Holocaust Education Initiative to share proof of its strong NEH program impact

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State will present evidence of its strong National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) program impact at the March annual conference of the National Association for School-University Partnerships (NASUP).

Two Initiative members and two program participants will travel to Anaheim, California, to share with conference attendees the positive effects the “Making Holocaust and Genocide Education Relevant Through Inquiry and Classroom Application” program has had on K-12 educators and students.

“Our 30 participants representing 15 states worked hard this past summer and fall to sharpen their teaching skills, deepen their content knowledge and examine their approach to Holocaust education in order to engage their students in new, more-effective ways,” said Boaz Dvir, an associate professor of journalism in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications who serves as the Initiative’s founding director and NEH program director. “We learned as much from them as they did from us. We’re excited to discuss our observations and findings with a larger audience at the School-University Partnerships conference.”

The Initiative’s nearly five-month NEH program included a weeklong residency in State College and Philadelphia in the summer and webinars and individual meetings in the fall.

“Most of the activities that we did or learned about at the residency were student-centered and they focused on discussion, contemplation, and reflection, which I feel is the best way to incorporate Holocaust education into the classroom,” one of the participants wrote in the program evaluation. “I also think these are just best practices for teaching in general.”

The March conference presenters include Initiative affiliate faculty member Logan Rutten, an assistant professor at the University of North Dakoka who served as the NEH program’s co-director; Danielle Butville, the Initiative’s assistant director; Farrell Kelly, a social studies teacher at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School in Falls Church City, Virginia; and Melissa Kreider, an eighth-grade English teacher at the Hempfield School District in Landisville, Pennsylvania.

“Our NEH program showcased the transformative potential of an inquiry-based, academically rigorous approach to Holocaust and genocide education,” said Rutten. “It also underscored the value of school-university partnerships as premier contexts for learning. We look forward to sharing with NASUP colleagues how we have leveraged our partnerships to create impactful learning experiences for teachers and students across the United States.”

Besides Dvir, Rutten, and Butville, the NEH program team included Kobi Kabalek, Jackie Kemper, Scott Metzger, Stacy Sterndale, Andrew Warren and Rocco Zinobile.

Based in the Bellisario College, the Holocaust Education Initiative is part of the Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative at Penn State. Its mission is to create intensive, trauma-informed professional learning experiences to help educators teach a variety of difficult topics.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation.