PreserveCast: Come along with us as we explore the broad world of preservation and the work being done to preserve, interpret, and save our past in a 21st century world. From aquaculture to historic foodways to forensic modeling, we're talking weekly with experts from across the globe. This is your host, Nick Redding. Welcome to Preservecast. On this week's PreserveCast, we're talking with Alicia Garsky, a 2022 recipient of the Harrison Goodall Fellowship. Alicia will share about her project, where she developed a summer program to connect skilled preservation contractors with young adults interested in learning more about this line of work. Join us in talking with Alicia on how her project unfolded and what lessons she learned along the way. All that and more on this week's PreserveCast. This is Nick Redding and you're listening to PreserveCast. And today we're excited to have Alicia Garsky with us. She was a 2022 recipient of the Harrison Goodall Fellowship. And we're going to be learning all about her project ⁓ and how it dovetails with the world of apprenticeships and preservation and high school and technical school and trade school and college and all these different things and the amazing work that she did over the past year and how not only is it ⁓ something that hopefully will help propel her career, but also ⁓ is really addressing a big need in the world of historic preservation. But before we get there, we love to get to know people that we're talking with. ⁓ And so, Alicia, tell us a little bit about yourself for the listeners. ⁓ Where'd you grow up? ⁓ How did you get into preservation in particular? How did you get into the kind of thing ⁓ that you're doing now? grew up in La Porte, Indiana. And actually, ⁓ 43 years later, I still live there. It's a charming little town. It has the Lincoln Highway running through it. And there are historic buildings built along that. So the town itself has a lot of character that I grew up ⁓ admiring. We have natural resources in LaPorte. are lakes, several of them. We have a beach. Very beautiful. ⁓ really nice place to be and above all my family has always been there. So it was an easy place for me to go back to after I went to college and kind of tried to figure out my career path in other places. I always ended up going back to La Porte so I still live there. ⁓ Well, lending a work in preservation ties into La Porte ⁓ and actually my dad ⁓ How do I say this nicely without offending Darryl dad? And he's heard this story before. Well, my dad was a heavy equipment operator and he demolished buildings for a living. So I jokingly tell him, dad, I really have some PTSD that I'm trying to recover from, your career when I was a kid. And what would happen was, his company would have the demolition or the salvage rights to these buildings that he would be demolishing. And I was so young, I didn't really understand what was going on at first, but we would go to these sites with my dad while he was salvaging pieces and parts. And my sister and I would play in the buildings and we'd make memories. And I'd drive by and I admire the buildings. And then one day I drive by, my parents would drive me by and the buildings would be gone in a big pile of rubble. It was just a overwhelming emotion for a young kid who had just made valuable memories, found some roller skates and played in these old buildings. And I was getting to know the buildings and then they were demolished and I would find out that it was my dad who did this. So it's kind of funny, but I've always been an earth I mean, I would grow up playing in the woods without shoes on and stuff. So for me, I saw the preservation of historic buildings as a way to preserve the earth and by keeping buildings out of landfills. And at a very young age, you know, I learned that. So it was always kind of in my mind as I grew into an adult trying to determine my career path and just always had this emotional attachment to a pile of building rubble in the landfill. like the story arc here. I I feel like it could be like some type of movie where it's like this like little kid growing up and dad's knocking buildings over left and right. then I don't know if it's like rebellious teen then becomes preservationist or whatever that is. But it's a It's funny, we get a lot of people on who are like, oh, my parents were so in love with history and I love this sort of different, different side of that. You got to make a living one way or another. But obviously it also propelled your career, too. So that's an interesting piece there. So so how do you go from though liking buildings to the kind of work that you do? And I don't think we actually addressed. I I said that you were a fellow and we're going to talk about what that meant. But what was what is the kind of work that you do and how did you get there? Well, going into college, trying to decide on a career path, you know, a path to study in college, I stayed kind of broad in general and obtained a liberal arts degree from Purdue. And my focus in college was interior design. And that stemmed from just an interest in buildings in general. But I didn't really know at the time, would have been in about 1998, that there was a career. in preservation or there could be or even really I might not have known what preservation was or had heard that term. I just knew that buildings were important to me and I wanted to keep them out of landfills going back to my childhood. So I got my degree at Purdue in interior design and their program, at least at the time, was really focused on adaptive reuse of historic buildings. or existing buildings, I should say. I still didn't really understand that I was dealing with historic buildings or that's what my interests were at the age of 18 through maybe 20, 21. But then while I was in college, I started making observations in the town I lived in, Lafayette, Indiana, and there were historic buildings there. And as I started paying attention, I realized that I was living in a historic building. I was working in a historic building and I had an aha moment during an art history class when I had to do a research topic and I chose to research the building that I worked in because it had had a lot of additions and evolutions over the years. I got really invested in it during college and ended up winning the art history prize for my project. ⁓ I got myself really into it. got the maintenance people to take me in the basement and on the roof. that was really my first time realizing that I was driven to historic buildings. So it really wasn't even until after college that when I had to start thinking about what I want to do with my life and I was working a job in a historic building, but it wasn't in the field. I I've gotten an internship with Indiana Landmarks and they're our statewide preservation agency. And they have regional offices all over the state. Well, I happen to live in La Porte and South Bend very close to where we have the Northern Regional Office. So I got my first internship working for Indiana Landmarks right out of college. And that is where I really started to realize that what I was doing and what I was interested in is historic preservation. So I found myself taking ⁓ all kinds of workshops that my internship employer offered, such as window restoration workshops, porch restoration workshops, and I just really got involved with everything that they were doing at the time ⁓ while doing my admin duties as an intern. So I went on to take some contract positions with Indiana Landmarks doing surveying for national register nominations and then writing national register nominations. ⁓ I'd gotten a job as an interior designer in the meantime, and I tried to let my boss know, she was really my first professional boss. I tried to let her know, I'm only interested in working with existing buildings and you just really don't get to choose that when. you're just getting started. So I ended up being an assistant for the interior designer with all kinds of new construction. And I burnt out really quickly in that first job. It wasn't even a year. And I thought, what am I doing? I have to be working with old buildings. I'm not interested in designing new. So my path to getting to where I needed to be, I didn't realize at the time that ⁓ there was still a degree in preservation you could achieve. So I started looking at my options and ended up going out to Portland, Oregon and getting a certificate as a sustainable building advisor. And I used my school training as an interior designer and my new certificate as sustainable building advisor and brought that back home to Indiana to focus more on. ⁓ advising people on how to make their existing buildings more sustainable. And my town isn't, you know, wealthy or large, and it wasn't very easy to get clients doing that. I promoted myself as someone who would utilize passive free measures to help you achieve sustainability in your existing buildings. Things like let's make sure we have ⁓ drapes closed in the winter to keep heat in and ⁓ things like that. And even advising people on composting and ⁓ restoring their wood floors with things like linseed oil and natural oils. So just things like that to connect my interest in the earth and sustainability with historic buildings. So. I really considered at that time getting a degree in historic preservation, going back and getting a master's, but the timing didn't work out for me. was already at that time an adult and ready to get married and start a family, which I ended up doing that instead and starting my real career in historic preservation. ⁓ because ⁓ in 2009, I got my first job as the deputy director of the historic preservation commission of South Bend and St. Joseph County. So it was our CLG ⁓ here in South Bend and St. Joseph County. And I did that job in a number of roles. I ended up getting promoted to the director position and then we transferred at one point and I became the administrator for the Historic Preservation Commission. But it was all basically the same job. And I did that for about 13 years up until... Just a couple of years ago in April of 2021, I went to work for my current employer of HG Christman Construction and I'm a preservation project manager. So now instead of doing the permitting for historic properties and construction. I'm managing construction projects and have a team of very talented carpenters and blazers that work with me. And I live very vicariously through these building owners. There are some just really cool projects that we've gotten to work on. feel very, very fortunate that I have this job and can really, it doesn't feel like the job to me. My career in preservation has really just been a natural evolution of what my interests are. So that's a good place for us to kind of pivot here a little bit, which is so you applied for a Harrison Goodall Fellowship, ⁓ which I'm pleased to say that, you know, most people who listen know that Preservation Maryland powers PreserveCast, but we also are the home of the Campaign for Historic Trades, which is a national program of the organization. And part of that, through the generosity of Harrison Goodall, was to create this mid-career fellowship to advance the world of preservation in a variety of different ways. And so there's an open call and you were selected for that. And what was your project? And then we'll go into what that project yielded, but what did you pitch and had in? that got everybody's attention and got the yes vote? Well, I had ⁓ recently switched to ⁓ working for H.G. Christman Construction and I started to get really interested in the technical aspects of historic preservation. So I started following a few different window restorers on Instagram and it just opened up a whole world of research for me in historic preservation. ⁓ construction. And that is how I initially heard about the Harrison Goodall Fellowship. And I clicked on a couple links and I saw it and I took the information about the Harrison Goodall Fellowship back to my fellow board members at South Bend Trade Works and told them I'm going to apply for this grant. And the project would be to pilot a trade program here in South Bend where we're located to connect high school students with local employers and really just to introduce high school students, specifically high school students that were taking a trades class. I wanted to introduce them to historic preservation. I mean, it took me years into adulthood to even really understand historic preservation. So I wanted high schoolers to get the message. Especially if they're looking at a career in the trades, I wanted them to know that working with existing buildings is a viable career choice. So I took this to Southland Trade Works and they gave me the green light to apply for it. So I filled out the paperwork and applied for it as if it were a grant. And I have to tell you, when I met with the committee for the first time and ⁓ then went on a week later to find out that I had been selected for this fellowship, It still took me about a week for me to realize that this was a fellowship and not exactly a grant. I was absolutely shocked and humbled because I had gotten a lot of different grants over the years working in my capacity with the certified local government, but I had never been personally selected. And I didn't even realize I was applying for something that was going to personally choose me in my project. So when that finally hit me, I took it really seriously because I am mid-career and I have been doing this for a while, but I kind of hit a wall from time to time with frustration on not being able to find preservation carpenters or people who could restore windows. And, the list goes on and on. can name 10 different things that there's a shortage of people doing right now, but It really got very stressful in my job with the Historic Preservation Commission to tell somebody that they couldn't replace their windows, they had to repair them, but there was nobody in this area or for many miles around that repaired windows or work on buildings. So for me, it was just at the point in my life where I want to be helpful in educating the next generation of people to do this line of work. ⁓ I'm not saying that I'm burning out or I'm tired or anything like that, but I am mid-career. So going on from here, if we don't bring in new people that are working with people who are my age or older and connecting them, I don't know how we're going to transfer this institutional knowledge to the next generation. So I kind of like took it upon myself. I really wanted to be that ⁓ bridge. ⁓ So that was, that was, applying for the Harrison Goodall Fellowship and the project that I ended up submitting for consideration, it changed a little bit from the application to the final execution, but it was for the better. It's called the Trade Works Field School. And the Trade Works Field School... was a two part project. First, I was to develop the field school, the pilot program here in South Bend to introduce high school students to preservation trades and to connect them with networking opportunities and local employers. So that was a week long event that was held June of 2023. But then the second part is I'm preparing a field school guide that will then be available for other communities to reference and inspire them to start up their own trade schools in their communities. ⁓ So I'm designing it so that it could be replicated but customized for your own community. And I feel like that's a big takeaway for people listening, which is it's great to hear about this project and the impact it had in your community. But then people listening who are probably nodding their head like, yeah, I can't find a contractor or I'm on a CLG. I tell people, no, you got to fix it the right way. And then they're like, well, who do I hire? I'm like, well, good luck. ⁓ Everybody's dealt with that who's in preservation. And so hearing that something might be replicable is important. And engaging, you hear about this a lot too, the work that the Campaign for Historic Trades does is on apprenticeship development. and catching people in their 18 to 30 range and upskilling or providing just basic skills. But then a lot of people say, well, what are you going to do about high school students? Because if they don't know it's even an option, then they're not going to go in that direction. And it seems like your project touched on that. Talk to me about the replicability of it. What is it that people will be able to pick up? And understanding that that piece isn't completely done yet. I know that. But you're working on that aspect of it. But what can people look for in that? And were there any big takeaways or things that you tried that didn't work or things that you tried and worked really well? Yeah, I learned so much over the course of a year when I was planning the field school that I want to share with other organizations and communities so they have a foundation to start from. So I'm building the guide so that it offers best practices, and then it'll give a little story about our experience in South Bend and our pilot program. And then it's set up to operate like a workbook so that someone who's using this guide can think about the experience we just shared in context with their own community and fill in the blanks on. For instance, our best practice might be partner with a local preservation agency. And then here in South Bend, we specifically partnered with South Bend Trade Works. And then in your community, who would you partner with? And so for each best practice, it's set up to give you an example and then get you thinking about who are the right connections in your community. So. It's really just a framework. You don't have to follow it exactly, but I will talk about things in the guide, such as insurance and obtaining a liability, which ended up being one of the biggest challenges that we faced with our project, because you have these young people who are not of adult age yet, and they're working in and around things that could be dangerous if they're not familiar with them. And we want to make sure that we're, you know, allowing them to do enough so that they can get a sense of what we're dealing with. So a lot of our field school topics ended up being demonstrations or hands on things like Sanders or practicing staining or things like that. We were not able to secure enough liability insurance in that first year to allow for our students to use power tools. So that's really the biggest challenge. But also in a week long program, you're trying to get in so many topics that you really don't have time to introduce something and then train somebody completely on it. So it worked out in a way that The students then just piqued their interest. It planted a seed with them to see a demonstration. then from there, you know, they'll have to move on to their next decision of where do I go from here to get an apprenticeship in whatever they were interested in, what they learned about. I was going to jump in. just think that there's, want to point out like kind of based on like the experience of the campaign, how critical this piece is, what you're doing. ⁓ because just giving people the opportunity to see if they like it opens people's minds in a really neat way. And I also think the replicability is such an exciting part of it. I I heard this presentation once already that you gave to the Goodall committee and walked away just really excited and enthused about this because I think for a lot of preservation groups, they're like, look, I care about trades, but... how we can't run a whole apprenticeship program. What could we possibly do that could make a difference? And there's varying ways of doing what you did. And if you can show the insurance piece, ⁓ and there's other programs out there that I've heard like Touch a Trade and things like that where it's sort of just giving people this experiential opportunity is something that I think is within the reach of a lot of preservation organizations. And I think the handbook and the work that you've done to kind of ground truth this and pilot it is just really exciting and really important. So I ⁓ will make sure that when the final product is done, will be distributed, will update this episode, put it in the show notes in the link. ⁓ So I know that that's on the horizon, but what's next for you? Are you going to keep at it? ⁓ Where does it all head after you get that piece done? ⁓ What are you hoping to accomplish next? Yeah. Well, my big focus right now is on completing the trade works field school guide. And it's a little more challenging than creating the field school itself because, you know, we had a finite timeframe when we had to execute the field school and there were deadlines. And with this, I don't want to publish something that is not useful, but I also don't want to publish it incomplete. And so I've been trying to make sure that I'm making the field guide or the guide as efficient and streamlined as possible because it has the potential to be like 50 pages long, but I really want it not to be exhausting and just be more of a resource. So I'm really focusing on that right now. It's a challenge right now. have a limited amount of time because I do work a full-time job as a project manager. And so we are bustling and try to squeeze, squeeze it in, in my pockets of time. But I get really excited about the idea of planning year two of the field school in South Bend. ⁓ I will have additional ⁓ volunteers that are going to help out. probably need to delegate more. I took it very seriously that I was the Harrison Goodall Fellow and I took like 99 % of the responsibility upon myself in year one, but it was really, really difficult. I was actually kind of behind on my workload for about three weeks after because you you spend a year planning it, maybe 10 hours a week. And then the week of the field school, I was dedicated at 40 hours a week on site. just. lots of activity going on. this next year we're going to have more volunteers. I've actually passed some of my fellowship ⁓ proceeds along. So I had some hard costs that I needed to take care of and I had to take some time off work. So a little bit of it served as a stipend for the hours that I missed at work. But then I wanted to pass the fellowship forward and I've donated to South Bend Trade Works. so that they can utilize part of my Harrison funding to have year two of their trade school. So, and it was really apparent to me during the year of planning that you have to figure out how to make this type of program self-sustainable, especially if you're not charging for it. So, you know, passing. paying it forward was my way of doing that for South Bend. But I also really feel like I've been afforded this really great opportunity from, you know, Preservation Maryland, also the National Park Service and Harrison Goodall. And I'm not really able to just leave it at the end of this year because my fellowship is over. I really want to scale up the field school and spread the message and help other communities and organizations start one of these in their own areas. So in my limited capacity, I've made a commitment to 2024 to scaling up the field school. And part of that is just with helping trade works plan year two, but I also want to present at conferences, whether it's Indiana Statewide Preservation Conference or end up at the National Trust or the APT Conference, it doesn't really matter. I can go to all of them ⁓ just to talk about the project and promote the guide so that other preservation agencies can learn about it and then start to assemble a committee locally to them that could put these on. So that's what I'm on, scaling up. Yeah, I will make sure that your contact info is in the show notes so people can contact you directly. ⁓ I think it's, ⁓ as I said, I can't say enough good things about this and so proud of the work that's been done and that we played a small role in just kind of getting you the funding that you needed and helping find the right people ⁓ and the support of Harrison that made it all possible. ⁓ The exciting thing about this for me, as you said, is replicability. I implore preservation leaders around the country to get Alicia in front of your audience and get her talking about this and providing the lessons learned. this sort of, ⁓ you know, it's not a huge threshold to jump to get into this kind of thing, but it's critical and it plays into the broader, more in-depth trades training components because If you can capture someone's imagination and excitement, then we can move them through the ladder and get them into the apprenticeships programs and those that have been just recently created ⁓ and keep them moving. But part of it is capturing their attention and imagination. And I think everybody knows all of our attention is divided so many different ways that this is a really important piece of making sure that the future of preservation is secure. And so just thrilled to have you here with us today to have that conversation before we go. We always make people squirm a little bit. What is your favorite historic place? Well, that one, it's really actually kind of easy for me, but it's more of a place that reflects on cultural heritage than a historic building per se. It is my neighborhood. It's called the Pine Lake Assembly. and it's on the north bluff of Pine Lake in La Porte. And I picture the Native Americans being up there with fires because it's a very high lookout spot. ⁓ A guy by the name of Captain Harding developed it back in the 1890s as kind of a retreat area for industrialists from Chicago, Indianapolis, Michigan, kind of came from all over to this assembly grounds and They built cottages that are now year-round housing and I live in one of them. And I've been there for seven years and the entire seven years that I've been there, the neighborhood association has elected me as their ground superintendent. So I am in all 22 acres of our natural historic environment, exploring all the time and 12 of the acres is in a conservation easement. So we have 2000 foot of lakeshore along Pine Lake with a private beach and just so much parkland and woods. And then we do have a cute little historic building called Community Hall. And before our annual meetings every year, you have to pull a string and you ring the bell and it like reverbiates through the whole neighborhood. And then all the neighbors kind of come to the community hall to have their annual meeting where they vote and have elections and stuff like that. So it is by far my favorite historic place because I love being home and I love being able to study it every day and protect it too because it's not immune to exploitation. ⁓ And I've seen some things out there like tree cutting that, you know, my dad retired. He finally retired. He's not a heavy equipment operator anymore, but he bought a sawmill. He's actually logging trees now. Oh, dad. Oh, dear. So anytime I see someone cutting a tree, I'm like, oh, my God. that would be the funny little quip at the end of your movie, I think, where the now dad is cutting down trees and maybe at the very least he can get you some decent lumber for your preservation projects. We'll go with that. He's got he's got good motivations. Where is that in the mountains up in Arkansas? But you know it just it really just ties into. I just think that I really care a lot about the Earth and historic buildings has been my way to show that all through the years and so the materials that go into it has. I joke about trees being cut and wood stuff like that. It really comes back to natural resources and just being sustainable altogether and so. That's tends to be how I live my life. And even as you in my little hometown of report, I just find my favorite historic place in the cultural heritage of my own neighborhood. And just thinking back of the generations of people that have been there and the history that's happened there. And it's just so peaceful. So keeps me motivated, lets me recharge every day and wake up for the next morning to go. you know, restore historic buildings and keep doing that and keep encouraging people to do that. Keep trying to get younger generations interested in doing that and connect them to elder generations with experience so that we can transfer this knowledge. And I did want to say to you, Nick, that the natural referral that I give to anybody who's interested in learning more is the Campaign for Historic Trades. I've found that it's a really good resource, a really good comprehensive resource for not only ⁓ people who are looking for new careers in the trades, but also people who are working in the trades. So thank you guys so much for putting together that resource. It should have been really nice to be able to, when someone says, how can I get involved? Look, go to the Campaign for Historic Trades website for your next steps. Well, I appreciate that plug and it's soon your resource will be up there for people to learn how to do one of these projects and it'll be front and center because it's a critical piece of all of this. ⁓ so so thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for the project and the work. And we'll make sure that you're getting in front of audiences all across the country. This will be the first, but certainly not the last. Thanks so much again, Alicia. It's been so much fun talking with you and learning about this project. Thank you so much, Nick. Thanks for listening to Preservecast. To dig deeper into this episode's story, head over to Preservecast.org for show notes and our collection of previous episodes. Don't forget to engage with this podcast by subscribing, commenting, and leaving a review. Follow along on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Preservecast for even more. Preservecast is currently recorded in Walkersville, Maryland and sponsored by the 1772 Foundation and powered by Preservation Maryland. Thanks for listening and keep on preserving.