BOWLING GREEN, O.--Two years ago, Bowling Green State University 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—with the help of a new $1 million award from the federal education department.

Over the next three years, the “Expanding America: Democracy, War, Diplomacy and Migration” project will offer 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.
Dr. Liette Gidlow, an associate professor of history, is academic director for the first year of the new project, which is designed to improve teachers’ knowledge of history through six Saturday conferences and summer institute each of the three years. 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.

Session 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 Dr. Scott Martin, associate professor of history, who has been academic director of “History Links” and will assume the same role in “Expanding America” after its precursor ends next year.

WGTE-TV in Toledo will be partnering with the participating schools, BGSU and the Hayes Center to 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 of history will be covered in subsequent years, namely 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.

The project is one of five in Ohio and 122 nationwide funded this year with Teaching American History Grants.

(Posted September 03, 2004 )