The built environment, historic landscapes, and artifacts of the southeastern United States offer a wide and exciting range of subjects for historical research, internship projects, and thesis topics. In recent years, preservation students have worked on projects related to the preservation of women's history and African-American heritage, the material legacy of the civil rights movement and the Cold War, industrial architecture, and the history of the region's many long-established preservation organizations. Museum students have developed interpretive and management plans for house museums in the United States and abroad, researched the history of slave and indentured servant clothing, and worked on exhibits and grants related to subjects as varied as Jewish heritage and the history of wine-making. Archives students have worked on African-American oral histories, collection descriptions for historical photographs and editorial cartoons, and a history of the regional system of the National Archives.

A wide range of library resources and historic sites help support these student research projects. Near at hand in Columbia are the South Carolina Department of Archives and History; the South Carolina State Museum; the Columbia Museum of Art; the university's South Caroliniana Library; and Historic Columbia Foundation, which operates four historic house museums. Two hours away in Charleston are the South Carolina Historical Society, and the museum properties operated by the Charleston Museum, the Historic Charleston Foundation, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Close by in North Carolina are the Biltmore House and Estate in Asheville and Old Salem in Winston-Salem. In addition, there are a number of units of the national park system in the Carolinas and Georgia.