"Al Éxito" supports the leadership development, post-secondary education, and civic engagement of Iowa Latina/o youth. In the summer of 2015, it piloted "Movimiento Al Éxito," a "pop up" summer program. In this article, we detail the innovative components and curriculum and describe our journey with "new…

The Civil War ended in 1865. From 2011-2015, Civil War sesquicentennial events took place around the nation. The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium used the opportunity to feature two exhibits on the critical role that the river played during the Civil War. Both exhibits highlighted contributions to the war effort by the surrounding…

The authors discuss how high school students participated in a unit in which they learned about African American history in a 1:1 computer classroom--in particular, how they were able to use digital history to learn about a variety of African American leaders who are not frequently covered in the traditional American History textbook. In addition,…

As American settlement spread to the Midwest, college and university campuses came to symbolize some of the greatest achievements of public policy and private philanthropy. However, the expansion westward often ignored the cultural precedents of Native Americans and the diversity of the varied native landscapes. Today, campus planners and historic…

One of the most remarkable developments in American education in the past half century has been the creation and rapid growth of the nation's community colleges. Built on the curricular pillars of vocational education, transfer programs, and community education, community colleges today are considered the "engines of statewide economic…

George Washington Carver, the legendary scientist and educator, spent five years at the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, known today as Iowa State University, as a student, graduate student and faculty member in the late 19th century. Nearly 120 years later, Carver's presence still looms large on the Iowa State campus. Carver…

This essay examines the college lives of two generations of Iowa's black college women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on the experiences of black women at Iowa's private colleges and the University of Iowa (UI) from 1878 to 1928. The experiences of black women in Iowa's colleges and universities are important for…

Bringing history home, an elementary history curriculum and professional development project, began in 2001. As originally conceived, the project's main purpose was to move history from the margins described by Bruce VanSledright into the mainstream of the K-5 school day. Seven years later, the Bringing History Home (BHH) instructional units are…

The anti-German sentiment during World War I reached a point where "people speaking German on the street were attacked and rebuked." Iowa Governor William L. Harding legitimized such expressions of prejudice and war-time fanaticism when he issued "The Babel Proclamation" on May 23, 1918. Antagonism toward Germans and their…

The Hmong are a distinct Asian people who, for thousands of years, dwelled in China, and then, more recently, in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. The Vietnam War caused thousands of Hmong to be displaced, and many came to the United States. This paper describes the decade-long resettlement of Hmong refugees in Decorah, a small town in Iowa. The…

The parage of foreign policy usually skipped rural Iowa, but on September 23, 1959, the eyes of the nation focused on Coon Rapids. Invited guests, curious onlookers, anxious reporters and photographers surrounded Roswell and Elizabeth Garst's white, wooden farmhouse. More than 700 National Guardsmen lined the highway between Des Moines and Garst's…

In 1988 the State Historical Society of Iowa appointed a Blue Ribbon task force composed of 45 Iowans to study the teaching of Iowa history at all levels of the educational system and to make recommendations. The task force formed committees to study in detail four specific areas of concern: (1) comparable studies of other states; (2) curriculum;…

The document describes a thesis project which focused on the development of a teacher resource guide as an aid in high school instruction of Iowa history. The objective was to increase students' awareness of Iowa through an examination of the state's current and past development. The project is presented in five chapters. Chapter I states the…

This bulletin was prepared to indicate recent progress in rural life and education as disclosed by the educational exhibits at the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915. The discussion includes (1) the general phases of progress in rural education, and (2) advancement in its more specific agricultural phases. Little attempt has been made to present…