Staff

Leadership and Content Team

Kelly Schrum, Director and PI

Schrum is the Director of Educational Projects at CHNM and an Associate Professor in the Higher Education Program at George Mason University. Schrum is co-director of the websites World History Sources and Women in World History, Making the History of 1989, and Children and Youth in World History and is associate director of History Matters. She is also the Academic Program Director on six TAH grants in Virginia and Maryland. Schrum received her BA from UC Berkeley and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Some Wore Bobby Sox: The Emergence of Teenage Girls’ Culture, 1920–1950, U.S. History Matters: A Student Guide to U.S. History Online, and World History Matters: A Student Guide to World History Online as well as articles on teenage girls and on teaching and new media. Schrum presents regularly at local, state, and national conferences including the AHA, OAH, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, NCSS, and the annual TAH Project Director's meeting.

Daisy Martin, Director of History Education

Martin is a former high school history and civics teacher who served as co-director of the Stanford History Education Group. She earned her PhD in Curriculum and Teacher Education in History and Social Science Education in 2005 with a dissertation entitled "Teaching for Historical Thinking: Teacher Conceptions, Practices, and Constraints." She recently co-directed Historical Thinking Matters, serves as teaching consultant with professional development efforts organized by the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, and teaches history teacher-candidates. She has worked with elementary, middle, and high school teachers in TAH grants in California, Nebraska, Ohio, and Tennessee, and led professional development workshops funded by NEH, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and the Teachers for a New Era project at Stanford. Current projects include creating classroom ready resources for teaching historical problems and researching teacher practices and conceptions relevant to this kind of teaching. Her publications include articles in The History Teacher and Educational Leadership.

Dan Cohen, Executive Producer

Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. His own research is in European and American intellectual history, the history of science (particularly mathematics), and the intersection of history and computing. He is the co-author of Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, author of Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith, and has published articles and book chapters on the history of mathematics and religion, the teaching of history, and the future of history in a digital age in journals such as the Journal of American History, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Rethinking History. Dan is an inaugural recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies' Digital Innovation Fellowship.

Jennifer Rosenfeld, Outreach Director

Rosenfeld joined Teachinghistory.org as Outreach Director in September 2010. Previously, she was the Deputy Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission which was established by the U.S. Congress to plan and implement the national commemorations of Lincoln's 200th birthday in 2009. Earlier in her career, Rosenfeld was Education Director of the Long Island Museum in Stony Brook, NY, and Education Director for the Old York Historical Society in York, ME. She has also consulted on museum education issues and served as a grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Rosenfeld holds a BA in History from the College of William and Mary and an MA in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program, SUNY-Oneonta.

Carl Aldrich, Graduate Outreach Assistant

Aldrich is a graduate student at George Mason University, pursuing an MA in U.S. and Applied History. He earned a BA in History from Utah State University in 2011 and completed an internship with the Bear River Heritage Area documenting and researching cemeteries throughout northern Utah and southeastern Idaho.

John Buescher, Historian and Researcher

Buescher headed the Voice of America's radio and TV Tibetan language broadcasts for more than 15 years. He has served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and as Program Officer in the Division of Education Programs of the National Endowment for the Humanities. His PhD is in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia. He has published extensively on the history of Tibetan and Indian Buddhism and on the history of 19th-century American Spiritualism.

Kristin Conlin, Research Associate

Conlin earned her BA in history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and her MA at George Mason University. She is also an Assistant Editor of the digital archiving project, The Papers of the War Department. Conlin formerly worked on the First Federal Congress project and has studied early and late medieval literature and 19th-century British politics and cultural growth. She also serves as the Head Coach of the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Crew Team.

Alan Gevinson, Historian

Gevinson is co-author of History Matters: A Student Guide to U.S. History Online (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005), author of Library of Congress Motion Pictures, Broadcasting, Recorded Sound: An Illustrated Guide (Library of Congress, 2002), editor of Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911–1960 (University of California Press, 1997), and associate editor of The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1931–1940 (University of California Press, 1993). At CHNM, he has worked on the websites History Matters and Making the History of 1989. He received a PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University and teaches history at George Mason University. He specializes in 19th- and 20th-century American cultural history, media history, film history, and older forms of popular culture.

Lara Harmon-Sutor, Content and Social Media Manager

Harmon earned her BA in theatre from George Mason University in 2008. Harmon's interests include social media, digital content curation, and gender studies.

Debra Kathman, Graduate Research Assistant

Kathman is a graduate research assistant and is a graduate student in history specializing in modern Europe. As an attorney and former nonprofit professional, her research interest is in both legal history and the history and development of charitable organizations in both Europe and America.

Saúl I. Maldonado, Graduate Student Researcher

Maldonado is a former Northwest Pasadena (CA) English teacher and Los Angeles college access program director. A doctoral student in Education at UC Santa Cruz, his teaching and research interests are centered upon equity and diversity policies, curriculum design, and assessment evaluation.

Rachel Pooley, Graduate Research Assistant

A doctoral student in colonial Latin American history at George Mason University, Pooley previously taught fifth grade (bilingual) and kindergarten in Austin, TX, and has also worked in educational research and in historical societies. Pooley holds a master’s degree in Latin American History, and one in Library Science.

Jack Schneider, Senior Research Associate

Schneider is a former high school history teacher and currently teaches in the Educational Studies department at Carleton College. His research focuses on equity and school reform, and he is the author of the book Excellence For All: How a New Breed of Reformers Is Transforming America's Public Schools.

Rwany Sibaja, Graduate Research Assistant

Sibaja is a graduate research assistant at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and a doctoral student in history specializing in modern Latin America. His primary research focuses on national and cultural identity in modern Argentina through the lens of soccer, and secondary research interests involve identity in modern Britain and the role of new media in creating a more authentic and engaging history curriculum for students. He previously served for over a decade as a high school Spanish and history teacher, as well as a K–12 Social Studies Program Manager in Winston-Salem, NC. Rwany also spends a week each June as a reader for the AP European History exam.

Mark Smith, Research Associate

Mark Smith is a second-year doctoral student in the School of Education at Stanford. Formerly he taught high school social studies in Iowa and Texas.

Web Design and Development

James McCartney, Lead Developer

McCartney is a CHNM developer specializing in web-based content management systems and lead developer for Teachinghistory.org. He has worked extensively with the Drupal CMS and is experienced in web software analysis and design, PHP software development, and relational database architecture. He holds a BS in Computer Information Systems from Missouri State University and will be graduating with his MS in Applied Information Technology from George Mason University this spring.

Chris Preperato, Multimedia Developer

Preperato is the lead video editor at CHNM. He earned his BA in Communication Arts from Allegheny College, specializing in Video Production. At CHNM, Preperato has produced more than 350 videos, including interviews with historians and teachers, montages, and classroom filming. In addition to his work at CHNM, he has produced a seven-part radio mini-series, and has been accepted into several film festivals for his short documentaries Wide Awake and Michael.

Chris Raymond, Lead Web Designer

Raymond is Senior Web Designer/Creative Lead at CHNM. She has diverse experience creating effective, award-winning visual communications as a graphic designer, web designer, science museum exhibit researcher/writer, science journalist, and publications director for an association of hands-on science museums. She has a PhD in sociology from Cornell University with emphasis in mass media and sociology of science. Raymond’s strong suits as a designer are typography, color, integrating imagery and text, and information hierarchy. She formally studied graphic design at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Ammon Shepherd, Webmaster

Shepherd is Webmaster and Technical Coordinator at CHNM. He holds a MA in history from George Mason University, where he is currently enrolled in the doctoral program. His research interests focus on the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Germany.

Alumni

Teresa DeFlitch

Teresa DeFlitch is the Director of City as Our Campus at Winchester Thurston School in Pennsylvania. The former Outreach Manager on Teachinghistory.org, she worked as Associate Director of Education at the Bush-Holley Historic Site after completing her MA in American History at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where she was awarded the Dobie-Kampel Fellowship and specialized in African American history and race.

Lee Ann Ghajar

Lee Ann Ghajar served as project manager for Teachinghistory.org from 2007–2010. Currently a digital history associate in Public Projects at CHNM, she works with Teaching History Commons, an online community for history teachers to share teaching materials and to discuss their craft. Ghajar is a candidate for the PhD in American history at George Mason University with research interests in 19th-century Southern industrial history and in the intersection of new media and historical presentation. At CHNM she has worked on Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution and managed web adaptation of a local oral history project.

Sharon Leon

Sharon Leon is the Director of Public Projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and Research Assistant Professor in the History and Art History Department at George Mason University. Leon received her BA in American Studies from Georgetown University in 1994, and her doctorate in American Studies from the University of Minnesota in 2004. Her book, An Image of God: Catholics and American Eugenics is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. At CHNM, Leon oversees collaborations with library, museum, and archive partners from around the country. She manages the Center's digital exhibit and archiving projects, as well as research and tool development for public history. Having directed Object of History: Behind the Scenes with the Curators of the National Museum of American History, and co-directed the award-winning Historical Thinking Matters, Leon also writes and presents on using technology to improve the teaching and learning of historical thinking skills. She co-directed Teachinghistory.org from 2007 to 2010.

Sam Wineburg

Sam Wineburg, the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and of History (by courtesy), directs the Stanford History Education Group and Stanford's PhD program in History Education. He also oversees the MA program for future history teachers. His scholarship has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and on NPR and C-SPAN. In 2003 his book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past, received the Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities for the most important contribution to "improvement of Liberal Education and understanding the Liberal Arts." In 2007 he was awarded the American Historical Association's William Gilbert Prize for distinguished scholarship on the teaching of history as well as being named an Outstanding Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. In his spare moments, he puts on a toolbelt and refurbishes old houses.