Patrice L. Jeppson

Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium, 2200 Ben Franklin Pkwy E1812, Philadelphia, PA 19130, Phone: 215-563-9262, Fax: 215-701-8757
pjeppson@speakeasy.net

Description of past and current involvement in public outreach and education

I feel strongly that archaeology outreach should be responsive to the needs of our publics and shouldn't be just about archaeology's stewardship agenda. As such, one of my interests has been in how to more effectively bring archaeology to the public school audience. Between 1998 and 2002, I undertook participant observation research at the Center for Archaeology/Baltimore County Public Schools(www.p-j.net/pjeppson/or) where I assisted a Social Studies Specialist in implementing a sequential, integrated, curriculum-based program of archaeology. I co-presented school visitation programs, co-supervised field archaeology activities, and co-wrote archaeology-enriched social studies exercises. (This collaboration has been reported on in several archaeology conferences and publications). As an historical archaeologist, my archaeology purview easily melds with social studies curriculum opportunities and, as a member of the SHA Public Education and Information Committee (K-12 Issues), I have pursued organizing events bringing social studies educators and archaeologists together. Towards this end, I would like to see better information exchange between the archaeology societies, agencies, and non-profits involved with outreach to the formal school sector (e.g., SHA, AAA, AIA, Project Archaeology). This is important given our few resources (money, time and people power), the size of this public/audience (53 million public school students and 2.3 million public school teachers), and the fact that we often tend to target the same educators (e.g., NCSS).
In the past, I have developed museum exhibits (including a traveling education case) related to academic research and to cultural resources management projects in California and South Africa. I taught for several years as an Adjunct Lecturer at California State University, Bakersfield (1993-1997) incorporating a unit on Public Archaeology into an historical archaeology course (1997). I taught the inaugural course in archaeology offered at the University of Venda, Thohoyandou, South Africa in 1992. Currently, I am conducting Public Archaeology research for the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium (www.benfranklin300.com/about.html). I am assessing Franklin-related archaeological evidence for the needs of an international loan exhibit, a Frankliniana Database, and educational outreach programs to be disseminated over the Internet. I have co-organized and participated in several conference sessions, both in the US and abroad, devoted to exploring the theoretical issues and applied practices of Public Archaeology

Interest in PEC membership

I have been a member of the SAA PEC for 3 years. I assisted with the Web Page Design Plan and currently I help gather and coordinate content for this set of public archaeology web pages. I am Chair of the SAA Excellence in Public Education Award Committee. Service to my professional society in relation to a topic of interest;  improve my professional society's public 'face'; encourage cross societal contact.

Area of interest:  broad

Target audience(s): professional archaeologists, general public, teachers/schools