At the heart of the Center is education. Center faculty regularly offer courses at UMKC on the American Midwest, as well as work with area schools to provide continuing education opportunities for K-12 teachers. These high-impact learning experiences offer students and community members an opportunity to learn about the history and culture of the American Midwest.
Recent UMKC courses include:
- Teaching Regional History at Watkins Mill State Historic Site
- History of Kansas City
- The Missouri/Kansas Border Wars
- Public History and New Media
- Oral History
- Telling Stories: History, Memory and American Life
- Archaeology Field School: Bates County, Missouri Burnt District
K-12 Education
National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture Grants
The Center has received six Landmarks of American History and Culture grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the summer workshop, Crossroads of Conflict: Contested Visions of Freedom and the Missouri-Kansas Border Wars, and most recently, Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Jazz Age and Great Depression. Hundreds of K-12 teachers from across the country have attended these week-long workshops. Through visits to historic sites and meetings with scholars, teachers have learned about the differing definitions of “freedom” that fueled the conflict along the Missouri-Kansas border during the era of the Civil War, and the diverse experiences of Kansas City in the 1920s and 1930s.
“I am more knowledgeable about Kansas and Missouri because I was actually in these places. I crossed over the borderline. … Having had these experiences will help me enrich lessons and activities with students.”
– Crossroads Workshop Teacher
“The workshop was truly amazing. You all did a fantastic job of immersing us in the culture of Kansas City from our computers.”
– Wide-Open Town Workshop Teacher
“The experience was wonderful. All of the scholars gave interesting and useful presentations, and the online resources they shared with us (archives, articles, lesson plans, museum exhibits, etc.) will be very helpful to me in developing lesson plans and to my students in conducting research.”
– Wide-Open Town Workshop Teacher