NCHE Board Members are in the News!

Here's the Latest from the National Council for History Education:

Earlier this month a member of the NCHE Advisory Council was honored by President Barack Obama, while a member of the Board of Trustees made history with First Lady Michelle Obama.

On July 10 President Obama presented a National Humanities Medal to Ed Ayers, citing "his commitment to making our history as widely available and accessible as possible." The prestigious award "honors individuals or groups whose work has deepened the nation's understanding of the humanities, broadened our citizens' engagement with the humanities, or helped preserve and expand Americans' access to important resources in the humanities." In particular, the President noted, "Dr. Ayers' innovations in digital humanities extend higher learning beyond campus boundaries and allow broad audiences to discover the past in new ways."

While a professor of history at the University of Virginia Dr. Ayers headed  The Valley of the Shadow project that digitized Civil War-era primary sources from two Shenandoah Valley communities, one in the South and the other in the North. Since becoming president of the University of Richmond, he has overseen production of Visualizing Emancipation, a digital mapping website.

Those who attended NCHE's 2013 conference will remember Dr. Ayers as one of "The History Guys" who entertained and informed the audience with a live version of Backstory, their popular weekly radio broadcast. Dr. Ayers served on NCHE's Board of Trustees and is currently a member of its Advisory Board.

When First Lady Michelle Obama and former First Lady Laura Bush took the stage together at the African First Ladies Summit in Tanzania on July 2, they shared it with NCHE Trustee Cokie Roberts. A television journalist and best-selling author, Ms. Roberts hosted the unprecedented meeting of American first ladies, moderating a discussion that ranged across topics from the importance of education to the excessive attention paid to the appearance of first ladies.

A member of the NCHE Board of Trustees since 2012, Ms. Roberts is a senior news analyst for National Public Radio and a political analyst for ABC News. Especially interested in the history of American women, Ms. Roberts is the author of Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation and Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation.

To hear what she had to say about sharing the stage with the current and previous first lady, follow this link.