Empowering others through museums and historical education

Kayla Stielow’s love for history has been a central theme throughout her academic and professional careers.

Now the Charles Lindbergh House and Museum and partnership sites manager for the Minnesota Historical Society, the St. Cloud State University alumna believes history education provides the foundation for a better future.

“I’ve always really loved history, and the combination of history and education was really appealing to me, because I think history can be really empowering for communities and individuals. If you can give people the tools to contextualize what’s happening around them, that gives them a lot more agency to do the things they would like to do for themselves and their community,” she said. “Being able to work with people who are doing that work, and now lead a team of people who are doing that work, is a really special privilege.”

Stielow earned her bachelor’s in social studies education from SCSU in 2014. She first became connected with the University as a high school student in postsecondary enrollment options.

“I wasn’t ready to leave after that experience, so I chose to stay,” she said about her decision to pursue a degree at St. Cloud State.

Following graduation she taught social studies in Alaska for a few years, before returning to SCSU for graduate school. She said the choice to return was easy, as she already knew the history program was filled with knowledgeable faculty members.

“In a lot of ways, it felt like getting to come home after being away for a few years,” she said.

While working on her master’s in public history, Stielow worked as a graduate assistant and worked in University Archives. Even though she didn’t plan to be an archivist herself, she said the bedrock of any job in the history field is being able to understand, utilize and research archives.

“I really, really enjoyed that experience. The biggest thing was Tom Steman — our University archivist — is just a phenomenal person,” she said. “I learned a lot because he’s very knowledgeable about what he does, but he’s also just a really caring person. He made sure that I was comfortable and supported me professionally, even though he knew I wasn’t going to be an archivist someday.”

Stielow earned her master’s in 2022, and had already received a job offer from the Minnesota Historical Society before graduating. She had previously worked summers as a tour guide for the Lindbergh House, which ultimately led to a job with the interpretive programs team. She worked with the entire historic sites network within the Historical Society in that position, and supported frontline workers and assisted with developing programs across the different sites before moving to her current role.

“Professionally, I just really enjoy what I do, so I think the biggest thing now is just continue to be better at what I do, to be a better leader, to reach out to more people, to make the spaces that I lead be more accessible to more people,” she said. “Museums have a really harsh history of not feeling welcoming to every community and group, so the more things we can do, diverse programming, diversifying our own staff, and making sure that the programs we’re doing are relevant to the entirety of the state of Minnesota — because that’s who I’m tasked with working with — versus just our traditional audiences, which are generally older and white.”

Stielow said the best parts of her job have been the opportunities to create a team of skilled, educated people who are passionate about the work they do, and to work with both large state entities and smaller community organizations to partner on community outreach and resources. She hopes to continue providing historical education and resources, as she believes it can help empower communities.

“The power of history lies in the fact that you can give people an understanding of the world around them, because you can contextualize it and explain why things are happening around them. That allows people to make more-informed decisions, as well as empowers them to have more control over the types of things they want to do, as well as empower themselves and their communities to get to where they would like to be in the future,” she said. “The second side of studying history and helping people through that process — which is what we do in the museum sector — is helping them with critical thinking and understanding how to do research for themselves. So on both sides, that’s just a really empowering thing, because you’re learning skills as well as information that allows you to live your life in a more empowered and educated way.”

Stielow credits the faculty and staff she learned from at SCSU with leading by example in having passion for the work they do, and how to pass that vibrancy on to others.

“This content and the work that we do, it’s really important, and it is good to be passionate about it and pour yourself into it. Even as a little 17-year-old PSEO student, that was something I saw consistently in my program. I was always so grateful for having that personal care added to the fact that I was just a student in a program,” Stielow said. “Especially in the education department; there’s so many of us, but they still cared that — not only did we get the content that they’re specialized in, but that we also were empowered by what they were doing, to be able to pursue our own personal and professional goals behind why we were pursuing these degrees. I made so many great relationships — especially in grad school — with people who are still supportive of my career today, and are still people I get to call friends now, too, as well as professional colleagues. Even though there’s a lot of students at St. Cloud State, it feels like a small campus in a lot of ways.”