Preservation Summer at Southern Illinois University
Carbondale
Preservation summer is an interdisciplinary, community oriented class for graduates and undergraduates. Each summer a different hands-on history and/or preservation project is completed by the students and “community listeners.” The projects have ranged from extensive research tracing Lewis and Clark in southern Illinois to hands-on rehabilitation of a shot gun house in Cairo. The professors have sought funding for projects through a Colorado-based organization Adventures in Preservation (formerly Heritage Conservation Network) and received two grants from LI for their projects in Jonesboro and Cairo. The classes have resulted in extensive research of southern Illinois that would not have been completed otherwise. Their work in Cairo has been one of the few successes in this depressed city for many years.