Next summer, 15 teachers from across the country will travel to Charlottesville to participate in a seminar on the significance of colonial Jamestown in forming American culture.
Sponsored by the University's Center for the Liberal Arts, the program is designed to help teachers develop new ideas for teaching their students about Jamestown, other early settlements on the Chesapeake and history in general. It also will expose them to new teaching methods involving computer and internet technologies.
William Thomas, director of the Center for Digital History and co-director of the seminar, said he hopes the teachers will "come away with a deeper and richer understanding of historical Jamestown and the legacy of the American experience, character and landscape."
Thomas said he and Crandall Shifflett, director of graduate studies in history at Virginia Tech and co-director of the seminar "were very excited to have the chance to work with teachers in a fantastic learning experience."
Thomas said the month-long program seemed particularly appropriate with the approach of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown's founding in 1607. The seminar will explore ideas that challenge the traditional understanding of the dominance of Puritan New England as the model for the American experience.
Thomas hopes to encourage people to consider Jamestown's role as "crucial to the formative experiences of America." The seminar also will explore "legacies of contact between the three distinct groups that came together in this landscape - Indians, blacks and white Europeans," he said.
Funding for the seminar was made possible by the award of an $88,517 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The money will pay for the teachers' expenditures, facilities, speakers and trips. NEH spokesman Jim Turner emphasized that the "rigorous" application process focused on "excellence of content and quality of planning." Turner also said the grant was one of only 30 awarded out of a pool of 70.
"If someone receives an NEH grant, it is most certainly well deserved," he said.
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