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United States Department of Education's Teaching American History Grant program was created to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of American history. Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) apply for the grants in partnership with colleges, universities, non-profit history or humanities organizations, libraries, or museums. Further information on the Teaching American History grant program is available on-line at the US DOE Teaching American History program website.
The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University has been a partner with LEAs in Ohio and across the nation on sixteen Teaching American History grants since 2001. We have the experience to create a dynamic professional development program for your district. Our staff will assist you with writing a winning grant proposal to secure the funding to make that program available to your teachers.
Why the Teaching American History grant?
The TAH grant program was created at the urging of United States Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia to address his concern that students today do not have adequate knowledge of traditional topics in American history. TAH grant funds may be used to provide professional development programs for teachers from kindergarten to twelfth grade in traditional American history topics. The grant presents a tremendous opportunity to provide new, innovative training programs for an underserved population.
Any eligible LEA may apply for a TAH grant. Eligible LEAs include school districts, charter schools considered to be an LEA by state law, educational service centers, intermediate units, educational cooperatives, regional educational service agencies, intermediate school districts, and other local government agencies engaged in the delivery of public education or the support of local public school districts. Individual teachers, private or parochial schools, or individual school buildings are not eligible to apply.
The Role of the Ashbrook Center in your TAH Grant application
The Ashbrook Center at Ashland University offers week-long intensive summer institutes for social studies teachers through its Master of American History and Government program. The institutes cover a wide variety of topics in American history and are taught by distinguished historians and political scientists from colleges and universities throughout the nation. Both the academic nature and the schedule of these institutes were designed with school teachers in mind. The institutes are offered only in the summer and each emphasizes historical content based on original texts and primary source documents.
Each institute begins on Sunday afternoon and runs for six days, concluding on Friday afternoon. All institutes take place on our campus, located in Ashland, Ohio. To assist participants who must travel by air to Ohio, we offer a shuttle service to and from the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at no charge to the participant or to the grant.
Institutes are offered in six one-week sessions each summer, with several different topics offered during each session. To learn more about our institute topics, please browse our past offerings. Your teachers may choose as many institutes as they would like to attend each summer from the many courses offered. With the wide variety of topics available, teachers have the flexibility to select topics of particular usefulness to them for their classroom instruction.
Institute Topics. Your teachers will have a broad range of institute topics to choose from over the course of the grant, and each of these institutes focuses on significant issues, episodes, and turning points in American history.
While our exact institute offerings vary from year to year, a core sequence of institutes covering the breadth of American history will be offered one or more times during your grant:
- European Discovery and Settlement
- Colonial America
- The American Revolution
- The American Founding
- The Early Republic
- Sectionalism and Civil War
- Civil War and Reconstruction
- The Age of Enterprise
- The Progressive Era
- America Between World Wars
- America During the Cold War
We also offer a series of institutes entitled Great American Texts, each of which is an in-depth study of a particular author or book. Several unique sections of Great American Texts are offered each year, highlighting authors and topics which will be of interest to not only your American history teachers, but also your government and American literature instructors. Past subjects have included Mark Twain, Ralph Ellison, Alexis de Tocqueville, The Federalist, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson.
Additionally, we offer several other institutes each year which cover a range of traditional American history topics. The varied topics may include social history, war and foreign policy, the branches of government, and studies of the thought, writings, and actions of major American statesmen like Abraham Lincoln and Alexander Hamilton.
Each of these institutes will help teachers improve their teaching by developing their understanding of traditional American history. Studying periods and themes in American history is also pedagogically important, as they are connected with the American history content standards. Please see our index of past institutes to get a better idea of our annual institute offerings.
Quality of the Faculty. Two instructors teach each institute, providing attendees with a variety of perspectives on the subject matter. Our instructors are distinguished history or political science professors from universities across the nation. They have published or taught courses on the subject of the institute they lead. As supporting material for your grant application, we will provide curriculum vitae for each of our faculty members.
In the many programs we have offered for teachers in the past, the Ashbrook Center has found the selection of the instructors to be critical for the success of the institutes. The professors conducting our institutes are excellent scholars, passionate about the subject they teach, and outstanding classroom teachers. Many of them are recipients of teaching awards at their respective colleges and universities. Students in seminars with such instructors are reminded that history is not a dry subject; it is a conversation among human beings across time. These students are moved to study and think about important historical questions in an engaging and insightful way.
These instructors develop the list of reading materials and lead the discussions during the institute. They are present for the entire institute, from breakfast until the end of each day. During our summer institutes, our faculty lives and eats in the same facilities as your teachers creating a unique learning community. At an Ashbrook summer institute, learning takes place not just in the classroom, but all across the campus.
The following is list of recent faculty:
- William J. Atto, University of Dallas
- Jeremy D. Bailey, University of Houston
- Christopher Burkett, Ashland University
- Andrew E. Busch, Claremont McKenna College
- Mickey Craig, Hillsdale College
- Joshua Dunn, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
- Todd Estes, Oakland University
- Christopher Flannery, Azusa Pacific University
- David Foster, Ashland University
- Steven Hayward, American Enterprise Institute
- Stephen Knott, United States Naval War College
- David F. Krugler, University of Wisconsin, Platteville
- Marc K. Landy, Boston College
- Gordon Lloyd, Pepperdine University
- John Marini, University of Nevada, Reno
- Melanie Marlowe, Miami University
- Ken Masugi, Johns Hopkins University
- Robert M.S. McDonald, United States Military Academy
- Sidney Milkis, University of Virginia
- Dan Monroe, Millikin University
- Lucas E. Morel, Washington and Lee University
- John Moser, Ashland University
- Peter C. Myers, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
- Matthew Norman, Gettysburg College
- Mackubin T. Owens, Jr., United States Naval War College
- Ronald J. Pestritto, Hillsdale College
- Kevin Portteus, Hillsdale College
- David A. Raney, Hillsdale College
- Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernardino
- Peter W. Schramm, Ashland University
- Greg Schneider, Emporia State University
- Colleen Sheehan, Villanova University
- Jeffrey Sikkenga, Ashland University
- Randall Strahan, Emory University
- Stephen R. Thomas, Ohio Dominican University
- David Tucker, United States Naval Postgraduate School
- John Waghelstein, United States Naval War College
Teaching with Primary Documents. In addition to increasing teachers' knowledge and appreciation of American history, your partnership with the Ashbrook Center will also seek to help your teachers improve their instructional methods. In particular, your teachers will study and review the core original historical documents of American history and improve their ability to teach their students how to analyze these historical documents.
During each of the institutes, the professors will model the use of original documents. These programs will help your teachers learn where to find original documents, how to examine documents as a tool for making historical explanations, and how to use documents effectively in the classroom. In support of your grant proposal, we will supply you with sample syllabi showing the extensive use of original documents.
Recruitment. Generating teacher interest and participation is one of the greatest challenges for those running Teaching American History grants. The Ashbrook Center has been a partner on sixteen Teaching American History grants since 2001, and through that work, has developed many methods of recruiting teachers. We will provide a "save the date" flyer to distribute at your preservice training sessions at the start of the school year, as well as printed and electronic versions of our catalog of summer institutes to distribute to your teachers once the summer schedule is finalized.
Once your first group of teachers returns home and relates their experiences to their colleagues, you will find that the institutes will be a far bigger draw than you first imagined. We go to great lengths to ensure that your teachers will not only develop a deeper understanding of American history, but that they enjoy their experience here while they learn. While here, your teachers have full access to university facilities, including our university library, Wi-Fi internet all across campus, computer labs, and our new $18 million recreation center. Our staff is always available to assist you with recruitment – just ask!
Cost. For the convenience and comfort of your teachers, and to make administration of the grant easier for your project director, we offer a package of the following services for each participant:
- Two semester hours of audit tuition (full graduate credit is available for an additional fee)
- Lodging for five nights in air conditioned campus housing, double-occupancy
- Meals, from dinner Sunday through lunch Friday, catered by AU's award-winning Dining Services
- All required books for each institute (teachers may keep the books)
- A $500 stipend paid to each participant
Together, the total cost per participant is $2,050. All of the costs will be charged to your Teaching American History grant, and the institutes will be offered at no cost to your teachers. This price remains firm for the duration of your grant, up to five years.
In your grant, you can include participation in Ashland's Summer Institutes for as many teachers as you would like, from one to hundreds. To calculate the total cost to your grant, multiply the number of participants you would like to send to Ashland each summer by $2,050.
You may also include an additional travel stipend in your grant. You may opt to reimburse your teachers directly for their travel expense, or you may add it to the stipend paid by Ashland.
Graduate Credit Option. Each of our summer institutes is part of our fully-accredited Master of American History and Government degree program. Each of your teacher participants in our summer institutes will attend our masters classes as an audit student. That is, they will read the assigned materials, attend each class, and participate fully in class discussions. They are not held responsible for written work assigned to those taking the class for graduate credit.
Your teachers may opt to take their institute for graduate credit for an additional fee, collected when they arrive for the institute. At your option, you may upgrade all of your participants from audit status to full graduate credit status, billed directly to the grant.
Teachers taking summer institutes for graduate credit will earn 2 semester hours and will be expected to complete the written work. Assignments vary from institute to institute, but may include a comprehensive final examination, a research or seminar paper, or a combination of items. Teachers taking an institute for credit will receive a grade on the A to F scale.
Your teachers DO NOT have to enroll in the MAHG degree program to take courses for credit, however any credit earned in a summer institute may be applied to the degree should one of your teachers decided to enroll in the MAHG program at a later date. Alternatively, your teachers may opt to use credits earned at the institutes for teacher certification purposes or for transfer to another university.
Additional Partners. The Teaching American History grant program gives LEAs broad flexibility to tailor a program to meet its exact professional developments needs. We have found that the most successful grant programs will include both a summer training component provided by the Ashbrook Center, and a series of school-year training sessions organized by another history education organization. These school-year training sessions can take many forms, from visits to local historic sites led by a local expert, to sessions held within your district led by master teachers on integrating historical documents into the curriculum.
We have worked with several different groups in the past to offer a complete year-round slate of professional development activities. We are more than willing to work with whomever you have in mind. We can also suggest partners with whom we have worked with successfully in the past. Please contact us for more information and for suggestions about potential partners.
Remember, the TAH program is intended to be as costless to the LEA as possible. These school year sessions may be offered during in-service professional development time already in your calendar, during regularly scheduled school days, or on the weekend to minimize the disruption to your schools. The cost of substitute teachers or stipends paid to teachers for additional duty time beyond contract hours may be charged to the grant.
Writing Your Grant Application. The staff at the Ashbrook Center will assist in any way possible as you write your Teaching American History grant application. If you partner with the Ashbrook Center, you will receive the following for your grant application:
- Text about the summer institutes at Ashland which you can use in your grant narrative
- A memorandum of understanding between you and Ashland University detailing the services that Ashland will provide for your grant
- Extensive appendix materials, including letters of commitment from project personnel, syllabi for several sample institutes, and curriculum vitae for institute faculty
- Assistance from our experienced staff with writing and submitting the final grant application
Your grant application should also name an outside grant evaluation firm. In support of your application, the evaluator will assist you with collecting and reporting data on your district to demonstrate the need for the project. The evaluator will also assist in the collection of data during the project to show the project's positive impact on teacher competency and student achievement.
In partnership with our evaluation partner, Grant Evaluation, we can also work with you to develop this evaluation plan for your teachers' participation in the summer institutes. You are free to use a different external evaluator, and we will be happy to work with any firm of your choosing to conduct an evaluation of the summer institutes.
For further information, please contact:
Christian Pascarella
Associate Director, Master of American History and Government
Ashland University
401 College Avenue
Ashland, Ohio 44805
419-289-5411
cpascare@ashland.edu
About the Ashbrook Center
The Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio is an organization experienced in offering content-based professional development programs for American history teachers.
The largest program at the Ashbrook Center is a series of professional development institutes and seminars for American history teachers. Originally funded by the Commission of the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, the Center first offered these intensive, content-based summer institutes in 1990. In the nearly twenty years since, more than 1000 teachers from across the nation have participated in the Ashbrook Center's programs. The programs have been funded by a variety of private foundations and government grants, including sixteen Teaching American History Grants.
The Ashbrook Center's intensive institutes encourage history teachers to deepen and broaden their understanding of American history. The programs hosted by the Center focus on historical topics which social studies teachers need to understand in order to develop students into informed citizens. Unlike most professional development programs for teachers which focus almost exclusively on teaching methods, these seminars emphasize substantive themes of American history. Their discussions revolve around primary source documents and their use in the classroom as a way to engage students and increase student achievement.
An important element of the Center's programs is a web site for teachers: TeachingAmericanHistory.org. This user-friendly web site features many interactive tools, including an extensive library of original historical documents, an audio archive of previous Summer Institutes, links to other archives and resources, and special exhibits, including an interactive exhibit on the Constitutional Convention.
At the suggestion of many teachers, the Ashbrook Center has worked with the Department of History and Political Science at Ashland University to create a Master of American History and Government degree program. The academic program and schedule have been designed with junior high and high school teachers in mind. The courses are offered only during the summer, a unique feature of this program, making it convenient for teachers from across the nation to enroll. While the program is designed for teachers, the program's coursework is in the substance of history and government rather than in teaching methodology. The program is taught by faculty from colleges and universities nationwide.
In 2004, the Ashbrook Center was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop web-based high school U.S. history lesson plans and associated interactive student exercises for the NEH's Edsitement website. The Ashbrook Center was one of two organizations selected by the NEH to increase the U.S. history and civics content on this important web site.
In 2005, the Ashbrook Center was selected by the U.S. Department of Education to run one of two Presidential Academies for American History and Civics. The Presidential Academy leads secondary school teachers in a careful on site study of three pivotal turning points in American history: The American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement. 
The study of these turning points is framed by the three famous documents that memorialize these American epochs: the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the "I Have a Dream" speech. Participating teachers spend five days in Philadelphia, six days in Gettysburg, and six days in Washington, DC. Fifty-two teachers, one from each state, one from the District of Columbia, and one from a U.S. Territory, are selected to participate in the Academy. The professors conducting the Academy are among the finest scholars of American history and government from across the country. The faculty includes two Pulitzer Prize winning authors and many recipients of teaching awards at their respective colleges and universities.
The Ashbrook Center's extensive experience working with teachers, experience working with the U.S. Department of Education, and work with the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop web-based high school U.S. history lesson plans demonstrate that the Ashbrook Center provides a strong and vital institutional home for your grant partnership, a partnership that will emphasize the importance of American history to your teachers.