Dunwoody-GPC Welcomes the Tuskegee Airmen

In preparing for the upcoming visit to the Dunwoody campus of the Tuskegee Airmen on Wednesday, April 6; the Dunwoody History and Politics Club will view the PBS documentary “The Tuskegee Airmen” on Tuesday, April 5 at 1 PM in B 1602. Hope to see you there.

2011 Appalachian Studies Conference--Richmond, KY

At the 34th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, Professor Will Simson convened "Sources of Public History," a panel that included several important presentations.

• John Cuthbert and Lori Hostuttler of West Virginia University Library and Archives on the 250,000 plus digital images now available through an online search engine to the public for viewing and personal use; the digital repository now provides a new and significant revenue stream for the Library and Archives.
• Lori Thompson, Marshall University, on Huntington, WV digitized TV reportage and reporters' scripts for all of WSAZ-TVs broadcasts; the station served as the Tri-state's main television link for local people through the mid-20th century. Thompson has been instrumental in making the station's videos available to locals online.
• Ross Burger, North Georgia College and State University, discussed the renovation and relocation of an 1830s Dahlanega, Georgia Gold Rush era cabin to University grounds for use as a craftways learning center.
• Marshall University students Katie McWhorter, and Rebecca Falcon described new, free data analysis application, "Trendalyzer," available through Google; used initially for identifying cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural reasons behind health needs, the application is perfect for combining disparate Appalachian demographic information into more useful data.

Professor Simson also presented at the conference. Drawn from his dissertation research, "Victory Gardens and Munitions from the Old Red Scar: The Chemicals Industry in the (East Tennessee) Ducktown Basin During WWII," Simson discussed the successful rational management schemes of Tennessee Copper Company owner Sam A. Lewisohn and general manager J.N. Houser that provided nationally recognized and awarded war work for thousands.

Dunwoody-GPC Welcomes the Tuskegee Airmen

Summary--recent GAH conference

Hello all,

Several of your colleagues convened panels or presented at the recent Georgia
Association of Historians Conference, Savannah, Georgia, 24-26 February 2011.

Kara Smith, Alpharetta, who presented a paper titled "Motivations for Care:
Princess Alice and the Establishment of a Secular Nursing Association in Hesse"

David Moon, Dunwoody,
"Southern Baptists and Southern Honor: Negotiating Masculinity in
Nineteenth-Century Georgia"

Susan McGrath, Clarkston, chaired a panel titled The Modern South.

Please note that the Georgia Association of Historians 2012 conference will be held in Macon, Georgia. Exact location in that town has yet to be determined. Georgia Association of Historians

April 2011 The Southern Labor Studies Conference

MEMORY AND FORGETTING: LABOR HISTORY AND THE ARCHIVE -April 7-10, 2011, Sheraton, Atlanta, Georgia

Note: GPC Faculty Member Robert Woodrum (Dunwoody/Alpharetta) will present his paper, "We are poor devils: Race, Unionism, and the Open Shop Movement along the waterfront, Mobile, Alabama," Friday 8 April @ 10:15 AM

• Mission of the Southern Labor Studies Association: http://southernlaborstudies.org/about/
• Program for the Conference: http://flipflashpages.uniflip.com/2/47068/82954/pub/
  

Cambridge in America lecture: Herculaneum: Living with Catastrophe

Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Master, Sidney Sussex) to
speak at Emory Tuesday, March 29, 2011, 6:15pm



Professor
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge;
Professor of Roman Studies) will lecture on "Herculaneum: Living with
Catastrophe" in the
Departments of
Art History and Classics at Emory College in Atlanta.

Herculaneum, which shared the fate of Pompeii in the
eruption of Vesuvius, has been the object of a major conservation campaign
sponsored by Packard Humanities Institute and directed by Dr. Wallace-Hadrill
since 2001. New discoveries made in the course of the project provide dramatic
evidence for major geological activity dating back a century before the
eruption, and to a long drawn-out catastrophe with which the inhabitants lived.

Date: Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Location:Reception Hall,
Michael
C. Carlos Museum

Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Emory University

Departments of Art History and Classics

Atlanta, GA

Time: 6:15pm

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Contact: Eric Varner,
mailto:evarner@emory.edu

Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill has been Master of Sidney Sussex College
since 2009. Previously Director of the British School at Rome for 14 years, he
has directed projects in both Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Other US appearances by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill:

March 24 -

Northampton, MA

March 28 -

Gainesville, FL

March 29 -

Atlanta, GA

March 31 -

San Antonio, TX

April 1 -

Austin, TX

History Discipline Meeting, 3.1.2011

At our discipline meeting yesterday we discussed the
following topics and decided on a plans of action regarding several.

1. SACS preparation: Current discipline assessment averages by course.
Our goal is to see averages for all instructors at a (C) level. While classes
taught by term-to-term, tenure-track, and tenured faculty reflect acceptable (C)
assessment averages, it’s clear from a review of the assessments that the
unsatisfactory averages across our course array reflect:

a. Academic year 2009-10 as the first one in which ALL history faculty gave
a weight of 5-10% to their course assessments; the previous two years’ numbers
thus drag down averages.

b. Communication and enforcement of adjunct participation in the assessment
process has been wanting; we have no idea how well adjuncts prepare their
students for the assessments.

To address these problems the
history faculty has decided on the following plan of action:

i. Mario Bennekin and David Moon (with assistance) will re-crunch the
numbers and remove the extreme highs and lows from the cache of assessments.
Typically the lowest scores represent instances where students tossed off the
exam; only one student got all 20 questions correct.

ii. History faculty will tweak the prose for questions most often missed by
the students and compose an amended assessment; there has been concern about the
accuracy of a couple questions.

iii. History faculty and adjuncts will get the revised assessment tool by
August 1, 2011 so as to incorporate both a Pretest and the course-end
assessment into their syllabi. Both tests will be the same so as to better
measure student learning.

iv. Professor Simson asked all faculty to contact their mentees and remind
them of the importance of preparing students for the assessment and to weight
the assessment appropriately.

v. The faculty agreed that this last effort will need Department Chair
support for its success.

2. SACS/GPC hiring and teaching accreditation requirements. Professor
Simson assured faculty that the draft of the hiring credentials forwarded by
Dean Brown were not going to be used to limit current faculty members’ ability
to teach a course, that the credentials were not an invention, but based upon
previous GPC faculty SACS recommendations and state guidelines. Furthermore
there was room in the proposed teaching requirements for chair and VPAA approval
of personal and professional experience.

3. Preparation for Textbook selection for 2012-13 academic year. At
present there are no changes (2011-12 year), but the history faculty agreed to
let Salli Vargis (world) and Robert Alderman (American) continue as the textbook
selection committee chairs for future selection; Marc Zayac and John Farris will
assist Vargis and Alderman, respectively. Selection will take place by poll,
Fall 2011.

4. Tom Graham reviewed his idea for the WWII Veterans Commemorative
symposium and dance for Fall 2011 term; faculty suggested the event
be mid-term and Tom (has now) agreed on an 11 November (or thereabouts) date.
Simson encouraged all faculty to participate and faculty began brainstorming
about panels, subjects, etc. As a whole, the faculty are excited about this
event.

5. Future events: Faculty decided that the academic year 2011-12 see
GPC put on a Georgia and the World history symposium—more on this to
come.

6. GPC budget effects on term-to-term faculty explained and
discussed.

7. Professional Development: Colleagues discussed recent and future
conference attendance, presentations, articles, and pertinent upcoming
student/faculty events. Simson stated he would request all faculty to forward
such information for him for distribution among colleagues. Simson will renew
use of the History Matters blog at www.gpc.edu/history for such purposes.

-Will

Dunwoody History and Politics Club-March event

Just a reminder: On Wed. March 16th, the History and Politics Club and GPC Hillel will jointly sponsor and lunch n learn discussion of the state of the middle east today compared with the time of Queen Esther (sixth century BCE). Bring your own lunch but Hammantashen will be available for desert!

The event will begin at 11 AM in NB 2100 and should last until 1. Please feel free to come and go as you need to without worry about arriving late or leaving early. The discussion will hopefully be free flowing.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Steve Koplan
GPC Hillel Faculty Advisor