Community Engagement

History as a Verb: Community Engagement

Our faculty and students are involved in numerous projects on campus, within Cedar Falls and Waterloo, and as part of state-wide initiatives.

Students gain hands-on experience through Service Learning courses like HIST 1011 Field Experience: Public History, where students spend 15 hours working on a public history project in a local institution. This seminar provides an introduction to various professions related to the major. 

History

Hosted at UNI

Phi Alpha Theta Lecture Series

Free and open to the public; face to face format.

  • This series begins with the Becker Lecture. 
  • Each month professors deliver a lecture on a different topic within their area of study. 
  • The last lecture of the year is given by an outstanding graduate student over their research.
  • International Attendance: utilizing Eventbrite and Zoom we've made our lecture series accessible to colleagues around the world. We've built new connections with fellow scholars, sparking ideas to further explore. 
     
The Donald Shepardson Memorial Student Research Symposium

Held annually in Spring  

  • Our History Club and Phi Alpha Theta students sort through student submissions and select presenters for the annual symposium. 
     

Local Initiatives

National History Day
  • Program includes a progressive contest cycle open to students in grades 6-12 beginning with the district contests in February/March, state contest in April, and national contest in June.

Visit NHD.org for more information about:

Statewide

Fortepan Iowa

FORTEPAN IOWA is a digital archive that features curated photos taken by ordinary Iowans over the 19th and 20th centuries. The photos represent the personal, whimsical, poetic, significant, and accidentally artistic moments of everyday Iowa life, and tell a rich story of Iowa’s great diversity and complexity.

Bettina Fabos (Visual Communication and Interactive Digital Studies), Leisl Carr-Childers (History), Sergey Golitsynskiy (Communication Studies), and Noah Doely (Art), directed the start of FORTEPAN IOWA in 2015. 

Fernando Herrera Calderon has continued Dr. Carr-Childers' work with the project and expanded upon it.