Gretchen Sorin

Dr. Gretchen Sorin

Dr. Gretchen Sorin is Director and Distinguished Service Professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program. She is an alumna of the Cooperstown Graduate Program and received her Ph.D. from SUNY Albany. Over the course of 30+ years, Dr. Sorin has worked for more than 250 museums as a museum exhibition curator and an education, programming, interpretive, and strategic planning consultant. She has served on many organizational boards and governing councils operating in the museum field. Currently, Dr. Sorin is the President of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums (MAAM.)  Additionally, Dr. Sorin has produced a wide body of highly regarded academic scholarship. Her most recent book, Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, was a finalist for the NAACP’s Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Her courses at the CGP include Introduction to Museums, Introduction to Exhibitions, and African American Art.

Dr. William Walker

Associate Professor, History
Dr. William Walker received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 2007. He is an associate professor at the Cooperstown Graduate Program, focusing on courses relating to public history, oral history and 20th-century U.S. cultural and intellectual history. Dr. Walker is the author of A Living Exhibition: The Smithsonian and the Transformation of the Universal Museum and an editor of The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook (https://inclusivehistorian.com/). He teaches first- and second-year courses, including Research and Fieldwork, Major Historical Issues, Identity & Activism, and Landscapes, Cultures, & the Environment.

William Walker
Cindy Falk

Dr. Cindy Falk

Professor, Material Culture
Dr. Cindy Falk is Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies at SUNY Oneonta and Professor of Material Culture. Falk has taught material culture methodology, historic preservation, designing for accessibility, and thematic courses in America’s tangible heritage.  She received her Ph.D. from the University of Delaware in 2000. She is the author of several books, book chapters, and articles including Barns of New York: Rural Architecture of the Empire State and Architecture and Artifacts of the Pennsylvania Germans: Constructing Identity in Early America. Dr. Falk also served as co-editor of Buildings & Landscapes: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum from 2012-2017 and is currently a member of the National Historic Landmarks Committee of the National Parks System Advisory Board.

Dr. Erik Stengler

Assistant Professor, Science
Dr. Erik Stengler is the assistant professor for the Cooperstown Graduate Program Science Track. Dr. Stengler received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. As an astronomer, he worked in the Observational Cosmology field, studying QSO absorption lines using data from space-based observatories, such as the International Ultraviolet Explorer and the Hubble Space Telescope. At the Cooperstown Graduate Program, Dr. Stengler teaches all science-based courses, including Science and Society, Science Learning, Science Museum Methods, Citizen Science, History of Science and Science Museums, Digital Technology in Museums, and Cabinet of Curiosities.

Erik Stengler

Professor Katie Boardman

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Education & Interpretation
A 1982 alumna of the Cooperstown Graduate Program, Adjunct Assistant Professor Katie Boardman worked for twenty years at The Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown in curatorial and interpretation management. Since 2003, Professor Boardman has worked in partnership with The Cherry Valley Group, providing interpretive training and planning. She is the editor of The Bulletin of The Association of Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums. Professor Boardman teaches first- and second-year courses, including Introduction to Museum Education and Interpretation, Applied Museum Education and Interpretation, and Visitor Experience. She also coordinates Spring and Fall semester CGP internships.

Katie Boardman

Professor Robin Campbell

Adjunct Professor, Material Culture
Dr. Campbell currently teaches Material Culture Methods at the Cooperstown Graduate Program. She won the 2019-2020 Distinguished Faculty of the Year student services award at Excelsior College. She previously spent 30 years as Chief Curator for the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites. She is also past-President of the Costume Society of America (http://www.costumesocietyamerica.com/). Her book Mistresses of the Transient Hearth: American Army Officers’ Wives and Material Culture, 1840-1880 was published by Routledge in 2005. Campbell has also contributed articles to several ABC-Clio publications on a range of topics, including the material life of enslaved people in the United States; American women at war; the role of consumer goods in shaping the New World, and daily life in antebellum America.

Professor Anna Rutenbeck

Adjunct Professor, Project Management
Anna Rutenbeck is an adjunct faculty member at CGP. She graduated from the science track at CGP in 2021. During her time at CGP, her research projects focused on representations of science and technology in science fiction media. Anna is currently the coordinator of science outreach activities at SUNY Oneonta, where she coordinates the AJ Read Science Discovery Center and SUNY Oneonta Planetarium, as well as managing public science outreach.

Professor Mehna Reach

Adjunct Professor, Collections Care and Acquisitions and Science Collections
Mehna Reach is a 2006 graduate of the Cooperstown Graduate Program and started her career in museums at the Providence Children’s Museum in Providence, RI as an AmeriCorps Museum Educator.  Over the past 23 years she has served in a variety of roles in the museum field. She has worked as an Outreach Educator at The Children’s Museum at Saratoga, as a Family Learning Fellow at the U.S.S. Constitution Museum and as an Exhibit Planner at the New York State Museum. Reach is presently the Museum Registrar at the New York State Museum and works with all of the Museum’s collection areas including history, art and culture, anthropology, ethnology, biology, geology and paleontology.  Professor Reach currently teaches Collections, Acquisitions, Care and Management of History Collections and Collections, Acquisitions, Care and Management of Natural History and Science Collections at the Cooperstown Graduate Program.