About the fellowship

About the Fellowship

This work is part of the Gardiner Foundation Semiquincentennial Student Fellowship Project, which connects student historians with the communities whose history they study.

The project is directed by Michael Leroy Oberg of SUNY Geneseo and spans three State University of New York campuses — Geneseo, Stony Brook, and Potsdam — matching undergraduate fellows with municipal historians and local historical societies across New York State. Fellows examine the layered meanings of American independence during the nation's 250th anniversary year. The program runs through the summer of 2026.

As the Stony Brook fellow for the Town of Islip, David Jandres-Ceballo is matched with the Town of Islip Historian and mentored locally at Stony Brook, producing the project's inaugural study and exhibit.

The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation

Established in 1987, the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation supports the study of Long Island history and its role in the American experience, with a particular emphasis on Suffolk County and the Town of Islip. The Foundation is named for Robert David Lion Gardiner (1911–2004), the 16th Lord of the Manor of Gardiner's Island, whose family's history runs through Sagtikos Manor in Islip itself.

The team

David Jandres-Ceballo

Gardiner Semiquincentennial Fellow

Born in El Salvador, David immigrated to New York as a teenager and is a native Spanish speaker who holds the New York State Seal of Biliteracy. He is completing a Master's in Social Studies Education at Stony Brook University, expected in spring 2027, and his bilingual, first-generation perspective shapes the multilingual exhibit at the heart of this project. He plans to attend law school, where his interests include economics, civics, and immigration law and policy.

George J. Munkenbeck

Town of Islip Historian · municipal-historian mentor

George Munkenbeck has served as Town of Islip Historian since 2015 and is David's primary local mentor. Recognized as the 145th Registered Public Historian in New York State, he received the Edward J. Winslow Local Government Historian Award for Excellence in 2024. A U.S. Coast Guard Reserve commander, he contributes to numerous Long Island historical societies and civic organizations, and his research and public programs continue to deepen the community's understanding of its heritage.

Mark M. Chambers, Ph.D.

Stony Brook faculty mentor

Mark Chambers is Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Stony Brook University and David's on-site faculty mentor. A historian of the environment, science, and community justice, he is the author of Gray Gold: Lead Mining and Its Impact on the Natural and Cultural Environment, 1700–1840 (University of Tennessee Press, 2021), and a former Rita Allen Civic Science Fellow whose current work examines environmental justice and community-based participatory research.

Michael Leroy Oberg, Ph.D.

Project Director · SUNY Geneseo

Michael Oberg is Distinguished Professor of History at SUNY Geneseo and directs the Gardiner Foundation Semiquincentennial Student Fellowship Project. A scholar of Native American and early American history and the author of numerous books, he leads the multi-campus program that places student fellows with the communities whose histories they research.

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Christopher Albergo

Assistant Town Historian, Town of Islip

Christopher Albergo is Assistant Town Historian in the Office of the Town of Islip Historian. He helped transcribe and annotate primary sources for this project, including Nathaniel Conklin's 1798 description of the Town of Islip, and supports the office's ongoing research and public history.

Contributors and researchers

Historians, researchers, and apprentices whose work this project draws on and builds with.

Evelyn Chiara Wolff

Researcher · German-language adaptation

Evelyn Chiara Wolff is a law student at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, studying Rechtswissenschaften (German law, on the Staatsexamen track, the state-examination path that qualifies graduates to practice as attorneys). Originally from Rhineland-Palatinate, she is helping adapt the project's resources into German so its public history can reach more communities. A fuller biography will follow.

Mollie Sebor

History Research Assistant, Town of Islip

Mollie Sebor served for five years as a History Research Intern and then History Research Assistant in the Office of the Town of Islip Historian. Her research recovered the little-known history of the Jewish community of Islip Town, published as the booklet “The Story of the Jewish Community of Islip Town,” a Girl Scout Gold Award project that this exhibit draws on for its account of the families, congregations, and Holocaust survivors who made a home in Islip, among them Samuel Sitko. She has carried that work to synagogues, Jewish centers, and libraries across Long Island and been featured in Newsday. A graduate of Suffolk County Community College, she will start her studies at SUNY Geneseo this upcoming Fall 2026 semester.

Sandi Brewster-Walker

Historian and genealogist · Montaukett Indian Nation

Sandi Brewster-Walker is an independent historian, genealogist, and writer, and an enrolled citizen of the Montaukett Indian Nation, for which she serves as a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer. For more than forty years she has researched the Indigenous communities and people of color of Long Island and the original thirteen colonies, from first European contact into the twentieth century. She is the author of the forthcoming Gone Whaling: Long Island Seamen of Color (The History Press) and writes widely on local Indigenous history, and she serves on the steering committee for a new minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University. Her work informs the project's attention to the Native, mixed-ancestry, and free Black families who are part of Islip's story.

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Kia Zarcone

History Research Apprentice (volunteer), Town of Islip

Kia Zarcone is a History Research Apprentice volunteer in the Office of the Town of Islip Historian, contributing to the project's ongoing research. A fuller biography will follow.

Acknowledgment

This project is made possible by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation and carried out in partnership with the Office of the Town of Islip Historian and the Stony Brook University Department of History.