Roger Williams University offers a one- or two-year Master of Science in Preservation Practices for students holding a bachelor’s degree. Students with a undergraduate degree in historic preservation may apply to the one-year (minimum), 34-credit program. A two-year, 52-credit program is available to qualified students holding a bachelor’s degree in other fields.
The mission of the Preservation Practices Program is to prepare students for multidisciplinary careers harnessing the historic and existing built environment to foster a vibrant, healthy, sustainable, and livable present. The MS program focuses on developing a foundation of analytical, technical, and professional skills for practice in the areas of cultural resource management, community planning, and place-based revitalization and redevelopment.
Coursework on the history of the built environment is coupled with applied learning experiences that introduce students to the interdisciplinary, team-based work of historic preservation practice. Applied experience and experiential learning are core components of the curriculum. These are delivered by a series of field-based workshop courses and a required internship undertaken in partnership with nonprofit organizations, government entities, and professional architecture and planning firms. The culminating experience in the MS program is an intensive two-semester sequence of a planning workshop and collaborative studio focused on a major historic rehabilitation or revitalization project. These applied courses happen in collaboration with the SAAHP graduate community of architecture, planning, and historic preservation students. Students wishing to do a traditional thesis in addition to the two-semester planning and design sequence may do so as an elective two-semester sequence under the advisement of SAAHP faculty.
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