December 18, 2024
The January council election is coming up! There are two positions on the ballot that represent AIA Societies on the AIA Governing Board (see Council packet for candidate slate and all bios). Get to know your candidates:
Patricia (Patty) Jubinska
Tor Castle Project Principal Investigator
Vice President of the Narragansett Society
Candidate Bio: I am honored to stand for the role of Vice President for Societies. I have been a member of AIA since the late nineties, and for the past decade I have been an officer of the Narragansett Society AIA chapter in Rhode Island. I am currently the Vice President of this chapter. I am interested in the Vice President for Societies position, because, I believe, that now is the time to advocate for what we do. When I first graduated with my doctorate, I was given the opportunity to develop an archaeology major at a small liberal arts college. It was a fantastic opportunity, but youth and inexperience plus sheer enthusiasm does not always keep things afloat. This position was lost due to lack of funding and the college never did develop the major. What I should have been concentrating on was visibility through marketing and community outreach. My career from there, although I occasionally taught, was in field archaeology both research and CRM work. Due to the nature of my work, I often found myself working in different countries. It was after one such engagement, that when I returned I found the chapter significantly changed. It no longer consisted of a wide range of involvement from professional archaeologists to students, but it was all students and very few at that. It no longer had a minimum of four events a year from pot luck social events and community involvement, but a look at Brown University artifact display in the fall and one lecture event in the spring. Only fourteen people were in attendance at the spring lecture and all were students. Not one faculty member attended and it was held at Brown University’s Archaeology Institute. I was quite dismayed. Advocacy for our profession is necessary, if our profession is to survive. And where this starts is at the local chapter level.
Visibility means credibility. I see our organization moving towards more community involvement, social events where as a group we become a community in our own right, and become the go to organization that is notified when site/heritage information is needed. Thank you so much for your consideration.
Katie Petrole
Assistant Director, The Parthenon, Nashville, Tennessee
AIA Nashville Society Outreach Coordinator
Candidate Bio: I am honored to stand for Vice President for Societies, a role in which I would aim to amplify the work of the AIA to wider audiences in support of our collective mission to promote archaeological inquiry and understanding of the human past.
I have been an AIA member for 13 years, serving as the AIA Nashville Society Outreach Coordinator since 2019. Key highlights include establishing our society book club and celebrating our 5th annual International Archaeology Day with a K-12 career talk, archaeology fair, and virtual lecture. The AIA Nashville Society is small but mighty, collaborating with local museums, public schools, libraries, and nonprofits to host regular lectures and programs. Thanks to Society Outreach and IAD grants, I have built up our society’s education collection which enjoys regular use with K- 12 and family audiences in our community.
I can best serve the AIA as the VP for Societies with leadership and communication skills developed throughout my career at museums and archaeological sites in the US and Greece. As the Assistant Director of the Nashville Parthenon, I have experience chairing internal and external committees and subcommittees, such as the museum’s strategic planning committee and the county-wide Academies of Nashville (AON) Chamber of Commerce Partnership Council.
I earned a BA in Classical Humanities from Miami University (Ohio) and a MA in Museum Studies from Indiana University (Indianapolis). From my undergraduate years through roles at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, Athenian Agora Excavations, Corinth Excavations, and the Parthenon, I have enjoyed connecting with the AIA through local societies and would be grateful to continue supporting the AIA as VP for Societies.
