As summer comes to a quick end (it feels like it was May just yesterday!), we want to spotlight the wonderful work done by our three Keystone Interns this summer.
Our Keystone Summer Internship Program is designed to provide preprofessional training to students interested in pursuing a career in history, historic preservation, or museums. We created this program to be an integral part of our interns’ academic training, and students are encouraged to seek credit.
This summer our interns Chloe Markle, Jenavieve Hottenstein, and Nathaniel Drenner worked on projects across the PA SHPO doing everything from data clean up, reading and mapping reports to file room clean up, community outreach, and historic research.
Let’s hear from them:
Chloe Markle, Archaeology Intern
Tell us a little about yourself
My name is Chloe Markle and my hobbies include crocheting, dancing and hiking! Some other facts include my favorite color being yellow, I’m a Pisces and I own chickens as pets. I am a senior at IUP who will graduate with a Bachelors in Anthropology/Archaeology in 2027. In 2028 I will graduate with my Master’s in Applied Archaeology.
Why were you interested in being a 2026 Keystone Intern for the PA SHPO?
First and foremost, I loved that the Keystone Internship allowed me to get a unique perspective on archaeology by seeing the state government side of things. In school we are prepared to enter the field by working as a CRM firm employee, so this was a new side of archaeology that I have never seen before. A second aspect that drew me to this internship was the ‘in office’ experience. Many archaeologists will have field experience, but I have seen what comes after the project ends and the data organization skills that are required to fully complete a project.
What is something interesting you worked on and/or learned during your internship?
My main project for the summer was reading and mapping PhaseIA reports which was a great project as it allowed me to get super familiar with different verbiages, companies, and processes that you find within the field of archaeology. It expanded what I thought I knew about the CRM field and how it interacts with the state government. This internship provided field visits as well and I was able to see Camp Security in York, PA. Camp Security housed prisoners of war during the Revolutionary War and I had never known this existed in essentially my backyard!
How will you take what you learned during the Keystone Internship into your future career?
This internship has shown that field work is not the only career path. My eyes have been opened to the opportunity of working with state government and the various positions and services they offer to Pennsylvania. As previously mentioned, I have learned invaluable data management skills that not many archaeologists have coming right out of school.
Photo of Harrisburg taken during a visit to the roof of the Capital during a tour. Chloe Markle.
Artifact from Camp Security (PA-SHARE Resource #: 2000RE01238). Chloe Markle.
Jenavieve Hottenstein, Statewide Preservation Plan Intern
Tell us a little about yourself
I am a master’s student in American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg. I am about to enter my last year in an accelerated degree program that will allow me to earn bachelors and masters in 5 years. I have previously interned and worked mostly at historic sites and have a passion for museum education and living history. In my free time I enjoy doing art and textile crafts, I am always interested in trying to make something myself.
Why were you interested in being a 2026 Keystone Intern for the PA SHPO?
I first noticed the internship at the State Historic Preservation Office because I was enrolled in a Historic Preservation class at my university. Coming from a background in public history, I found historic preservation interesting because of how legal and technical procedures worked to serve history and craft a conscious public landscape. I also was a Keystone intern in 2023, so I was familiar with the internship structure and eager to learn a different side of commonwealth work.
What is something interesting you worked on and/or learned during your internship?
For my internship I worked closely with the Statewide Historic Preservation Plan for 2025-2035, a document that encapsulates the broad goals and focus areas for preservation partners across the commonwealth. My tasks were focused on outreach and implementation of the plan. Both of my major projects centered around reaching out to communities and organizations to build partnerships and connections that will ultimately advance the work of historic preservation.
How will you take what you learned during the Keystone Internship into your future career?
Historic Preservation is truly a discipline in and of itself, and it requires a completely different mindset and approach then other history focused fields. I found that the work of Historic Preservation is highly diverse and adaptive, and my 2.5-month internship was only enough to skim the surface of the field. I deeply treasured my time working with the PA SHPO because it allowed me a valuable angle to learn and participate in historic preservation. I am unsure if I will work in preservation again, but I am confident that this exposure will further enable me to make valuable connections for any of the work that I am doing in the future.
Photo in front of the Governor’s House during a tour. Jenavieve Hottenstein.
Carrying all the Statewide Plans that were sent out to county historical societies. Jenavieve Hottenstein.
Nathaniel Drenner, National Register Intern
Tell us a little about yourself
I am a doctoral candidate in American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg. My research areas are public history and material culture. Before going back to graduate school full-time, I taught high school English. A lifelong Pennsylvanian, I grew up in Lancaster County, have family connections in the western part of the state, and lived in the Philadelphia area for over a decade.
Why were you interested in being a 2026 Keystone Intern for the PA SHPO?
I am interested in the concept of place, the way people assign emotional and cultural meanings to physical locations. At SHPO, I wanted to move beyond theory to better understand how places—and all their associated meanings—are preserved in a practical sense. I also wanted to gain work experience in public history.
What is something interesting you worked on and/or learned during your internship?
I had the opportunity to visit sites in Huntingdon and Chester counties that are being considered for National Register nomination. It was rewarding to see local, grassroots efforts taking place to preserve historic sites and landscapes in these spaces. That’s what public history is all about! Also, as you might expect from my background, I am particularly interested in places related to writers and their works, and I discovered a number of such places in Pennsylvania that I hadn’t known about before starting the internship.
How will you take what you learned during the Keystone Internship into your future career?
I gained a better understanding of how preservation professionals describe, evaluate, and document historic sites. As a future public history professional, it will be important to have a wide and flexible skill set. Thanks to the internship, I have more tools in my toolkit to apply to my future work—wherever I end up.
Outside the PA SHPO Office. Nathaniel Drenner
Andrea MacDonald, Director of PA SHPO/Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer, with interns Nathan and Chloe outside the Capitol Dome. Andrea MacDonald.
Nathan, Chloe, and Jenavieve joined John Crawmer, field directo to learn about archaeology at Camp Security.
Thank you to all three of our interns who contributed so much of their time to our projects and initiatives. We wish you well for the coming year!
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