Emily Crumpton

Emily Marie Crumpton graduated from USU in 2017 with an M.A. in History. Her primary research areas included media, gender, crime, and mortality in the United States during the Progressive Era. As part of her program, she also focused on developing teaching skills through her work as a graduate assistant for Dr. Colleen O’Neill and through teaching internships with both Dr. Victoria Grieve and Dr. Dan McInerney.

For the 2016/2017 school year, Emily was granted a research fellowship at the USU Special Collections and Archives. In addition to gaining library and archival skills, she was tasked with curating two special collections exhibits. Each exhibit was based on original research that was not related to her thesis project. The first, a window display, featured the work of Caroll Wegemann, an early 20th century geologist who worked for the National Parks Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. The second curation project was a digital exhibit that highlighted histories of women from Cache Valley.1

After graduation, beginning with the Fall 2017 semester, Emily worked as a lecturer for the USU History Department in conjunction with the Distance Education Department. She taught freshman level U.S. History courses to Aggies all over Utah, most of whom were high school students participating in concurrent enrollment programs. Early in 2018, Emily landed a one-year internship at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City. During that year, when she was not teaching, Emily was training volunteers on how to use the library’s metadata enhancement tool and helped coordinate metadata enhancement projects.

Near the end of Emily’s internship, she was offered a full-time position with the Church History Library as the content manager for the Pioneer Database and as a Church history consultant.2 Combined with her time as an intern, Emily has worked for the Church History Library for a little more than two years. Shortly after accepting her current position, Emily decided to take a break from teaching and reenter grad school. She is currently enrolled in an online Master of Library and Information Sciences program through Wayne State University. She intends to graduate in 2023 with an MLIS and Archival Administration certificate.

Over the past year, Emily has attended multiple conferences and even presented at RootsTech 2020, the world’s largest genealogy conference. She has published multiple research guides and blog entries for the Church History Library website, and has become involved with several collaborative projects with organizations such as the National Parks Service, FamilySearch, This is the Place Heritage Park, and Days of ’47. Outside of the library and classroom, Emily hosts tours of the Salt Lake City cemetery, searches ebay for books to add to her antiquarian collection, and spends time with her two children, Cameron and Bailey, who share her love of history.

“Earning a master’s degree from the History Department at USU,” Emily says, “provided me opportunities to develop skills that have influenced my professional goals and career pathway. To future students, I give the following advice: 1. ‘Work smart.’ Working hard only gets you so far. Working smart means taking advantage of opportunities that will build a foundation for future success. 2. Develop a good relationship with your advisors and communicate with them often. 3. Be teachable. 4. Don’t forget to find joy in your journey.”

1 http://exhibits.usu.edu/exhibits/show/cachevalleywomen
2 https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/overlandtravel/