Fulbright Award winner Timothy Roberts, who is now a professor and graduate director at Western Illinois University led the “Career Skills: How Editing War Love Letters Can Build Career Skills” lecture last Tuesday.
The lecture focused on discussing Roberts’ latest book, “The Infernal War: The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard” and the career skills that he derived from the experience.
“I got into history because of my AP European history teacher in high school. Because of [him], I started college majoring in history,” Roberts said.
Roberts said he was convinced by his business major friends in college that he would not get a job after graduation with a major in history, so he took up accounting as a second major.
“I was an accountant for four years before I started working in this field,” Roberts said. “I was contacted by a fellow professor one day asking me to respond back to an email sent by a man claiming to have about 200 letters exchanged between his great-grandfather and his wife during the war in the late 1800s.”
Roberts discussed the importance of using local resources that could connect one to bigger opportunities. Libby Tronnes, assistant professor of history, said she thinks that both the Bradley and Peoria area are rich in resources.
“I thought the lecture was very beneficial, as the steps he spoke about concerning civil war letters can be applied almost anywhere,” Tronnes, said.
Abigail Fuentes, a senior majoring in family and consumer sciences, had been trying to decide on her post-graduation plans before attending the talk.
“It was so interesting to me that he made a comment about how sometimes you have to be at the right place at the right time because that was kind of what I experienced coming tonight,” Fuentes said.
Roberts contacted his longtime friend Bradford Brown, the chair of the Bradley history department to inform him he was going to be at the graduate fair. During that talk, they decided to host this event to educate undergraduate students about graduate school and skills that would help them with their careers.
“One thing I would tell students about graduate school is that it might seem intimidating, but then you figure out that it is not about having to know everything before you even get in, but is actually an opportunity to learn more, possibly even about completely different things,” Brown said.
