Union College News

Dr. Jimmy Dean Smith Selected for NEH Summer Institute

Dr. Jimmy Dean Smith, professor of English at Union College in Barbourville, has been selected to participate in the Summer Institute for College and University Teachers.

The institute, hosted by Ferrum College in Virginia, is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Held from June 8 through July 4, the program will examine Appalachian issues that link regional study to the liberal arts. Nineteen teachers and scholars from 13 U.S. states and Japan were selected to receive stipends for travel and expenses to participate in the institute.

Guest faculty at the Summer Institute will include poet Frank X. Walker, historian Gordon McKinney, feminist researcher Mary Anglin, book and CD producer Paul Kuzco, Appalachian musician Ron Short and migration scholar Phillip Obermiller. Several Ferrum College faculty members will also serve as faculty and presenters for the institute.

Dr. Smith, whose work at Union includes directing the nascent Honors Community, says, “The interplay between regional and national models of American culture seems likely to remain dynamic in the humanities. I hope to be able to link local (and personal) culture to culture-at-large.”

Dr. Peter Crow, a member of Ferrum’s faculty and director of the institute, says this is an extraordinary opportunity for those selected to participate. "When the institute is over, participants will have developed ways to incorporate their own regions and localities into their students' learning. They will see how a focus on the near-at-hand can become a window on the wider world. And, most importantly, they will know the excitement of a learning community wherein the community, the professors, and the students all learn together," Crow says.

June 16, 2008

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