A Florida State University faculty member has received a statewide teaching award for her impact as an educator in the field of historic preservation from a nonprofit that promotes the protection of Florida's historic sites and heritage.
Kathleen Powers Conti, an assistant professor in FSU's Department of History, earned the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation Roy E. Graham Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation Education and was honored at the Preservation on Main Street Conference in Fernandina Beach, Fla.
"I'm honored that my colleagues nominated me for this award, and I'm so grateful I get to work with such amazing faculty and students here at FSU," Conti said. "I love getting to show students how they can take what they've learned in a history classroom and apply it in a wide variety of careers including with the National Park Service, museums, and local, state and federal governments."
"Professor Conti implements hands-on activities that allow students to move from acquiring foundational knowledge to engaging in acts of creation. Her accolade highlights how FSU's history program is important to Floridians who want to preserve the historic fabric of their communities."
- Jennifer Koslow, Department of History chair
The Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, founded in 1978, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting Florida's history and heritage. The Roy E. Graham Award is named in memory of historic preservation architect and educator Roy Eugene Graham and recognizes professional educators who have made long-term contributions to historic conservation education, ensuring future generations will continue to preserve Florida's history and most endangered places.
"My interdisciplinary teaching style is enriched by my professional experiences as a public historian as well as my academic research on interactions between built and natural environments," said Conti, who joined FSU's faculty in 2022. "I love showing students how to apply classroom learning to real-world projects with community partners. This allows my students to build a portfolio of sample work projects with polished examples of their research, analysis and writing for future employers."
At FSU, Conti teaches courses covering historic preservation, museum studies, public history, architectural history and environmental history for both graduate and undergraduate students. In these courses, she emphasizes the importance of participating in place-based learning at historic sites and often engages students in real-world preservation projects.
"In my historic preservation class, students research and analyze a building of their choosing in Tallahassee to create an entry for the Florida Master Site File, our state's official inventory of historical and cultural resources, and write a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places," Conti said. "With place-based learning, our class travels to a historic site or landscape to explore and analyze it together, ensuring students get well-rounded, real-world experiences."
Conti also advises student research projects as an instructor for the history department's senior seminar, a capstone course in which students develop their own research projects and is an affiliated faculty in the Native American and Indigenous Studies Center at FSU.
Outside of teaching, Conti's chapter in "Architectures of Slavery: Ruins and Reconstructions" was recently published by University of Virginia Press and she serves as a co-principal investigator for a $300,000 grant from the Florida Department of Transportation analyzing how to better identify and protect historical and cultural resources.
"My research helps people and communities preserve the stories and places that matter to them," she said. "This preservation is important for us today but also to ensure these stories and places are protected for future generations."
Conti has mentored many students, including four history master's graduates - Hope Evans, Alessio Luna, Jacqueline Vanegas and Jacob Winton - who each received Historic Preservation Scholar Awards from the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation at the July conference.
"The work my students are doing in historic preservation is making a real, tangible difference in our communities," Conti said. "I'm delighted to see my students receiving awards and recognition for their work in historic preservation and public history."
In 2013, Conti earned a master's in Russian and East European studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, followed by another master's degree in historic preservation from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. While earning her doctorate in architecture from UT Austin, Conti worked as a senior architectural historian for HHM & Associates and EBI Consulting before coming to FSU in 2022.
"Professor Conti implements hands-on activities that allow students to move from acquiring foundational knowledge to engaging in acts of creation," said Department of History Chair Jennifer Koslow. "Her accolade highlights how FSU's history program is important to Floridians who want to preserve the historic fabric of their communities."
To learn more about Conti's work and historic preservation research conducted in the Department of History, visit history.fsu.edu.
