Historic Reno Preservation Society

Preserving Truckee Meadow's Past through Education, Advocacy, and Leadership

From Your HRPS President - Spring 2011 PDF Print E-mail

HRPS Educational Programming: Inciting your inner curiosity

I’m writing this at the end of January, after the monthly HRPS program. I hope you were there, to experience of the insight of the speakers and the vitality of their interaction with the 125 people in the audience. It was HRPS programming at its best: a free and open occasion to foster lifelong learning in the community.

This program also inspired this message, focusing on the "education" component of HRPS's mission (Preserving Truckee Meadows' past through Education, Advocacy and Leadership).

 

The goal in our educational programs is to incite your inner curiosity! We do this in several ways:

  • Walking Tours entertain and inform, reaching about 1,000 people a year with information on local history, architecture and special topics. Look for an expansion of our tour schedule for 2011.
  • Special projects supplement our walking tour schedule. These in-depth experiences include the Home Tour, bus tours of the Lincoln Highway and WPA Project and our tour of UNR’s Keck Museum. These tours attract from dozens, to hundreds, of people.
  • Monthly programs feature a wide array of topics of historic, preservation and cultural interest. Recent subjects range from "35 Years of Casino Entertainment" to "Basque Aspen Art" to "Historic Nevada State Hospital." Let us know if you have an interesting program idea.

These aspects of HRPS’s educational efforts are fairly well known. There are two other exciting initiatives that are less known:

  • 4th grade project, now in its second year, engages Reno school children in local history. Almost 1,000 children were involved in 2010. Classroom study is followed by a field trip to actually experience the locations. As a teacher stated, "The teachers and students thoroughly enjoyed themselves and educationally, it was a perfect fit for the 4th grade history standards." See a related article in the new FootPrints for more details.
  • The Scholarship Fund was established through The UNR Foundation and offers tuition assistance to a student working on historic preservation (or related) subjects. The endowment-based scholarship is a win-win situation, with the student gaining practical experience and HRPS fostering in-depth and conscientious research to complement our work. The Fund was established with donations to HRPS and the generosity of Sharon Walbridge and Wanda Casazza. The HRPS Board recently approved a donation to "grow" the Fund. We're happy to accept additional donations to encourage the next generation of historical scholars.

Albert Einstein once said "Learning is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it." I take great comfort to be in league with ol' Albert, knowing that HRPS offers plenty of chances to learn throughout life. Join us on the lifelong attempt!

Sharon Honig-Bear