MEET OUR GRADUATES: Justin MacDonald

While completing a history major, Justin MacDonald also completed RIC’s certificate program in public history, which is a hands-on experience of the past – history not only read about, but investigated through museum artifacts, archival studies, first-person narratives, etc.

Through his internship at Independence Trail (Rhode Island’s unique form of public history), MacDonald began to unearth the “unsung” French sailors and soldiers who died in Rhode Island during the American Revolution. Using diaries, journals, newspapers, historical sites, government archives, monuments, cemeteries and other sources, MacDonald is attempting to find out the names of these individuals and where they were buried. He also researched the major French admirals at the time, mapping out their voyages, pinpointing the site where they embarked at Narragansett Bay and determining the locations of their hospitals and barracks.

Through his research, MacDonald was able to provide Independence Trail with a document that can be displayed upon their website to help educate and inspire individuals who have limited knowledge of the French and of their contribution to Rhode Island and American independence. MacDonald’s research is still in progress. His internship at Independence Trail will continue after he graduates from RIC.

MacDonald also held an internship at Roger Williams National Memorial. He said he will stay on as a volunteer after graduation because he enjoys talking to the public about history. “History is not only about understanding the past,” he said, “but understanding how the past still affects us.”

MacDonald received the History Department Award for academic excellence and was awarded the Evelyn Walsh Prize for excellence in history and service to the college.

He was inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa international honor society and received Phi Alpha Theta history honors.

MacDonald’s archaeological interests extend beyond America to Asia. He is a practicing Buddhist and was invited by a monk from a local Cambodian temple to research Cambodia’s 2,000-year-old Angkor Wat temple complex – the largest religious monument in the world.

After graduation, MacDonald will apply for fellowship scholarships in archaeology at Brown University and UMass-Dartmouth.