Ep. 116 - What is the MA in Archaeology?

Thinking about grad school? Love history, culture, and hands-on learning? In this episode of the CSUSB Advising Podcast, Matt and Julian chat with Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers, Program Director of the Master of Arts in Applied Archaeology at CSUSB!

Here’s what you’ll learn:

 💼 Why over 95% of graduates find jobs in the field
 🔍 What makes CSUSB’s program stand out from others in California
 🤝 How cohort-based classes build community and career networks

If you’re passionate about history, culture, and making a difference, this episode will show you how to turn that passion into a career.

Have questions? Contact Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers at matthew.deslauriers@csusb.edu. 

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hello and welcome to another episode of the CSUSB Advising Podcast. This is Matt Markin from the ASUA Academic Advising office, and co-hosting with me today is...

Julian Trujillo  
Advisor Julian again, from the same office Academic Advising here at CSUSB. 

Matt Markin  
Hey, Julian, how are you?

Julian Trujillo  
I'm good. How about yourself? 

Matt Markin  
Doing very well. I'm very excited for our guest today. And you know, on today's episode, we get to learn more about the Master of Arts in Applied Archaeology. And to help us unpack this degree program, let's bring on our guest today, and let's welcome to the podcast, the Program Director of the MA in Archaeology, Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers. Dr. Des Lauriers welcome.

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
Thank you for having me happy to be here. 

Matt Markin  
Yeah, we're glad that you're here with us today. You know, very interested to learn more about this program and share this with our students. But before we get to that, of course, we always like to ask our guests about themselves. Can you tell us about your your path and journey into higher ed? What's, what's your origin story?

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
Well, I mean, I was, I grew up as a military kid, and I traveled around a lot, never lived anywhere more than three years my entire childhood. I think I went to 13 different schools by the time I graduated high school, and that, I think, was one of the things that created the interest in different kinds of people, different histories, different places, when you get to see a lot of these things, that it raises questions, and you you develop that, that curiosity. And when I decided to go to school, I went to Cal State Bakersfield, which is kind of ironic, because if you think about it, I started off as a road runner, and now I've become a coyote, very Warner Brothers. But I'm very happy to be a coyote. And from my undergraduate schooling at Cal State Bakersfield, I have to tell you that the undergraduate education, having taught at both community colleges at the UC and at the CSU. The undergraduate education at the CSU is very much at the top level. It is superior to the undergraduate education at a lot of these other institutions. And I'm very glad to have had that. One of the biggest things is that as a CSU student, I was able to participate in research and really work with the faculty there at CSUB in ways that undergraduates at some other larger institutions, or more explicitly, research focused institutions don't have that opportunity. By the time I applied for and got into graduate school at UC Riverside, I had done more field work and more research than all of my other colleagues in that program. I had had that opportunity, and it really prepared me for a career in this field in ways that continue, you know, to be of benefit. So if anybody ever has any questions about, what do you get out of a CSU undergraduate education? I'm here to tell you, it's fantastic. You know, I'm here as evidence of that. And when I was, you know, trying to decide what to do in in my education, I decided to work in in western North America. The area that I specialize in in terms of my own research, is Baja California. They're in northwestern Mexico. And it is something that I think really highlights the idea that cultural heritage and the the histories of people aren't always written down. And so in order to be an effective anthropologist, archeologist that studies these areas, it's, it's not all about pyramids and pharaohs and whatnot. It's, it's about the deep histories that we're able to investigate, study, protect and teach people about that that really animate, you know, the the work that we do in terms of, you know, what I do here at CSUSB, I was at Cal State Northridge for 14 years as a faculty member directing their public archeology program. It's an applied archeology program here largely a difference in name, and so I've been directing graduate programs in this field since 2005 and I've seen changes throughout that time and seen different ways that we can support our students in building their careers as it moves forward. One of the things that the MA in Applied Archaeology here at CSUSB does. That really sets it apart from a lot of other programs in archaeology is that it has that specific focus on being an applied program. And what do I mean by an applied program? It is something that doesn't just look at it from the context of the research or large scale grant funding. It looks at it as a training program for professionals that are going into a field, where they may work for the California State Parks, or they may work at a Tribal Historic Preservation Office, or they may work at the San Bernardino County Museum in these different areas, different facets of that work that are less about the theory and more about the actual practice of conserving, protecting and understanding cultural heritage and history in here, in Southern California and elsewhere, and many, many programs at a lot of other places where you could go to get a degree in archeology don't have that same focus, and they focus much more on theory and grant. You know, getting grants, which is all good, but when if you look at the jobs surveys that have been done by the Society for American archeology, the National Organization for our discipline, over 80% and in some surveys, as much as 85% of the actual jobs in archeology are in the applied realm. They are working for government agencies, private companies, different museums, rather than as university faculty. And so if we're going to be having a program that attempts to not just focus on replicating the faculty, you know, faculty, making more faculty, but focuses on where the real jobs that these students could have, that they could have an impact on their communities, on their local areas and beyond, it's going to be something that prepares them for those real world careers, and that's the idea of an applied program, because most other places may peripherally train students in these things, but they don't have the specific curriculum that we do. We have a whole two semester sequence of courses on the laws, regulations and procedures that go into this profession. And so in that, we are almost unique in California, and we're very proud of that, and because of that focus, because of the internship requirements, and because we send people out to do these internships with with different agencies, private companies every time, for example, you do an environmental impact report. When Caltrans is widening a highway or somebody is building a housing development, they have to do an environmental impact report, and a component of that environmental impact report is the cultural resources. And so there's a multi billion dollar industry of private companies that do that, subcontracting that that really is some of the bread and butter. And we have an incredibly good record of getting students employment after graduation here in their chosen field, rather than having to, you know, be creative and try to figure out how it goes, we're really able to slot people into these opportunities. And so we're very proud of the fact that over 95% of our graduates are currently employed in archaeology.

Julian Trujillo  
Thank you for sharing that information. I think that was a really good foundational and important for all the students are exploring this potential route now, for those students that are not typically in this route and maybe they're exploring or for just students that are not aware of what the program may be. Can you tell us something more about the MA program that you're offering?

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
Well, one of the cool things that we do here in our program is that we actually have it cohorted. So when students start the program, they take the same required courses in theory and proposal writing and lab courses and all of that with the same group of students that they start, the with which with whom they start the program. And so you really end up building a lot of, in some cases, you know, lifelong connections with these people. And it's, it's something that also enables us to be able to guarantee that students will be able to make forward progress on their degrees, not hampered by faculty sabbaticals or scheduling of courses and whatnot, and we avoid those sorts of bottlenecks that happen when you flip around, oh, we're going to teach. Teach this required course now or this required course then, no, they're always taught in the same semester. And the idea is that you go through, you know, in in the sequence, and those courses build on one another, because we know that a lot of students may not have, you know, come in deciding from their freshman year that they're going to be archaeologists. And so we're not assuming that people know everything from the start. And this is just kind of a filter. So we build this curriculum, so the first classes lay the foundation, and then the second classes, you know, build on that and build on that. It's scaffolded in a way that's intended to really build people up and build up their confidence and their their skills in these areas, in ways that aren't sort of roadblocks. We like to think of it as a ladder rather than a speed bump, and that's really one of the key things. The other thing that we have is we have a really fantastic support from from the college and the university. We have really great facilities for our students. We have a whole graduate student lounge and an undergraduate student lounge. We have the necessary equipment. We have 3d scanners and printers and ground penetrating, you know, magnetometers, so the students here aren't sort of hampered in building the skills that they need to build because of the the lack of tools. One of the things that I've told people who've asked me, oh, you you moved from one university to another, that I really have to sing the praises, or in this case, you know how the praises of of the the coyote team is that this institution here really does give us the tools we need to do our job. And there's a lot of universities that have similar kinds of missions, but I've been very, you know, pleasantly, you know, surprised in some ways as to how much our institution here in San Bernardino does that. And the other things that I think are worth mentioning about the program is that it's not the largest in terms of faculty. There's other places that might have a longer list of faculty. But because we focus on the applied archeology in the program, as opposed to having a broad spectrum program, we have the majority of the faculty in our department are actually faculty that can directly support students with this particular interest, because you could go someplace and say, oh, there's this program, and they have 12 faculty, but then only three of those faculty really support that particular program of study, right? And so we really have, we think, kind of hit the sweet spot with, you know, focusing in on this particular area of training and professionalism.

Matt Markin  
I really like that. And with this particular program, so it's about that's currently structured, about 30 to 31 units. They have their core classes. They choose an elective. There's the culminated experience requirement. Is this program meant to be like a like a two year program. Or how do you have it structured?

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
It's basically, it's structured as a two year program. And if someone comes in and they have, you know, a focus and a dedication to completing the program within those two years, they can absolutely do it, and it has and continues to happen. One of the reasons why some of our students don't finish in two years isn't because of the structure of the program, but because many of our students in the graduate program are also already employed in some facet of of the discipline, and so they're coming back to school to sort of up their game, to level up, as they say, right? For example, one of our current students is the Patty Garcia. She's the tribal liaison for California State Parks. And so sometimes, you know, being able to dedicate, you know, as much time as would be necessary to finish in two years. You know, she has other obligations. We have other students that are currently employees of some of the local Tribal Historic Preservation offices. We have students that are Forest Service employees, etc. So when, when you're looking at, you know, time to degree, we've created the system so that you can finish in two years. If you know that's, that's what you have the time to dedicate it to, and we're not creating any kind of roadblock to that. If students, you know, have other concerns, other obligations, you know, sometimes that's, that's just the reality. Situation, it takes a little bit longer, but most of our students tend to finish in about three years. Include, and that's the average including people who are employed. One of the reasons why we're able to support as many of those sort of employed professionals is because all of the required courses for the graduate degree are taught from 530, to 815, and so you don't have to take three days off from work, you know, to to come and take the classes. You just get an hour off so you can beat traffic, you know. But, but the idea is that, you know, we really are designing it to be a program that success, that is as accessible to to as many people as possible. And one of the real benefits, to be honest with you, about having those, those professionals as part of the program, is that they often, because they're in these cohorts with their other their fellow students, they're actually very often, very frequently, able to provide, you know, networking and opportunities to the other students that that they're going through the program with. And I can, I could sit here and list, you know, for the rest of the podcast, all of the examples of people who have gotten jobs because one of their cohort members said, Hey, by the way, you know, they're hiring over here, or we're looking for somebody to work, you know, an internship over the summer or whatnot. And so when you combine both, you know, the the quote, unquote, traditional students, with students who are, you know, working professionals, or even students who are coming back for a second career, it really, actually enhances our ability to to support these students in building their careers.

Julian Trujillo  
Yeah, that was, that was very sweet. I'm going to go back to the comment that you had made earlier about the roadblock, you know. And instead of the roadblock is, or you view more like a ladder, right? And I think that kind of how you were stating, it sounds like it's tailored a lot to the students and various populations. So I was going to go in and ask a little bit about the networking, but you did mention that, and I think that's something critical, because a lot of things, people go into these fields or different careers or exploring programs, and they're wondering, how is it going to look like in the next the next path, right? Or the next, what's the next level? And then having those connections? I think is it's great. I'm going to go ahead and inquire a little bit about what's the application process, what's the admission process, what's the GPA, any prerequisites that they should be considering?

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
Basically, the GPA requirement is the is the same as the wider university requirement. I believe it's a 3.0 in your field of study. So there's some people who have GPAs that are slightly lower than 3.0 when you consider all of their coursework. But as long as you have a 3.0 in your your chosen field, in as an undergraduate, and we have students that have BA degrees in history, some BA degrees in ethnic studies, some BA degrees, we even have, I think we had a psychologist one time, but, but, largely speaking, the the the only sort of requirements that you have, you know, some of the basic, you know, coursework that would be required for, you Know, for the the lower division undergraduate stuff, you don't have to necessarily have a degree in anthropology, but if you don't have, you know, the intro to archeology will sort of ask, you know, you might want to get that before, before you start dedicating yourself to a graduate degree in that field. But it's, it's pretty straightforward. There's no real additional burden. We ask for letters of recommendation for these students, and those don't have to be from archeologists, per se, because what we're really looking for in students are people who have the potential to to be professionals in a field that is, is really, really important to to quite a lot of people, and really important for our society at large. And that's, you know, the the field as as it's described in in the literature of, you know, cultural resource management. You know, you're you're basically looking to be somebody who is working with history in, like I said, like I gave examples earlier, you know, in a museum context, or working for a tribal government, or working for a government agency where your job isn't to necessarily try to profit from this, but you're trying to both research and understand but then also conserve, protect and teach you know about this to the wider audience. And so there's a lot of different pathways that people can. Come to in archeology. One of my favorite examples is George Frison. He was a cowboy in Wyoming and didn't become an archaeologist until he was in his 40s. He was a working cowboy. He said he got thrown from his horse and hurt his back so he couldn't work for a living anymore. So he became an archeologist. He said there are people graduate students who have had, who had careers, you know, until they were, like, I said, in their 40s, and then decided they really wanted to go back and do what had always interested them. And so we have people who are graphic designers, you know, in their previous life. We have students that are straight out of, you know, undergraduate you know, who've kind of always known they wanted to do this. But one of the things that I think is pretty typical for anthropology in general and archeology in particular, is that they don't really teach students at in high school that this is a real possibility. There's been, despite everything that's going on in the world today, I have seen quite a few job postings, over 22 job postings, just here in California alone, for people with degrees like this one, and as long as you have a need to to have people in these positions, because they're not going to stop building highways, they're not going to stop putting up, you know, housing developments, golf courses. And there are shifts and changes. Like I said, I've been doing this for long enough to have seen, you know, shifts and changes. But it has been, you know, my experience that at the end of the day there, there is a very solid set of job possibilities for people in this field.

Matt Markin  
Very true. And yeah, like everything you're saying, I'm like, I just want to be able to tell students all of this. And I think that if there's anything you want to add to this, you know, you know, we, Julie and I primarily work with undergraduate students, but we have a lot of students that are always asking about graduate programs. And let's say we have a student that is considering the MA in applied archeology, and is there anything that we could share with them, or anything if they're listening right now, that you would want them to know, whether they're a first year student, a sophomore, whatever undergrad level, they are that anything they should be involving themselves with, or any information they should know as they're preparing for maybe making that decision?

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
Absolutely. I mean, basically, one of the things that that I ask all of the the incoming students is, you know, what? What kind of, what kind of an archeologist Do you want to be? You know, what kind of a professional do you want to be? What are the things that that really interest you, you know, what are the things that you wake up in the middle of the night, you know, wondering about when you wake up in the morning and you, you know, scroll through your social media feed? What are the things that you stop to look at, you know, and really kind of self examine that, because you can say, you know, in the abstract, oh, you know, everybody should get GIS training. Well, sure. I mean, that's probably a helpful thing. Or, you know, you should, should up your ability to effectively use AI, yeah, but that's true for everybody, you know, in in the world that we're in, right? So, what is it about this field that is, is really drawing you in? Why are you, why are you exploring this and to really think about that, especially, you know, in the context of things like your statement of purpose, right? You really want to not just say, oh, you know, I love all of the the National Geographic specials that I've watched, and it's like, yeah, you know, people, people dig that stuff, you know? I mean not to, not to toot our own horn, but there's more than one movie franchise about archeologists. Let's just be honest, right? You know, it's, it's not a, not a boring thing at a cocktail party when, when people ask you what you do, and you say, I'm an archeologist, there's follow on questions there, right? So, so that's obviously there, you know, the interest and the excitement and the idea of, you know, looking deep into the past and trying to, you know, solve different mysteries. But it's also key to understand what it is that you want to do? Do you really like examining art and architecture? Do you like, you know, figuring out how to do some of this research in a methodological sense? Do you like the lab component? Do you like the ground penetrating radar? You know? Do you want to do LIDAR mapping with drones, which we can do? You know, those are, those are the kinds of things that you really have to decide, because those are going to be the things that really direct you towards the specific skill sets that you want to develop to set yourself apart. Because there's a whole big bucket of archeologists pun intended that you know, and if you want to stand. Out from the crowd. You know, what is it that's, that's, you know, that's your thing. What do you want to do? Because you're going to have to put in the time and dedicate yourself into developing those skills, and you don't want it to be something that's not engaging your heart and soul, right? You know, it has to be something that that you like. And I think, even more important than than the specific skill sets is, you know, how do you want to to engage with this? Do you? Do you want to engage with this? You know, as a museum professional? Do you want to be, you know, somebody who works with the community? Do you want to be somebody who works in the lab. You know, one of the classes that I'm teaching this semester actually is, is a great one. It's the experimental archeology class where we actually make, one of the ways that we start off is teach the students how to make stone tools, flake obsidian and whatnot, into, you know, spear points and blades and all of that, they get better from where they start, but, and, but the cool thing about that approach is that it really also teaches them, and it's an undergraduate course, it teaches them how to do the research. You know, for example, my advisor at UC Riverside did this study where they actually took they made stone bladed sickles like were used in the Neolithic the first farming communities in the Near East. And then they had the Agriculture Department there at UCR actually planted two acres of Emmer wheat. And then they, you know, went out and harvested one acre while it was still green, harvested the other acre while it after it had dried. And then they compared the use wear signatures on the stone blades and the sickles. And under microscopic examination, you're able to identify that signature of use for on these stone tools, which was really amazing, because a lot of the, a lot of the perishable items don't survive 1000s of years, but the stone tools do. And so you're able to in a very forensic kind of way, you know, it's like ballistics tests for, you know, criminal justice. You can identify, oh, this fight, this bullet was fired from this gun. Well, this, you know, stone tool was used to do these different kinds of tasks. And so you're kind of working, you know, backwards from the static, you know, archeological record, the remain, the artifacts that we have. And you're working backwards to really understand the real behavior behind them. Rather than just categorizing them or putting them on a shelf. You're really seeing these as signatures of human behavior. And then the other angle on it is with ethno archeology, where you work with living people who are doing something, and then you see, well, okay, we were there. We watched this happen. And then you work it forward and say, what's the archeological signature of that behavior? And so both of those sort of empirical approaches, actualistic archaeology really highlight for people, you know what the whole foundation of of the research is? How do you know what people were doing and how they were doing it? And if you can go, if you can move in both directions, that way, it creates a very kind of engaging way to to understand what can sometimes otherwise be a very kind of meager, static, you know, record. It's dirt, it's rocks, you know, okay. But then if you add that, you know, actualistic experiential component to it, it not only gets you to the scientific solution, but at the same time, it creates an experiential, phenomenological understanding of these activities that's that's often missing from from more stale and less less engaging approaches.

Julian Trujillo  
Yeah, so I think you're hitting the nail right on the head. This is representing cultural heritage and the importance of how these things kind of help us animate our history to kind of conclude, I want to go ahead and ask, is there anything on the horizon for the anthropology majors? So anyone trying to pursue that major?

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
Yeah, right now, one of the things that we're developing is, in partnership with graduate studies and our program, we're actually working to build what this institution has called and you can look it up on the website, a cape program, C, A, P, E, Coyote, accelerated post graduate education. They even have a cute little icon with a coyote with a cape on. It's very superhero. And that program is designed to create a mechanism for undergraduates, either first time freshmen or transfer students, to apply to the graduate program while they're still undergraduates, and they're able to then take some of the courses that. Are part of the core requirements for the graduate program, as undergraduates, count those classes towards their units for the undergraduate degree, and then also towards their graduate degree. And this, once we get that fully developed and approved by the curriculum committee and the university, will enable people to basically enter into what's called a four plus one program. You take your undergraduate study, course of study, it doesn't change those requirements, but then you're able to take some of the courses from the grad program, apply those to your undergraduate credits, and then when you finish your ba you're then transitioned into the graduate program without having to reapply to the graduate program. You're already accepted into that program, so you finish your BA, and then, you know, you walk and you throw your, you know, your mortar board up, and, yeah, I've got a BA, but then you come back the next fall, and you keep going into our graduate program, and it'll effectively significantly reduce the cost, because it'll reduce about a year, you know, assuming you take the courses, when we say you should take them, you know, reduce the length of time by by a full year. And if you can remove a full year off of a graduate degree, that is a significant reduction in the cost to the students. It's also a significant reduction in the amount of time that you have to be here on campus, amount of time before you're able to enter into the job market. And so what we're really trying to do is break down some of the barriers that have existed and continue to exist for people to become professional archeologists. Because for a long time that that barrier, because to hold a permit, for example, from the federal government for Secretary of the Interior standards, you have to have a master's degree. You can work on a project with a BA, but you can't be, you know, the the boss. You can't be the person that they send out there to do the work all on your own, with your own crew, unless you have a master's. And that has meant that there have been fewer first generation students. There have been fewer students from communities of color that have been able to enter into the upper ranks of the profession, and if the CSU has any mission at all here in California, it's to enhance social mobility and to enhance the opportunities available to the citizens of California. And given that larger system wide mission, we really strongly feel that moving in this direction aligns with the the the underlying mission of our whole system, and also because what we do in cultural resource management, what we do in applied archaeology, so often deals with the history and heritage of communities that have been marginalized in the past or have not been allowed to dictate, you know, what gets preserved and what doesn't. And so if we can change that by having more students who are first gen, more students that are from communities of color in those positions where what gets preserved and what doesn't isn't just decided by somebody who may or may not have any connection to that heritage, we will go a long way towards really achieving the stated mission of anthropology, rather than just paying lip service to it. So we're trying, and we are moving in these directions because we are committed not only to the mission of our discipline of anthropology about, you know, intercultural understanding and history, but also to the mission of the CSU and and I think the spirit of California and our institution here in San Bernardino, yeah.

Matt Markin  
And I can hear the passion your voice with that. And I really hope that that goes through the cape program really sounds amazing, and it has since. I have so many benefits just looking at the website right now, and yeah, it definitely has that cape on the coyote super Cody there, but there's a lot of great information. And thank you so much for being on the podcast with us today and sharing this. And we're very excited to get this out to students, absolutely.

Dr. Matthew Des Lauriers  
And I encourage anybody who's interested, even if you're just sort of exploring the possibility, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me. We have a lot of opportunities available to students, both to you know, work with our faculty as well as you know, networks that can put them in touch with people that they can work with in archeology, doing research, exploring history and heritage of diverse communities, both here and then internationally, and I'd be more than happy to help them begin that journey. Awesome.

Matt Markin  
Sounds good. Perfect way to sum it up. Thank you again. Thank you.