, they can use this toolkit to find ways to navigate the removal of that monument." 

Specifically, over the next two years, the US/ICOMOS team will be drawing on domestic and international examples to build case studies, creating a map of controversial monuments in the U.S., and connecting those case studies to those controversial monuments. They will be sharing these and other helpful resources in real-time via a public-facing website and app, which is to be fully completed in late 2023.

The project will be lead by the newly hired Program Director, Cequyna Moore, and Ursin will work on the Monuments Toolkit team.

"I have been able to use a lot of coursework to explore and expand on my understanding of  international heritage; applying it and connecting it to people in the organization has been helpful," said Ursin. "It’s really nice that my coursework has been able to parallel with the people I’ve been meeting and the things I’ve been doing with US/ICOMOS."

Published on Tue, Jan 4, 2022 - 10:35AM