Contributor Biographies

Elizabeth Aaron Bruce Baskind Paul Faeh Michael Flamm Jason George Monica Gisolfi Reiko Hillyer Betty Braun Kleinfeld Daniel Kotzin Alyce Loesch

Andrew Meyers Eric Rothschild Brenda Santos

Academic Advisers and Consultant Biographies

Contributor Biographies

Elizabeth Meola Aaron is currently teaching Advanced Placement U.S. History at Summit High School in New Jersey, where she has been on the faculty for seven years. She previously taught at Asbury Park High School, also in New Jersey, for four years. She attended public schools in New Jersey and majored in history and secondary education at Boston College, from which she graduated cum laude in 1992. She also spent a semester studying at the Université de Paris. At Rutgers University, Newark, Aaron completed a master's degree in the art of teaching history. Since then, she has participated in the Institute for Civic Education, at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education; the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on the Renaissance, held at Duke University; and the 2002 Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History summer seminar "Thomas Jefferson and the Foundations of American Democracy." She currently teaches U.S. history and world history. Aaron also implemented an after-school program in which high-school students tutor elementary school pupils. She is a member of the district's Professional Development Committee. In addition, she serves as a liaison between the high school and the Summit Historical Society. In this role, Aaron directed an oral history project, in which high-school students interviewed local residents and performed research about the community to create an archive for the town's public library.

back to top

Bruce Baskind is currently teaching at Brooklyn Technical High School, completing his twentieth year as a New York City high-school history teacher. Baskind began his undergraduate studies at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz with the goal of becoming a public-school teacher. Soon thereafter he earned a master's degree and began a doctoral dissertation under the direction of William Taylor at SUNY at Stony Brook. There, Baskind was trained in the "new" social history; he later earned a fellowship to study with a leading historian of the new discipline, Herbert Gutman, one of the founders of the American Social History Project at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Baskind also joined the faculty of Seward Park High School in Manhattan's Chinatown. After developing innovative courses in the humanities for several years, he joined "Brooklyn Tech," where he has devoted himself to the pursuit of a "history that matters" by developing interdisciplinary courses such as The Lower East Side Experience, featured in the book Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students, and Their High School by Samuel Freedman (New York: Harper and Row, 1990); History through Drama; and American Social History. Baskind has also contributed to projects sponsored by the American Social History Project, the Museum of the Chinese in America, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. A recent National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar on William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, inspired him to write his first screenplay, Speare.

back to top

Paul Faeh teaches Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) and Advanced Placement European History at Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois. He has served as a reader for the College Board's APUSH exam and has attended AP workshops conducted by Eric Rothschild and Stu Lade. Mr. Faeh, a member of his school district's school improvement and leadership committees, is active in the development of reading-and-writing across-the-curriculum projects. Recognized for his teaching excellence, he is included in Who's Who Among America's Teachers (2002, 2004) and has been nominated for the Illinois Teacher of the Year award (2003–4). Mr. Faeh attended public schools in Wisconsin and holds a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

back to top

Michael Flamm associate professor of history at Ohio Wesleyan University, is a specialist in modern U.S. history. At Columbia University, he and Professor Alan Brinkley have cochaired summer workshops sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Mr. Flamm serves as a faculty consultant to the College Board, advising it on Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH). Mr. Flamm taught high-school history for five years in New Jersey and New York. He is the author of Law and Order: Street Crime, Civil Disorder, and the Crisis of Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming) and has coauthored, with Brinkley et al., The Chicago Handbook for Teachers: A Practical Guide to the College Classroom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Mr. Flamm is also the author of scholarly articles on Lyndon Johnson, urban violence, and the political culture of the 1960s. He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia.

back to top

Jason George teaches U.S. history at the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore. He reviews materials and is content advisor on Advanced Placement U.S. history (APUSH) for the AP Central Web site of the College Board. Mr. George holds a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Massachusetts, from which he graduated summa cum laude. He holds a master's degree and a Ph.D. in history from Ohio University (Athens). In his dissertation he examines Russian perceptions of the United States from 1776 to 2001. At Bryn Mawr he coaches cross country, advises the chess club, and co-advises the Model United Nations Club.

back to top

Monica R. Gisolfi completed her B.A. at Barnard College. Gisolfi is currently a doctoral candidate in U.S. history at Columbia University, where her dissertation concerns the origins and rise of southern agribusiness. Before entering the Ph.D. program at Columbia, she taught for two years in the history department at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Riverdale, New York. At Fieldston, Gisolfi taught the tenth-grade U.S. history survey course and developed and taught an advanced elective in U.S. government and politics to juniors and seniors. Outside the classroom, she developed and advised a community-service project in which Fieldston students tutored elementary-school students. She also participated in the Gilder Lehrman Institute's summer seminar at Yale University, on the Origins of New World Slavery. As a guide for Big Onion Walking Tours, she conducts historical walking tours of various New York City neighborhoods. Gisolfi has taught logic and rhetoric, a course that is part of Columbia College's Core Curriculum, and has taught law and politics in U.S. history at John Hopkins's Center for Talented Youth.

back to top

Reiko Hillyer earned her B.A. at Yale University and is currently a doctoral candidate in U.S. history at Columbia University. Before entering the Ph.D. program at Columbia, Hillyer taught for seven years in the history department at her alma mater, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Riverdale, New York. While at Fieldston, Reiko taught seventh-grade anthropology, the tenth-grade U.S. history survey course, and Advanced Placement U.S. History, and she developed and taught an advanced elective in African American history to juniors and seniors. Outside the classroom, she served on several search and professional-development committees, coached girls' soccer, and founded a gospel choir. She also participated in the first Gilder Lehrman Institute summer seminar at Yale University, in 1995. In addition, for the past several years Reiko has been giving historical walking tours of various New York City neighborhoods as a guide for Big Onion Walking Tours. Reiko's graduate work is on the development of the tourist industry in Florida in the late nineteenth century and its relationship to the New South. In 2001, Columbia's Undergraduate History Council voted Hillyer the "Most Outstanding History Teaching Assistant."

back to top

Betty Braun Kleinfeld is currently teaching history at Hunter College High School in New York City. She teaches American and Global Studies as well as the following electives: Political Theory; Philosophy; and Contemporary Issues. Ms. Kleinfeld has advanced degrees from Columbia University's history department and Jewish Theological Seminary, in Russian, European and Jewish history. She also lectures on subjects as diverse as Middle Eastern politics and culture; Russian History and Literature; and Modern Jewish History. She has attended summer institutes on the contemporary Middle East, the 2002 Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History Summer Seminar on Thomas Jefferson and the Foundations of American Democracy, and the 2002 United States Institute of Peace Summer Institute International Peace, Security and Conflict Management. With NEH support, Ms. Kleinfeld is currently developing a curriculum guide for high-school teachers on the history and culture of Central Eurasia to be completed in 2003. Teaching for over twenty years, Ms. Kleinfeld has mentored numerous NEH Young Scholars, Independent Study students at Hunter High, participants in the National History Day Competition, as well as contestants for the Quality of Life Social Science Research.

back to top

Daniel Kotzin is a newly appointed assistant professor of history at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. From 1999 to 2002, he taught honors U.S. history, environmental history, and Jewish history at Beth Tfiloh Dahan High School, a small private high school in Baltimore, Maryland. In the 2001–2 academic year, he also served as Chair of the Jewish History Department there. At his school, Kotzin was a leader in the integration of technology into the history classroom, and he published an article about his classroom use of the Valley of the Shadow Web site, "The Internet as an Opportunity for Students to Create Their Own Document-Based Question," in The History Teacher (August 2001).

Recognized for his teaching excellence, Kotzin is included in Who's Who Among America's Teachers, 2002. In addition to his teaching and his contribution to Columbia American History Online, he has worked as an educational consultant for the Goldsmith Museum, a Jewish museum in Baltimore, where he designed curricula. He is currently completing a biography of Judah Magnes, an influential American Jewish communal leader during the Progressive Era, which is due to be published in 2003 by Wayne State University Press. He holds a Ph.D. in history from New York University. His dissertation, in American intellectual, cultural, and ethnic history, was supervised by Professor Tom Bender.

back to top

Alyce Loesch currently teaches history at Westhill High School in Stamford, Connecticut. She has been teaching Advanced Placement U.S. History for seven years and was instrumental in expanding the program to a broader group of students. For the past five years, Loesch has been serving as a reader for the APUSH exam. She holds an M.A. in American history from Hofstra University. Loesch continues to pursue her scholarly interests and has attended numerous summer institutes, sponsored by Harvard University, the University of Maryland, the U.S. Army, and the Oregon Constitutional Project. She also participates in National History Day. In 2002, Loesch took part in "We the People. . . . The Citizen and the Constitution," organized by the Center for Civic Education. Loesch is a two-time winner of the Connecticut Celebration of Excellence Award and was recognized by her school district and her peers this year as a "Spotlight" educator.

back to top

Andrew Meyers received his A.B. in architecture from Princeton University, M.A. in architectural and planning history from Yale University, and M. Phil in American urban history from Columbia University. He has taught courses at Connecticut College, Yale University, and Columbia University, where he served as the teaching assistant of Professors Ken Jackson and Alan Brinkley. Meyers is currently chair of the history department at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Riverdale, New York. A specialist in American urban and architectural history, Meyers is presently researching New Deal planning in New York City. His publications on urban history focus on the development and planning of the modern American city. He was among the first tour leaders for Big Onion Walking Tours, New York City's largest provider of historical walking tours, founded by Columbia University graduate students in history. Meyers has taught seminars for teachers on place-based history, New York City history, and the use of new media in the classroom.

back to top

Brenda Santos is currently a teacher at Bronx Leadership Academy High School in New York City, where she piloted the Advanced Placement program in U.S. history after having been trained by master teachers Eric Rothschild and Robert DiLorenzo. Santos graduated summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, with a major in social thought and political economy and a minor in women's history. A graduate of the New York University Graduate School of Education, she continues to pursue her scholarly interests through her participation in the 2001 Gilder Lehrman seminar "Passages to Freedom," held at Amherst College, and in the 2002 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute "Historical Interpretations of the Industrial Revolution in Britain," held at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. In addition to her contribution to Columbia American History Online, Ms. Santos has developed curriculum for Brooklyn Expedition, a collaborative effort of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Public Libraries, and the Brooklyn Children's Museum that makes resources and teacher-support materials available online. In her school and her district, she is a leader in the integration of technology into the curricula of content classes. In 2002, Santos was selected Teacher of the Year by school leaders, fellow teachers, and students.

back to top

Academic Advisers and Consultant Biographies

Dick Parsons is a professional development specialist at the Center for Technology and School Change (CTSC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he works with teachers and administrators to demonstrate that underprivileged students can excel academically when they have access to digital information. Before joining CTSC, Mr. Parsons was the professional development manager and social studies curriculum specialist at the Institute for Learning Technologies, Columbia University. Mr. Parsons has taught social studies and English in public schools for more than thirty years.

back to top

Elizabeth Robeson is a doctoral candidate in American history at Columbia University, specializing in the Progressive Era and the early-twentieth-century American South. Her articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of Southern History, Southern Cultures, The South Carolina Encyclopedia, and Jewish Women in America: A Historical Encyclopedia. For Columbia American History Online, she served as a peer reviewer and wrote the captions for several DBQs developed for the e-seminars of Professors Alan Brinkley and Kenneth T. Jackson.

back to top

Eric Rothschild retired as chair of the Social Studies Department at Scarsdale High School in Scarsdale, New York, in 1998 after 36 years in the classroom. Since retiring, he has been teaching at Columbia University's Teachers College and at Manhattan College. Rothschild has been a national figure in Advancement Placement U.S. History (APUSH). On behalf of the College Board, he conducts professional-development workshops, wrote the "Teacher's Guide to APUSH," and served as a member of the Test Development Committee and as the question leader at the AP annual reading. Rothschild also has written and spoken widely on simulation gaming. His video, "Using Simulations in the APUSH Classroom," is available at the College Board. He has also designed simulation games for HarpWeek.

With Alan Brinkley, Rothschild coauthored The Chicago Handbook for Teachers: A Practical Guide to the College Classroom. In 1991, Rothschild was elected to the executive board of the Organization of American Historians, the first secondary-school teacher to serve on the board. That same year, he was Social Studies Educator of New York State.

back to top

Carl Shulkin has taught Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) at the Pembroke Hill School since 1974. He earned his bachelor's degree in history from Brown University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from the University of California, Berkeley. In his dissertation he examined reparations that resulted from the First World War. Mr. Schulkin has been an AP reader for several years and an AP consultant since 1993. He served as a workshop leader for the Leadership Program for Teachers at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (1990–94), and he was a regional leader for the New Media Classroom program of the American Social History Project (1998–2000).

back to top

Thomas Thurston is the project coordinator for the Teaching American History Project in Stratford, Connecticut. He has served as manager of content development at the Institute of Learning Technologies (ILT) at Teachers College, Columbia University. There he developed the New Deal Network, an educational Web site sponsored by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. His hypertext essay Hearsay of the Sun: Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence in Nineteenth-Century American Courts is published by The American Quarterly in its series Hypertext Scholarship in American Studies. Mr. Thurston is pursuing a Ph.D. in American studies at Yale University.

back to top

Thorin Tritter currently serves as a lecturer in the history department at Princeton University. He has taught ethnic, urban, and business history courses at LaGuardia Community College, Queens College, and Columbia University. Mr. Tritter has presented and published papers on a variety of topics related to newspaper operation and urban development. He has been awarded research fellowships from the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In addition to his teaching and research, Tritter has served as a peer reviewer for book awards and paper proposals for the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. For Columbia American History Online, Tritter peer reviewed the historiographical points raised in the point-counterpoints. He is also an editor for the history listserv H-Urban, a member of the Columbia University Seminar on the City, and a member of the steering committee for the Symposium on the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression. Tritter received his Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University in 2000, completing a dissertation entitled "Paper Profits in Public Service: Money Making in the New York Newspaper Industry, 1830 to 1930," under the supervision of Kenneth Jackson. When not in the classroom, Tritter can often be found on the streets of New York City leading historical and architectural tours for Big Onion Walking Tours.

back to top

Philip J. Van Fossen is director of the James F. Ackerman Center for Democratic Citizenship and associate professor of social studies education in the School of Education at Purdue University, where he teaches courses in elementary and secondary social-studies education. He is also the associate director of the Purdue University Center for Economic Education (and holds a courtesy appointment in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue), where he also teaches introductory economics courses for the Economics department. Mr. VanFossen's primary research interest is in the use of the Internet in social-studies classrooms. Previous to teaching at the university level, Mr. Fossen taught U.S. and European history at the high-school level. In addition to teaching, Mr. VanFossen serves on the editorial boards of four journals and has published articles on Internet use and economic and social-studies education in Theory and Research in Social Education, The International Journal of Social Education, The International Journal of Educational Media, The Senior Economist, The Southern Social Studies Journal, and Economics for Kids. He has been a guest editor for an issue of Social Studies and the Young Learner. Mr. VanFossen is also chair of the advisory board of EconEdLink, the National Council on Economic Education's Marco Polo online resource site, and served as peer reviewer of the teaching tips in Columbia American History Online.

back to top

Tracey Wilson has taught U.S. history, both AP and non-AP, and a local-history course at Conard High School in West Hartford, Connecticut, for more than 25 years. She consults for the College Board and is coauthor of its Social Studies Vertical Teams Guide. Ms. Wilson conducts an AP workshop in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, during summers. She also leads workshops on Connecticut history, guiding students and instructors in the use of primary documents, and she writes a monthly local history column for her town's newspaper. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Brown University. In her dissertation she examines gender and class at two Hartford companies.

back to top