BGSU history faculty contribute content for $1 million grant project

Two years ago, BGSU faculty began providing “history links” to Toledo and Fremont teachers as part of a U.S. Department of Education-funded program.

Now, they’re “expanding America” for more teachers—from 21 school districts in Erie, Huron, Sandusky and Seneca counties—and with the help of more money—a $1 million award from the federal education department.

Liette Gidlow	Scott Martin

Over the next three years, the new project, called “Expanding America: Democracy, War, Diplomacy and Migration,” will include 18 Saturday colloquia and three weeklong summer institutes for 105 teachers—35 per year—in grades 4-12. That’s a similar schedule to the federally funded “History Links” program launched in 2002.

Liette Gidlow, history, is academic director for the first year of the project, whose purpose, she said, is “to improve teachers’ content knowledge of history” through each year’s six Saturday conferences and summer institute. Faculty from colleges and universities will be guest lecturers at the sessions, most of which will be held at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont.

The content will be aligned with new state standards for social studies and should help teachers “to better be able to meet the demands of the content standards,” Gidlow said. Her co-principal investigator is Scott Martin, history, who has been academic director of “History Links” and will assume the same role in “Expanding America” after its precursor ends next year.

President Sidney Ribeau spoke on opening day about BGSU strengthening relationships with the larger community for mutual benefit, “and we think this (new project) is a really terrific example of doing just that,” added Gidlow.

The project, one of five in Ohio and 122 nationwide funded this year with Teaching American History Grants, will make extensive use of original, primary-source documents. Among those documents are diaries, speeches, papers, treaties and other government records, she explained, calling them “the raw data that we use to draw historical conclusions.”

Partnering with the schools, BGSU and the Hayes Center will be public television station WGTE in Toledo. “This is an exciting difference” from “History Links,” Gidlow noted, because WGTE will both produce an “Expanding America” Web site and help teachers learn to create their own Web sites.

Starting in October, the project’s first year will be devoted to the most recent period of American history—“Becoming a World Power” after the Civil War and through the Cold War and its aftermath. For scheduling reasons, earlier periods will be covered in subsequent years—America and the world during colonial times, the American Revolution and the development of American democracy, and “War, Expansion and Democracy” from the Revolution to the Civil War.

Tom Culbertson, director of museum and education at the Hayes Center, said the project is a natural extension of its predecessor.

“We figured that ‘History Links’ was successful and we had a model to work from, although we’ve improved on it in this one,” he said. The improvement, he continued, is in the more unified approach of having all participating teachers attend every session in a given year, rather than being able to pick and choose which ones they will attend. That approach may help organizers better measure the project’s effectiveness later, he said.

“History Links” has helped “re-energize” some of the Toledo and Fremont teachers, Culbertson added, saying “we had inquiries from teachers in surrounding districts who wanted to participate, but weren’t part of our grant population.”

With “Expanding America,” they’ll get the chance, and “we’re hoping that things run just as smoothly,” he said.