Faculty
Frances Ford
Consultant, Architectural Materials Conservation
Cari Goetcheus
Assistant Professor, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, Clemson University
Kristopher King
Project Manager, WECCO
Richard Marks
Owner, Richard Marks Restorations, Inc.
Jennifer McStotts
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, College of Charleston
Ralph Muldrow
Associate Professor, Department of Art History, College of Charleston
Ashley Robbins
Assistant Professor and Interim Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, Clemson University
Robert Russell
Professor, Department of Art History, College of Charleston
Elizabeth Garrett Ryan
Adjunct Professor, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, Clemson University/ College of Charleston
Katherine Saunders
Associate Director of Preservation, Historic Charleston Foundation
Richard Sidebottom
Adjunct Professor, Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, Clemson University/ College of Charleston
Barry Stiefel
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, College of Charleston
James Ward
Assistant Professor, Department of Art History, College of Charleston
Staff
Rae Ann Blyth
Administrative Assistant
Patty McNulty
Student Services Program Coordinator
Faculty
Frances Ford
M.S. Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania; B.A. Historic Preservation, College of Charleston
Frances Ford has had a long-standing interest in materials conservation, and in graduate school concentrated in that area, particularly the field of paint and ornamental plaster conservation. She currently works an as independent conservator as well as heading conservation initiatives for Richard Marks Restoration, a nationally known restoration contracting company based in Charleston. In addition to her work focusing on historic interiors, she is much in demand for her skills in cemetery restoration and stone conservation, and has been entrusted with the repair of some of the oldest graves in Charleston.
Frances is an active scholar as well as a practitioner, and has participated in conferences up and down the east coast, as well as internationally. She has a long-standing interest in the important 19th-century Philadelphia marble mason, John Struthers, and most recently has presented a paper on the Struthers tomb of George Washington at Mount Vernon. She continues to research and document the work of Struthers and his company.
Cari Goetcheus
M.H.P. University of Georgia; B.L.A. Utah State University
Cari Goetcheus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at Clemson University located in South Carolina, USA. She holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from Utah State University and a Master of Historic Preservation from the University of Georgia. Her research interests include landscape preservation education, physical evolution of land uses and land use history, vernacular landscapes, and the impact of African American culture on the landscapes of the Southeast.
Prior to her academic career, Ms. Goetcheus worked in both the public and private sector. As a Historical Landscape Architect with the National Park Service in Atlanta, GA and Washington, D.C., Cari worked with the Cultural Landscape Inventory (CLI) program. In Washington, D.C. she worked with NPS regional colleagues who assisted the 396 national parks with a variety of cultural landscape issues. In private practice, Ms. Goetcheus worked in both traditional landscape architecture offices on master plans, site designs and comprehensive planning reports, as well a preservation firms known for their cultural landscape work and developing National Heritage Areas. On a volunteer basis at the national level, Cari was instrumental in developing the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) program and its documentation guidelines.
With 20 years of experience in research, planning, preservation, and project management, Ms. Goetcheus is a licensed landscape architect in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of Georgia. Current and recent projects include development of a Campus Preservation Plan funded by the Getty Foundation Campus Heritage Grant program, working with ten African–American communities along the coast of South Carolina to document their basket making traditional places, creation of cultural resource documentation for a c. 1785 property on the Clemson University Campus, and a Scenic Byway Management Guide for the Sumter National Forest.
Kristopher King
M.S. Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania; B.A. Architectural History, Trinity College
Mr. King has worked in private practice, focusing on historic preservation and construction management, and was previously employed by Historic Charleston Foundation, where he managed of the largest preservation easement programs in the country, as well as directed the technical outreach and zoning advocacy programs.
Currently, he is a project manager for WECCO of Charleston, a development, design, and construction company specializing in LEED certified, sustainable rehabilitation and infill projects.
He is an active member of the Urban Land Institute, and is an executive committee member for ULI South Carolina's Visioning Charleston 2030, a Reality Check exercise. He is also a member of the Charleston Green Committee and teaches courses in historic preservation at the College of Charleston.
Richard Marks
Historic Preservation Certificate, University of Pennsylvania; B.S. Construction Management, Clemson University
Richard Marks started Richard Marks Restorations Inc. in 1985 to provide a qualified resource for persons seeking advice or services concerning the stabilization, preservation, restoration or conservation of historic buildings and sites. Today, RMR has several preservation and documentation consultants as well as over thirty full-time carpenters, masons, plasterers and decorative crafts people. RMR facilities include work shops for cabinetry, millwork, stone, plaster casting, and a lab for analytical conservation examination and research.
Richard Marks completed the South Carolina general contractors exam in 1984. In 1985 he graduated with a BS in construction management from the College of Architecture at Clemson University. At Clemson he completed one semester of studies in Italy, with a focus on European conservation and restoration. He worked two years towards Masters Degree in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania and received a certificate in 1995. At the University of Pennsylvania he focused on architectural conservation and researching historic building techniques. He currently serves on an alumni advisory board for historic structures at Clemson University and is working in Charleston to start a graduate center in Historic Preservation for Clemson. He is a trustee for The Historic Charleston Foundation and an advisor for many other non profit, preservation and community organizations.
Jennifer McStotts
J.D. and M.H.P. University of Georgia; B.A. Architecture/English/Psychology, University of Arizona
Assistant Professor Jennifer Cohoon McStotts teaches the Preservation Law and Economics course in the graduate program, as well as courses in preservation, planning, and cultural resource management at the College of Charleston. Ms. McStotts' research includes current legal issues related to preservation, such as easement policy and greenspace, and interpretive issues like the relationship between commemoration and difficult histories at sites such as the Berlin Wall and Japanese Internment Camps. She is currently on sabbatical.
Ralph Muldrow
M.Arch and M.S. Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania
Ralph Muldrow is the Associate Director of the joint Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and is the Simons Professor of Historic Preservation and Associate Professor of Art History and Historic Preservation and Community Planning at the College of Charleston.
He has numerous years of experience as an architect (NJ license) and preservationist, including new and renovated library projects in New York City, Historic Tax Credit renovation projects, non-profit board experience towards the rehabilitaton of the Roebling factories in Trenton, NJ; contextual additions to to historic structures, new resdiential design, restorations of house museums (including the Old Dutch Parsonage in New Jersey and Tudor Hall in Petersburg, Virginia), the design of centers for the arts on historical campuses; project architect for the restoration of the Anne Arundel County Courthouse in Annapolis, Maryland; past director of the National Heritage Area Development Institute; professional work with historic Main Street studies and design guidelines; and numerous other professional work including traditional design for new towns and houses, renderings and historic studies. His teaching areas include American Architecture, Architectural and Urban Design, Building Materials Conservation and Planning.
Ashley Robbins
M.Arch. University of Notre Dame; B.S. Architecture, University of Virginia
Ashley Robbins, AIA, ASID is an architect and interior designer that has specialized in historic preservation since 1991. She started her career as the Assistant Architect for Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village and continued as a partner in a rural practice before working in Washington DC for the preservation firm Oehrlein & Associates Architects. While in DC she worked as the HP project architect for Dumbarton Oaks, the Lincoln and Washington Monument concession kiosks, Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt's Home in Hyde Park and the United States Holocaust Museum Café renovation. She continues to consult on many of these projects.
Her main interests are new interventions within historic contexts and preservation master planning. Other focuses are building material deterioration and construction details. She teaches the theory course, preservation studio and administration and management.
Professor Robbins received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia in 1991 and a Master of Architecture from University of Notre Dame in 1997. She is licensed in Virginia and New York.
Robert Russell
Ph.D. Art and Archaeology, Princeton University; B.A. Southern Illinois
Robert Russell has been at the College of Charleston since 1994. He is a professor of architectural history in the Department of Art History, and the Director of the undergraduate Program in Historic Preservation and Community Planning. He teaches courses in modern (1750-present) American and European architectural history, the history of cities and city form, and occasional hands-on courses in historic masonry and cemetery conservation. His research interests are varied and have resulted in papers and articles about (among other things) Charleston domesticity, the development of the College of Charleston campus, Preservation Charters in the 20th Century and Italian Civic Palaces.
He has had a particular and longstanding interest in American county courthouses and their social and urban meaning, and has edited a book, written by students, on the courthouses of South Carolina. He is currently finishing a book about the early-19th-century American architect, William Strickland.
Elizabeth Garrett Ryan
M.A. Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, University of Delaware; B.S. Anthropology, College of Charleston
Ms. Ryan was previously employed as Director of Museums for the Historic Beaufort Foundation in Beaufort, S.C., where she conducted research on collections, planned and developed exhibits, and coordinated acquisitions. She has served on the Beaufort County Historic Preservation Review Board and the Tourism Management Advisory Commission for the City of Beaufort. Her additional research has included in-depth study of the decorative arts and historic interiors in collaboration with the Winterthur Museum in Delaware and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in North Carolina.
In addition to teaching the Historic Interiors classes in the Clemson/College of Charleston Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, Ms. Ryan also currently works as a Decorative Arts Appraiser with Alice L. Patrick, Inc., AAA in Charleston, S.C.
Katherine Saunders
B.A. Historic Preservation, Mary Washington College
Katherine Saunders is the Associate Director of Preservation at Historic Charleston Foundation where she has worked since 1996. Her primary job responsibilities include preservation advocacy, planning, and historical research. A native of Virginia , Ms. Saunders earned her B.A. in Historic Preservation at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia and is currently pursuing a M.A. in History at the College of Charleston and the Citadel.
She worked as an archaeologist at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest before moving to Charleston in 1992. Before coming to HCF, she worked for SC State Parks and The Charleston Museum. One of her largest projects to-date for HCF was the survey and nomination of approximately 30,000 acres in Berkeley County, SC to the National Register of Historic Places as the Cooper River Historic District. Her principle research interest for the last several years has been the fortifications of colonial Charles Town, the results of which were published in 2002. In 2005, she was appointed by Charleston mayor Joseph Riley as co-chair of the Mayor's Walled City Task Force.
Richard Wesley Sidebottom
Master of Architectural History, Preservation Certificate, University of Virginia; B.A. History and Classical Studies, Emory University
Mr. Sidebottom has worked with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History as Supervisor of Compliance, Tax Incentives, and Outreach programs; Historic Architecture Consultant; and Review and Compliance Coordinator, facilitating federal and state programs in historic preservation. He has also participated in research and documentation projects in Wales, Bristol England, and Falmouth Jamaica, and continues to explore issues facing preservation and development interests in South Carolina.
Mr. Sidebottom has served as an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina, teaching History of American Architecture to both graduate and undergraduate students, and is currently teaching History and Theory of Historic Preservation at the Clemson/College of Charleston Graduate Program.
Barry Stiefel
Ph.D. Historic Preservation, Tulane University; M.U.P., University of Michigan; Historic Preservation Certificate, Eastern Michigan University; B.S. Environmental Policy, Michigan State University
Barry Stiefel earned his Ph.D. in Historic Preservation at Tulane University and has professional, volunteer, and academic experiences in 14 states as well as abroad. These experiences have included preservation planning projects, historic building surveys, historic building nominations, historic building reports, creating archival inventories, designing historic house museums, and genealogy research. Presently, Dr. Stiefel is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Historic Preservation and Community Planning at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. He is interested in how the sum of local preservation efforts affects regional, national, and multi-national policies within the field of cultural resource management and heritage conservation.
James Ward
M.L.A., B.L.A., and B.A. English, University of Georgia
James Liphus Ward is a Landscape Architect of near thirty years experience in private and governmental practice in the Southeastern U.S. and Bermuda. He is now also an Assistant Professor in Preservation and Planning in Charleston, SC working on urban and regional landscape models for preservation, cultural landscapes, and documenting historic buildings and sites.
Staff
Rae Ann Blyth
Administrative Assistant
Ms. Blyth provides administrative support to the program director, faculty and students and works closely with Clemson University and the College of Charleston to foster a collaborative environment. She is the primary on-site administrative support contact for the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation.
E-mail / (843) 937-9596Patty McNulty
Student Services Program Coordinator
Ms. McNulty provides support for the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation in the Planning and Landscape Architecture Department on Clemson's main campus in upstate South Carolina.
E-mail / (864) 656-4257
