Faculty Profile

Michael Tomlan is a historic preservation educator who teaches the history of urban development, documentation techniques, problems in contemporary preservation planning practice, and museum planning and development.  Professor Tomlan directs the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation Planning and Cornell’s Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban and Landscape Studies, assisting students in archaeology, architecture, engineering, history, hotel administration, landscape architecture, public affairs, real estate, and urban studies.

Professor Tomlan is Project Director of the National Council for Preservation Education and a member of the editorial advisory boards of several journals, including the recently introduced Preservation Education & Research.

He also serves as Chair of the Senior Board of Advisers to the Global Heritage Fund (Palo Alto, CA), reviewing the nominations for and the management of conservation projects in Asia, the Middle East, Central and South America. He has consulted on projects for the World Monuments Fund; the J. Paul Getty Trust; and rehabilitation and restoration projects in Arizona, New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Tennessee, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Since 1992, Professor Tomlan has been president of Historic Urban Plans, Inc., an Ithaca-based business. In 2005, he was elected to the College of Fellows of the Association for Preservation Technology International.

• B.Arch., University of Tennessee, 1973
• M.S.H.P., Columbia University, 1976
• Ph.D., Cornell University, 1983

 Community Service

• Chair, New York State Barn Coalition, Ithaca, NY
• Juror, Niagara Mohawk Community Renaissance Awards, Syracuse, NY
• Member, Board of Trustees, Friends of Hyde Hall, Cooperstown, NY
• Member, Board of Advisors, Goucher College Limited Residency Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, Towson, MD
• Member, National Register of Peer Professionals, General Services Administration, Washington DC
• Member, Board of Advisers, James Marston Fitch Charitable Trust, New York City, NY.
• Member, Board of Directors, Heritage Watch, Athens, GA & Phnom Penh, Cambodia
  

(under contract) Historic Preservation:  Caring for Our Expanding Legacy, Michael A. Tomlan, with David Listokin, John Wiley & Sons, hardcover, 352 pages, 150 illustrations, ISBN: 978-0471716433.

Preservation of What, For Whom?  Michael A. Tomlan, ed., National Council for Preservation Education, softcover, 234 pages, 1997, ISBN:  978-0966272314.

• Documentation for Preservation
• Perspectives on Preservation
• Building Materials Conservation
• Fieldwork/Workshop in Historic Preservation
• American Urban History
• Economics and Financing of Neighborhood Conservation and Preservation
• Preservation Planning and Urban Change

• Building conservation technology
• Documentation methods for preservation
• History of the preservation movement
• China, India