Jenny Nicholas

Chair

Salt Lake City School District (UT)

Jenny Nicholas taught Social Studies in the Salt Lake City School District for 21 years, specializing in AP European History, IB History and US Government courses.  Her newest work will be as her school’s coordinator of the Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate programs.  She is passionate about teaching—and being taught by—her students and sees history education as a critical component of shared knowledge in our society.  Jenny earned a BA in History from the University of Utah, an M.A.T. from Boston University and an Ed.D. in Education, Leadership & Policy from the University of Utah.  She represented the state of Utah as a James Madison Fellow and has worked for the James Madison Fellowship Foundation for many years.  Jenny appreciates opportunities to learn through her association with NCHE and knows that some of the strongest ways in which she has improved her career is through her associations with skilled and passionate educators.  

Wendy Rex-Atzet

Secretary

Utah Division of State History (UT)

Wendy Rex-Atzet is a public historian at the Utah Division of State History. She has more than ten years' experience managing the National History Day program at the state level in Colorado and in Utah. Wendy is passionate about helping young people connect with history through hands-on, relevant learning experiences. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she specialized in the environmental and cultural history of the American West. She holds an M.A. in history from San Diego State University, and a B.A. in communications from the University of Utah. Her publications include Denver Mountain Parks: 100 Years of the Magnificent Dream, with Sally L. White, and Erika D. Walker, and photography by John Fielder (2013).

Dan Dunn

Treasurer

The Branson School (CA)

Dan currently teaches economics and history at the Branson School in Ross, California. Prior to that he was an analyst and portfolio manager at a San Francisco based hedge fund for 15 years. He has an AB in Economics from Stanford as well as an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives with his wife, children and new puppy in Larkspur, California. When not teaching, Dan can generally be found fly fishing or scuba diving.

Douglas Brinkley

Rice University (TX)

Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University, bestselling author, Grammyaward winning producer and presidential historian for CNN. Eight of his books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and each of his most-recent publications have been New York Times bestsellers. Brinkley received the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Naval History Prize for Driven Patriot in 1993 and the Benjamin Franklin Award for The American Heritage History of the United States in 1998. His book 2006 The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast won the Robert F. Kennedy book award. He is also the author of the award-winning biographies Rosa Parks: A Life, Cronkite, and Wheels of the World: Henry Ford, His Country, and a Century of Progress.

Published in 2016, Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America is the third volume of Brinkley’s bestselling U.S. environmental history series. Brinkley’s most recent book, JFK: A Vision for America—which he edited together with the president’s nephew, Stephen Kennedy Smith—features JFK’s greatest speeches, iconic photography, and reflections by leading statesmen, writers, historians, and public figures. The book is the basis for New-York Historical’s upcoming exhibition honoring the 100th anniversary of President Kennedy’s birth: American Visionary: John F. Kennedy’s Life and Time, opening June 23. Brinkley, who has edited Jack Kerouac’s diaries, Hunter S. Thompson’s letters, and Theodore Dreiser’s travelogue—and has co-edited a previously unpublished novel by Woody Guthrie together with Johnny Depp—serves as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Audubon, and American Heritage, and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Century Association, and the Society of American Historians, and has held board or leadership advisory roles at the American Museum of Natural History, the Yellowstone Park Foundation, the National Audubon Society, and the Rockefeller-Roosevelt Conservation Roundtable—reflecting his commitment to conservation and environmental preservation. Brinkley has been described as “America’s new past master” and has received numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities throughout the nation for his work as an Americanist. He earned his BA from Ohio State University and a PhD in U.S. diplomatic history from Georgetown University

Kristy Brugar

Past Chair

University of Oklahoma (OK)

Kristy Brugar is an Associate Professor of Social Studies Education in the Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education at the University of Oklahoma.  Previously, she was an assistant professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI and a middle school social studies teacher in Maryland and Michigan.  Dr. Brugar earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education from Michigan State University.

Dr. Brugar is a recipient of the OU Jeanine Rainbolt College of Education Junior Faculty Award (2017), the National Council for the Social Studies, College and University Faculty Assembly Early Career Award (2017), and the OU Robert L. and Nan A. Huddleston Presidential Professor of Education (2018).  

She is a long-time member of NCHE.  Her research interests include social studies and history education, interdisciplinary instruction involving history/social studies, literacy, and visual arts, and teacher development.  She can be reached at kristy.a.brugar@ou.edu

Chris Bunin

Albemarle High School (VA)

Chris Bunin teaches social studies and geospatial technologies at Albemarle High School in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is also Assistant Professor of Geography at Piedmont Virginia Community College and the iSTEM GIS chairperson for the Virginia Geographic Alliance. During the past decade he has collaborated on a variety of projects focused on using geospatial technologies and geoliteracy to enhance historical research and instruction. He is co-author of Jamestown to Appomattox: Mapping US History with GIS (2014) and GIS for Teachers – A Guide to Authentic K-12 Integration and Application (2017). In 2016 NCSS recognized Chris as the Secondary Social Studies Teacher of the Year, and in 2017 NCGE awarded him the Brunn Creativity Award for the Outstanding Teaching of Geography. When he is not teaching or mining historical GIS data, he can be found hiking and enjoying the Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife and their 3 children. You can follow him at @ahsgeo.

Jason Butler

DeKalb County Schools (GA)

A former newspaper journalist, Jason Butler supports the K-12 social studies educators of a large, Atlanta-area school district after 14 years as a classroom teacher. He has led seminars as a Master Teacher for the Gilder Lehrman Institute; taken students to field study in Europe through National History Day; and presented at many local, state, and national conferences, with particular interest in researching, teaching, and writing about Black History. In 2012 he was selected to represent Georgia as a James Madison Memorial Fellow.

Robert Cassanello

University of Central Florida (FL)

Robert Cassanello is an associate professor of history at the University of Central Florida. He is a social historian interested in public history. His book To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville won the 2014 Harry Moore Award by the Florida Historical Society. He also produced numberous media projects such as the films, The Committee, Filthy Dreamers and Marching Forward with Dr. Lisa Mills. The films have screened at numerous state, national, and international film festivals and their films have won several awards including a Suncoast Emmy© and College TV Emmy©. Additionally he produced the podcasts RICHES of Central Florida, A History of Central Florida Podcast, Florida Historical Quarterly Podcast, and The Florida Constitutions Podcast. He has won the Dunn Internet Broadcasting Award with the Florida Historical Society for his work in podcasting. Dr. Cassanello also was a featured voice on the weekly public radio program Florida Frontiers produced by the Florida Historical Society between 2013 and 2016.

Mike Clemens

Osceola High School (FL)

Mike Clemens graduated from Millersville University of Pennsylvania. He believes he was born to be a history teacher. One of his earliest memories is of his father lifting him to touch the Liberty Bell, which at the time was located outside and covered by a shed type roof. He chairs the social studies department at his high school and has worked for the Florida Humanities Council as a master teacher and as a Lead Teacher on two Teaching American History grant programs.

Tony DiSario

Griffin-Spalding Schools (GA)

A 1997 graduate of the University of Florida in Elementary Education with a minor in U.S. History, Tony DiSario began his career in Clayton County, Georgia, teaching 5th grade in an urban school south of the city of Atlanta. Known initially as an expert in mathematics pedagogy, Mr. DiSario taught Mathematics Methods at Georgia State University for three years before returning to his children’s school in Henry County, Georgia as a classroom teacher. Six years on a Teaching American History Grant shifted Mr. DiSario’s instructional focus to social studies, and after thirteen years, he left the classroom to support 27 elementary schools in social studies instruction as the Elementary Social Studies Teacher on Special Assignment. A Georgia Social Studies Teacher of the Year, Mr. DiSario currently serves as the Social Studies Coordinator for Griffin-Spalding Schools.

Charles Errico

Northern Virginia Community College (VA)

Charles Errico received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in American diplomatic history. He is a professor at Northern Virginia Community College where he has won teaching awards from the alumni association, the educational foundation and, in 2007, was named one of the outstanding faculty members in Virginia. Charlie participated in over forty NCHE colloquiums as part of the Teaching American History grant. His book, Portrait of America, is required reading at over sixty universities in the United States and Europe.

Tracy Garrison-Feinberg

Brooklyn Prospect Charter School (NY)

Elizabeth Grant

National Liberty Museum (PA)

Elizabeth Grant is the Chief Program Officer for the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia. She is responsible for strategic and long-term institutional planning with specific oversight of exhibitions, education, and public programs. In her time at NLM, she has established the Learning and Public Engagement team and led the team in production of expanded onsite and virtual learning programs for all ages. She has more than 15 years’ experience in collections-based education, having led education departments for museums and archives in the United States and Britain, including the New-York Historical Society, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Museum of the American Revolution. She has a PhD in American Studies from the University of Birmingham, UK, and has published on the intersection of race, place, and memory in post-industrial cities. 

Paul Horton

University of Chicago Lab School

Paul Horton has taught history from sixth grade through college freshmen for forty years. His career includes teaching in public, parochial, independent, and clinical laboratory schools. He currently teaches at University High at The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and his scholarship and reflections on history teaching can be found at The Journal of Southern History, The History Teacher, and the Washington Post and other places.

Sarah Jencks

The History Co:Lab (DC)

Kevin Krahenbuhl

Middle Tennessee State University (TN)

Kevin S. Krahenbuhl is Interim Director of the Assessment, Learning, and School Improvement EdD Program and Assistant Professor of Education at Middle Tennessee State University. Kevin taught history for nearly a decade in K12, taught survey courses in history for several years in community college, taught social studies pedagogy and supervised pre-service teachers, and is engaged in ongoing research of cognition in history. Kevin recognizes historical understanding as among the most important for examining any issue in its context and for equipping people to engage civilly in society. He has published dozens of writings, including many peer reviewed research articles, two historical articles on the Crusades, and the release of his first book in 2018, The Decay of Truth in Education. Kevin is married to Allison and has four children: Audrey, Ethan, Sophie, and Ava.

Kevin Levin

Independent Historian and Educator (MA)

Kevin M. Levin is a historian and educator based in Boston. He has taught on the high school and college level and is the author of numerous articles and books about the American Civil War.

Freda Lin

YURI Education Project (CA)

Freda Lin is the Co-Director of YURI Education Project, a consulting business that develops curriculum and professional learning. With a focus on Asian American and Pacific Islander stories, YURI works with PK-12 teachers and schools, creatives, and cultural institutions such as PBS and the Smithsonian Institution.  Being a student activist leader for Asian American Studies at Northwestern University led her to become a middle and high school history teacher in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. After leaving the teaching field, she facilitated social movement history tours with Freedom Lifted, and consulted with the Center for Asian American Media and UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project. Freda also served  as the Education Program Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, where she implemented programming to promote awareness of World War II Japanese American incarceration experience and its connection to current issues.

Luis Martínez-Fernández

University of Central Florida (FL)

Dr. Luis Martínez-Fernández is Pegasus Professor of History at the University of Central Florida, where he specializes in Cuban and Caribbean History. A prolific author, he has published articles in some of his field’s leading scholarly journals: Latin American Research Review, Slavery and Abolition, and Cuban Studies; his books range in subject from the early colonial Caribbean (Key to the New World [2018]) to the Cuban Revolution (Revolutionary Cuba: A History [2014]). His forthcoming book, All History Is Contemporary History, is a collection of columns on politics, culture, and the unimaginable events of 2019-2022.

Dr. Martínez-Fernández is also a committed public intellectual, who believes that historians have the responsibility to project their knowledge beyond the university classroom and the scholarly press to reach wider audiences. He has actively pursued this commitment through public lectures, editorial articles, participation in documentaries, through museum exhibits, and in collaborations with K-12 teachers. He brings to NCHE’s board decades of service in various leadership capacities including the Board of Trustees of the College Board and the Board of the South Atlantic Humanities Center.

Andy Mink

National Humanities Center (NC)

Andy Mink is the Vice President for Education Programs at the National Humanities Center in Durham, North Carolina.   After earning degrees in history from the University of Virginia and the University of South Carolina, he taught in a public middle school in central Virginia for ten years.  He joined the NHC in 2016 after leadership positions at the University of Virginia and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in which he spearheaded project-based outreach efforts for K-12 educators.  He is a Master Teacher with the Organization of American Historians in their Distinguished Speaker Program and also serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Council for Social Studies.

Alana D. Murray

Shady Grove Middle School (MD)

Alana D. Murray, PhD is an educator-activist who has taught world history on both the middle- and high-school levels and currently serves as a middle school principal at Shady Grove Middle School in Montgomery County, Maryland public schools. She has created pilot lessons on African-American history, conducted youth leadership training workshops for several organizations and provided professional development to educators at conferences across the country. More recently, her research interests center on supporting principals in developing the skills to be culturally reflective school-based leaders.  In 2005, she served as the co-editor of the publication, Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching with Deborah Menkart and Dr. Jenice View.  She is the author of The Development of the Alternative Black Curriculum, 1890-1940: Countering the Master Narrative. This book focuses on the impact of black women in shaping the social studies field.

Murray received a B.A. in government and politics from the University of Maryland, a M.A.T. from Brown University, and her PhD from the University of Maryland. Her work on this project stems from both professional and personal experience. She is the granddaughter of Donald Gaines Murray, whose landmark lawsuit against the University of Maryland Law School successfully desegregated the university. Her grandparents dedicated their careers to an equal education for all children and her parents instilled the critical roles of research and community organizing.

Mia Nagawiecki

Center for Civic Education (NY)

Mia Nagawiecki is the Center for Civic Education’s vice president and chief of staff. She works to advance the Center’s mission, providing meaningful civic and constitutional history education to students, teachers, and citizens across the country and around the world. Prior to joining the Center for Civic Education in 2021, Nagawiecki was vice president for education at the New-York Historical Society. Under her leadership, the Education Division expanded from a local servicer to an award-winning national history education provider. A key initiative in this work, she conceived of and directed the Women & the American Story (WAMS) project, the first-ever comprehensive U.S. women’s history curriculum website. She has also facilitated hundreds of workshops, institutes, and credit-bearing courses for K-12 educators to help enliven the teaching and learning of history and civics. Nagawiecki is also an adjunct faculty member in the CUNY School of Professional Studies MA in Museum Studies program. And in 2021 she was named to the Crain’s New York Business “40 Under 40” cohort. Nagawiecki holds a BA in history from Barnard College and a Master’s in American studies from Columbia University.

Whitney Olson

National History Day - California

Joshua L. Reid

University of Washington (WA)

Born and raised in Washington State, Josh Reid (registered member of the Snohomish Indian Nation) is an associate professor of American Indian Studies and the John Calhoun Smith Memorial Endowed Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington. He holds degrees from Yale University and the University of California, Davis, and is a three-time Ford Foundation Fellow. He has published extensively on American Indian and Indigenous history. Reid currently directs the university’s Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest and edits the Emil and Kathleen Sick Series on Western History and Biography with UW Press and the Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity. He serves on the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review and the editorial advisory board of the Pacific Northwest Quarterly. Reid currently researches Indigenous explorers in the Pacific, from the late eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. His broader research interests include the North American West, environmental history, borderlands, and the Indigenous Pacific.

Mike Williams

National Humanities Center (NC)

Mike Williams serves as the Education Projects Manager for the National Humanities Center, in Durham, NC. As a former history teacher, he has twice been recognized as the Warren County Schools Teacher of the Year and the 2017 Organization of American Historians Tachau National Teacher of the Year. He has published works in the texts "Family History In The Classroom" and "When We Were British: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Visualizing Early America,” and was featured as a contributing author in Time Magazine’s “25 Moments That Changed History” series. He has been awarded fellowships through the West Indies Teacher Institute and Rural Teachers Global Trust where his research connected classrooms in London, Scotland, Ghana and Barbados. He serves in a number of capacities, including the Executive Board of the North Carolina Council for the Social Studies, North Carolina Geographic Alliance, UNC-Duke African Diaspora Fellows Program and Warren County Community Center Executive Board.