May 15, 2009

An open house is scheduled Thursday, May 21, to honor 12 central San Joaquin Valley teachers who are the nation’s first group of graduates in the Master of Arts Teaching American History program. These 12 teachers were trained through a partnership between California State University, Fresno’s Department of History and the Clovis Unified School District.

The program is for high school teachers who wish to integrate the traditional American history master’s degree content knowledge into their classroom curriculum.

Clovis Unified coordinated the project, whose partners included the Department of History within Fresno State’s College of Social Sciences, the San Joaquin Valley History/Social Science Project and the American Institute for History Education. Funding came from a $1.78 million federal grant awarded in 2005 – the largest grant to a California applicant and the third-largest among 129 funded nationwide.

The open house will begin at 4 p.m. May 21 at the Smittcamp Alumni House at Fresno State. The main presentation is at 5:15.

The 12 graduating teachers are from Fresno, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties. Also attending will be 30 other teachers from those counties and from Mariposa and Kings counties who participated in the grant.

Additional information is available by contacting Sharon Vock at 559.278.6079 or svock@csufresno.edu.