Agatha Hupenbecker Burnet Endowed Graduate Research and Teaching Assistantship

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Agatha Hupenbecker Burnet Endowed Graduate Research and Teaching Assistantship

In 2013, the Agatha Hupenbecker Burnet Endowed Graduate Research and Teaching Assistantship was established with support from Dr. Hupenbecker Burnet, a former Iowa State University Textiles and Clothing professor from 1956 until 1993. She was an advocate of preserving and collecting historic garments and textiles, founded the Ph.D. program in the department, and worked diligently to catalog textiles and apparel in the collection. She also served as the department chair from 1973 until 1993.

Students who have held the assistantship came from a variety of disciplines such as public history, fashion design, art history, history, fashion merchandising, business, computer science, LGBTQ studies, women and gender studies, and communication studies. The students have also had varying research interests such as Black women’s fashion; dress and identity in Renaissance portraiture; activism and fashion during the AIDS epidemic; and queer and trans DIY fashion production and distribution.

Her endowment has provided on-campus graduate students enriched learning opportunities through the assistantship where they engage in:

• Collaborative team research resulting in:
  • peer-reviewed publications
  • national and international conference presentations
  • curatorial exhibition scholarship
  • digital humanities projects
• Curating and mounting physical exhibitions in one of our many gallery spaces including the Mary Alice Gallery and the Donna Danielson Conservation Lab window
• Assisting with teaching courses which utilize the collection such as our fashion history, cultural aspects of fashion, and social/psychology of fashion courses. In this area students assist with:
  • grading weekly assignments
  • responding to student needs and questions: answering emails, holding office hours
  • managing the learning management system
  • creating supplemental course materials as needed
  • moderating questions during class
  • updating and delivering lectures or other in-class activities
  • pulling objects from the collection for study
• Collection management tasks such physical care of the collection; monitoring environmental conditions of the collection; assisting with maintaining the collection handbook; assessing risk management; and accessioning/deaccessioning objects
• Media work including:
  • assisting with developing content related to the collection for various social media outlets, such as YouTube, Facebook, and/or Instagram.
• Public programming such as:
  • curator tours of exhibitions
  • collection and facility tours
  • exhibition related talks

If you are interested in the Agatha Hupenbecker Burnet Endowed Graduate Research and Teaching Assistantship, please contact Dr. Kelly L. Reddy-Best at klrb@iastate.edu.

To be eligible for graduate assistantships, you must first apply to our Apparel, Merchandising, and Design graduate program. The Apparel, Events, and Hospitality Management handbook has more information on assistantships including selection criteria, funding, and salaries. Assistantship applications are emailed individually to each student after they are accepted into the program.