A Look Into the Hudson River Valley Institute

The Hudson River Valley Institute features many beautiful historical paintings. Credit: Erin Holton '25

Tucked in a corner on the first floor of Fontaine Hall, the Hudson River Valley Institute holds a significant amount of history behind its doors. This small section of the building, decorated with artwork of the American Revolution and bookshelves filled with historical documents and books, is a hidden gem amongst the many academic departments of Marist College. Many Marist students do not know about the Institute, but since its inception in 2002, it has had a positive and educational impact on the lives of students, faculty and the local community.

As defined on its website, the HRVI is the “educational arm” of the Hudson River Valley Heritage Area, and its main mission is to increase public knowledge of the rich and important history of the Hudson River Valley. HRVI has four main methods of attaining that goal: digital content, public programming, student internship experiences and the publication of the Hudson River Valley Review. 

The HRVI website, referred to by the team most often as its Digital Library, has an extensive amount of content. There is a variety of academic materials, ranging from resources for student research projects to lesson plans for teachers. HRVI provides lesson plans developed by Marist undergraduate students that have been tested and developed further by teachers. These lesson plans cover a variety of subjects, such as “Presidential Leadership During Wartime” and “The American Revolution in the Hudson Valley.” Along with these lesson plans, there is also a section of information regarding historical sites in the Hudson Valley that educators can utilize for field trips.

The Hudson River Valley Review is a biannually published journal that takes an “eclectic and interdisciplinary approach to the region and regionalism.” It features photographs, documents, paintings, articles and more. The journal also serves as an opportunity for interns to get their work officially published.

HRVI has had around 225 interns over the years, all from varying majors. Many history students work with professor Jason Schaaf, the education coordinator of HRVI, in order to complete an internship course, but many other kinds of students complete internships at HRVI. Some examples of student involvement have included a philosophy major researching the philosophical elements of the Hudson River School and a fine arts project relating to the Ashokan Reservoir and environmental conservation. 

Executive director of HRVI Andrew Villani has been with the Institute for 16 years, starting as an intern in 2008. “There's a lot of different opportunities that involve Marist students,” he said. “That’s really the lifeblood, one of the key elements that has always been the case for the Institute.”

“We try to get to places where our students can touch stuff and see stuff, and talk to the folks who are experts in whatever content they're covering,” Viallni added. “That ends up being a really enriching component of what an internship at HRVI can be.”

Stephanie Sperounis ‘24, who majors in history and adolescent education, is one of the five student interns at HRVI this spring. She has helped create lesson plans for the HRVI website, which has added to her experience as someone involved in education. She believes that working as an intern at HRVI has helped her with skills she will use post-graduation. 

“It’s a lot of writing, short abstracts and longer abstracts and papers and research, which is definitely important. Also, just getting my name on published writing pieces on their website is super important and very beneficial for future career opportunities and resume building,” she said. 

Sperounis also hopes that HRVI will grow in terms of student involvement. 

“I didn’t really know about it until I was looking for the internship, so I definitely feel like growing the presence and being on more Marist social media could draw greater attention, especially for the history majors here because they have a lot of great resources for papers and research projects which could definitely benefit students here,” she said.

Nicholas Donahue ‘24, who majors in history and political science, is a two-time intern at HRVI. In a similar way to Sperounis, he said he feels that he is being prepared for life after college, especially with the path he wants to take after he graduates.

“Personally, I want to go to grad school for history at some point, and I would like to be a historian on a professional level one day, so all the skills that I’ve had to learn and develop at HRVI are relevant to what I would be doing one way or the other,” he said. “Research skills, writing skills, editing skills and even on the social media end, it opens you up to the idea of public history, and not just the academic setting, so you learn more about how to communicate history to people without making their eyes roll over.”

Donahue also believes that the work he is doing at HRVI is showing him the impact that an organization like the Institute can have on a community.

“This year, I did a couple of posts with abandoned sites around the area, and a lot of older people who are on the Facebook page will say, ‘I worked there,’ ‘I went to such and such place when I was a kid,’ and they’ll start talking about it, and you realize that this is actually important to people on some level, even the smaller things.”

As the executive director, Villani is involved with the extensive programming that the Institute does, and he believes that the methods employed by HRVI are effective in highlighting important and sometimes forgotten history in the valley.

“In the programming that we offer, we try to be representative of the incredibly diverse history that has taken place in the Hudson River Valley during that time, across all time,” he said. “That includes military-related history, which has been something we've done a lot of over the years, but also the stories that haven't been told over and over again.”

HRVI has also increased its outreach since the COVID-19 pandemic, when it made a switch to virtual programming. It currently does hybrid programming, which has made the information and programs more accessible to people in retirement. 

“Marist has a lifetime learning group, New Paltz has one, some of the other colleges around the area have lifetime learning groups, which are folks in retirement that are getting enrichment. They've become a huge new audience for us because they can join the programming without having to come out at night or navigate some of the challenges of getting to the program,” said Villani.

Currently, HRVI is working on highlighting the stories of women painters and artists from the Hudson Valley, which Villani is excited to be working on. 

“We've been doing a lot with the Hudson River School and artists in the last couple of years, particularly with trying to get the story of women painters out there. They were there, they were painting, but they're not in the textbooks in the history books yet. This is something that's happening a lot right now, and it makes sense for us to be a platform for that.”

HRVI is also preparing for a historical conference in Albany, New York, this coming summer and working with the New York State Museum and a New York State historian to relaunch a statewide conference on New York State history in June in Albany. 

In the meantime, HRVI is always looking to continue its outreach and educate those who are interested, publishing its spring issue of the Hudson River Valley Review in May.