University of Washington

With the support of the John and Mary Ann Mangels Endowed Fellowship, Patrick Lozar, a fifth-year PhD candidate, has been working to help K-12 educators in Montana access the rich archives of Native American history held at the Montana Historical Society (MHS) and to encourage educators to incorporate these primary documents into their curricula. While undertaking dissertation research at the MHS, Lozar realized just what an untapped and rich resource the archives were. A former high-school social studies teacher, he also knew how hard it could be for K-12 educators to access primary documents like those he was uncovering. Lozar explains, "My goal for this project was to be a liaison between the A N N O U N C I N G T H E F R A N K A N D J O A N C O N L O N E N D O W E D G R A D U AT E S T U D E N T F E L L O W S H I P Professor Emeritus Frank F. Conlon and Professor Emerita Joan Conlon have generously established a new fellowship for graduate students. It will help graduate students in the later writing up stages of the dissertation. The Department of History extends a big thank you to them. P AT R I C K L O Z A R : O P E N I N G U P N AT I V E A M E R I C A N A R C H I V E S T O K-1 2 E D U C AT O R S This year Brendan McElmeel was named the Mellon Fellow for Reaching New Publics. This program is designed to help PhD students think about their engagement with the broader public and how they might be able to use their education to bridge the gap between the academy and the wider community. Brendan's position focused on exploring the relationship between universities and two-year community colleges . It was the fact that McElmeel had attended a two-year college himself that first drew him to this opportunity. "After my own experience I knew that two-year colleges played an important role in our communities, and I know that many of our students at UW come through these systems before coming to us. So, I was quite interested in this unique opportunity to learn about them from the inside." He spent the year working closely with Professor Cristóbal Borges at North Seattle College, sitting in on many of his classes, discussing pedagogy and teaching strategies with him, and meeting and connecting with students. McElmeel's biggest takeaway was that the college classroom can be a site of public scholarship, something Borges is deeply committed to. "In these spaces we have a unique opportunity to (hopefully) get community members from many different walks of life to engage with history and take that interest far beyond their time in the two-year system … It was a very valuable year for me," said McElmeel. Brendan is a historian of 20th-century Russia. He plans to pursue a teaching career in higher education after graduation and after this experience is particularly interested in teaching at a two-year college. B R E N D A N M C E L M E E L : C O N N E C T I N G P H D S T U D E N T S W I T H C O M M U N I T Y C O L L E G E S archive and teachers. I wanted them to know what was available and how I could help them use these resources. It was a great experience and really rewarding to see these sources being used in the classroom." Lozar spent last summer working in the archives and with local schools and teachers. His biggest project was cataloging a collection of early 20th-century photographs of the Crow Nation in Montana. He also presented his findings at a workshop—"Teaching Montana Native American History through Primary Sources"—at the Montana Educators' Conference in Missoula in October 2017. Patrick is currently finishing his dissertation, "Behind and beyond the Line," which examines how indigenous communities on the Columbia Plateau negotiated the United States' and Canada's imposition of the U.S.-Canadian border through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He recently received a prestigious Ford Foundation Fellowship to aid with this project. GRADUATE STUDENTS WORKING TO REACH NEW PUBLICS One of the most rewarding things about studying history is being able to use your research to reach communities that would otherwise have little access to this knowledge, and to see your efforts make a difference beyond the university. Two Department of History graduate students, Patrick Lozar and Brendan McElmeel, have been using their skills and work to reach new publics in different ways. D E P A R T M E N T O F H I S T O R Y   7 history matters

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