Alumni Spotlight: Quin McKinney

As a passionate student of history at Western, Quin McKinney was often asked, “What are you going to do with a History major?” Though her path wasn’t always clear, since graduating in 2020, Quin has successfully leveraged her degree to develop a fulfilling career in historic preservation. She credits her experiences with faculty in the History Department for giving her the necessary tools to pursue this vocation. “I feel very lucky to have [had] professors that got really excited about history and were able to get the class excited about [it],” she remembers. “That’s something that I definitely take with me...how one person can really make an impact on someone like me...because that’s what I want to do. 

Quin, as an ADHD student, appreciated Prof. Price’s ability to connect students with history in an engaging way—infusing his lectures with humor and passion for the material. His warm and inviting classroom demeanor connected with Quin and made learning both easier and more enjoyable. The enthusiasm Prof. Price and other History Department faculty at Western shared with students left a lasting impact on Quin. “It made me be a better student of life,” she acknowledges.

Likewise, Prof. Price recalls being inspired by Quin. “[She] was a wonderful student,” he says, describing her as “intellectually curious” and “sensitive to the challenges and triumphs in past people’s lives.”

Though Quin wished to pursue work in the field of history after graduating, she knew teaching was not for her. Several of her friends were working for the Forest Service at the time and directed her to the Student Conservation Association, which helps place students and recent graduates in entry-level jobs. Willing to relocate, Quin applied for several internships until she was accepted into an interpretation position, welcoming guests and providing information at Medicine Wheel National Historic Monument in Wyoming. This internship taught Quin that she not only enjoyed providing historic interpretation, but also how important the hands-on aspect of historic preservation was to her.

Quin found an ideal position with the Massachusetts Historic Preservation Corps, calling her next internship a “perfect blend of history, talking with visitors, learning, educating, and working with [her] hands.” She leaned into hands-on work, learning how to use a variety of carpentry tools, and developing a whole new set of skills. “I don’t think I’d ever even held a drill, honestly, before that,” she admits. Through each of her diverse positions in historic preservation, Quin continued to develop skills seemingly outside the realm of her history studies, including carpentry, masonry, and woodworking—things she “wouldn’t have even dreamt of doing until now.”

While working for the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Training Center, Quin and her crew helped restore the Wade and Curtis Cabin at the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado. “I got to sand and put linseed oil on the floor, and it just ended up really beautiful,” Quin recollects fondly. The team also repaired the daub (the mud between the logs) of the cabin and put in a new oak floor. She calls this project “an insane transformation...[back] to its period of glory,” distinguishing it from other types of preservation. Quin explains that sometimes the work of historic preservation is centered on stabilizing and preserving a building to represent its condition at a particular point in time, while other times the goal is to fully restore it to a new condition.

Looking back, Quin did not realize historic preservation could be a career until after she started interning. Teaching is commonly suggested to students thinking about a career in History, but Quin wants students to know that there are other options outside of academics. Historic preservation can be a great career, especially for anyone who, like her, “would go to reenactment villages and museums as a child and get really excited about history."

Quin has found many historic preservation sites to be welcoming and inclusive spaces and hopes to keep interest and engagement in the skilled trades alive. “Historic preservation is a…unique thing that needs a lot of attention right now,” she emphasizes, “and if you’re interested in working with your hands and being part of a community, then that’s a good place to start.” 

While Western may not have taught Quin how to repair masonry or carve ornate wooden details for historic houses, she feels the History Department prepared her to do something just as important—to keep asking questions. “I like to know more of a deeper history rather than just the surface level,” she says, “and Western inspired me to get more curious,…be more passionate about history, and to understand that there is a kind of connection between everything.”