“It is an honor to be recognized by my peers and to have the opportunity to lead the National Council on Public History at a time when so many new public history programs are starting up in history departments in the United States and abroad,” Weyeneth said. “I hope to nurture that growth, to encourage a more racially and ethnically diverse group of students to study public history, and to encourage local practitioners – the community activist working to save a landmark or the local museum curator who may not see themselves as public historians – to take advantage of the NCPH’s many resources.”

A faculty member at the University of South Carolina since 1992, Weyeneth is the director of the history department’s Public History Program.  The Public History Program has received numerous awards over the years recognizing the quality of faculty and graduate student research and its on-going work in African-American heritage preservation.  

“The Public History Program is one of the great success stories at the university, and Bob Weyeneth’s leadership has been an important part of that story,” said Dr. Lacy Ford, chairman of the department of history. “We hope Bob’s election to this prestigious national office will let people of the state know even more about the good work our Public History Program is doing.”

Currently, more than 200 alumni of the program are employed at the nation’s most visible institutions, including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, as well as in the rich variety of state and local organizations all across the United States.  Many of the public historians working in South Carolina museums, historic sites, preservation agencies, libraries, and archives are alumni of the USC program.  The program offers a “Master of Arts in Public History” with specializations in historic preservation, museum studies, and archival administration.  It organizes two field schools, one in the United Kingdom and one in Charleston, that are important in recruiting graduate students to USC.  In addition, the Public History Program offers two interdisciplinary certificates in museum administration and cultural resource management, as well as a dual-degree program in library science, in cooperation with the McKissick Museum, the Department of Anthropology, and the School of Library and Information Science.

“The Public History Program is a crown jewel of the university,” Weyeneth said. “It is one of the oldest, largest, and most successful public history programs in the United States.”

Weyeneth’s scholarship focuses on what he calls “public history and the problematical past.”  His research explores controversial and difficult chapters of history, asking how these stories can be communicated to public audiences.  His publications have addressed the challenges of doing public history in communities with historical secrets and the issues that arise when societies contemplate remembering – or forgetting –  the problematical past.  He will teach two courses next year that will research the connections between slavery and the origins of the University of South Carolina. 

Weyeneth will take charge of the NCPH at a time when the organization will reach its 30-year milestone and is rapidly growing as programs are springing up in college and university history departments across the United State and in other countries.  “For many institutions, public history is the heart of their civic-engagement efforts,” said NCPH executive director John Dichtl. “In his work as a publicly engaged scholar at the University of South Carolina and in NCPH, Bob Weyeneth has been at the forefront of these and other advances in the discipline of history. As president-elect for the next two years and then president of NCPH for two more, Bob will be steering us through a generational shift among our members and the academy, as NCPH absorbs a growing number of young public history practitioners.”