Landmarks of American History and Culture: Workshops for School Teachers
Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution
June 28-July 3, July 12-July 17, and August 2-7, 2009
Dear Colleague:
The Tsongas Industrial History Center warmly invites you to join us at Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts, for a week-long summer Landmarks Workshop, Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Teachers of history, language arts, science, technology, and math will find Lowell a most engaging classroom.
This six-day (Sunday night through Friday) teacher workshop uses the rich resources of Lowell National Historical Park, Old Sturbridge Village, and Concord, MA, museums and historic sites to offer residential learning experiences during the following weeks: June 28–July 3, July 12–July 17, and Aug. 2–7, 2009. Each participant receives a stipend of $750 to cover housing, some meals, books and other expenses. Some additional funds are available on a case-by-case basis for travel. Travel funds and stipend balances are allocated after the Workshop is over.
Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution Website
The Inventing America Workshop website, www.uml.edu/tsongas/NEH, provides useful information about the Workshop and will include a full syllabus with all reading assignments and details about workshop sessions.
Theme
In 1978, Congress created Lowell National Historical Park, recognizing “that certain sites and structures in Lowell, Massachusetts, historically and culturally the most significant planned industrial city in the United States, symbolize in physical form the Industrial Revolution.” No city offers as dramatic a view of the American Industrial Revolution as Lowell. Founded by Boston merchants in the 1820s, Lowell quickly emerged as the foremost industrial city in the United States. These early industrial capitalists, aided by skilled mechanics, borrowed from and improved upon British engineering and manufacturing technology, first on the Charles River in Waltham, Massachusetts, and later on a far larger scale in Lowell, where they created a massive water-powered textile center on the Merrimack River. They sought to create a factory village that would compete successfully with English manufactures, but co-exist comfortably with the values of a traditional agricultural society. What these founders established, and the massive social, technological, and economic changes resulting from their enterprise, will be the subject of our Landmarks of American History workshop.
Lowell National Historical Park and the City of Lowell are extraordinarily rich “classrooms,” and the Inventing America workshop sessions make full use of them. Lowell’s “Mile of Mills” was once powered by canals that the Park now maintains and that we explore on interpreted boat tours through the canals and out to the Merrimack River. At the Boott Cotton Mills, we can observe (and hear the roar of) ninety operating power looms weaving cotton cloth, and use new exhibits and audio-visual materials to learn about topics ranging from farm labor, to the inventions and workers of Lowell’s heyday, to modern international textile production. In the nearby Boott boardinghouse, we learn from unique exhibits that bring to life the living conditions of Lowell’s “mill girls” and the stories of later Lowell immigrants. Connecting these and other Lowell historical and cultural sites is a trolley system using restored turn-of-the-century trolleys that contribute to the historical ambience that pervades Lowell today.
Content, Scope, and Approach
The Inventing America Workshop combines scholarly presentations with on-site investigations of the canals, mills, worker housing, and exhibits of Lowell National Historical Park and of other sites in Lowell's historic district. Sessions draw on scholarly monographs (discussed below), primary sources (such as "mill girl" letters), and works of literature and historical fiction. We intersperse hands-on activities with lecture-discussions and field investigations. In addition to Lowell’s landmark resources, we take full advantage of Old Sturbridge Village exhibits and scholars to explore pre-industrial rural life and draw on the expertise of scholars and presenters at Walden Pond and Minute Man National Historical Park in Concord, Massachusetts, to explore how prominent authors addressed the question of industrialization’s effect on American life, values, and the environment.
Hands-on activities deepen participants' understanding by engaging them in simulations where they weave cloth, build water-powered mill systems, and work on assembly lines. Participants even cook a meal over fireplaces at Old Sturbridge Village and discuss farm vs. factory life after a boardinghouse dinner at the Boott Cotton Mills.
Assigned readings include one core text, Inventing America: A History of the United States, Vol. 1 (1st or 2nd edition), that all participants should purchase. The Center provides all other books and resources, scholarly readings, farm and factory primary sources, excerpts from works by such authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and a wide variety of lesson plans.
Participants should read, prior to the Workshop, one of the following works of historical fiction for youth: Katherine Paterson's Lyddie (New York: Puffin Books, 1991); OR Avi's Beyond the Western Sea, Book Two: Lord Kirkle's Money (New York: Orchard Books, 1996); OR Barry Denenberg's So Far From Home –The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl (from the Dear America series, New York: Scholastic, 1997). Participants may either purchase the historical fiction title of their choice or borrow a copy from a library.
Three generations of scholars have recognized the importance of Lowell to American history, encompassing such areas of study as technology and business, women’s history, labor history, urban studies, and American studies. The finest of these works place Lowell in larger regional or national contexts.
In the 1920s Caroline F. Ware, in a path-breaking study of New England’s textile industry, examined not only the men who founded Lowell’s cotton textile corporations, but also the women who worked in the mills. Her book remains a classic among scholars of labor and business history. Influenced by her work, Thomas Dublin produced the Bancroft prize-winning Women at Work, edited volumes of factory letters for his work Farm to Factory, and authored the outstanding Lowell:The Story of an Industrial City, the visitor handbook of Lowell National Historical Park.
An important complement to Dublin’s work is Thomas Bender’s Toward an Urban Vision, one of the finest urban histories produced to date. Bender explores the changing social fabric and economic forces in Lowell as it grew, within the span of twenty-five years, from a factory village to a teeming urban center.
The scholarship on the city’s industrial interests, engineering, and technology is equally extensive. One such study, George S. Gibbs’ monograph of the Saco-Lowell Company, highlights the important role Lowell played in the nation’s early machine-making industry. Robert Dalzell’s Enterprising Elite sheds significant light on the kinship networks of the founding “Boston Associates,” their business practices, and the social and political influences this class exerted over nineteenth-century New England. Merritt Roe Smith devotes an entire chapter to the Spindle City in Inventing America (core text of the Workshop), an American history textbook for college and advanced placement high school students. Inventing America is a synthetic narrative that explores the nation’s history through the lens of technology, invention, innovation, and social change.
Core Faculty and Specialist Lecturers
The scholars and presenters include former Lowell National Historical Park Historian Gray Fitzsimons, one of the foremost scholars of Lowell history. History faculty include Dr. Chad Montrie of UMass Lowell, whose specialty is U.S. environmental, labor, and social history; Dr. Merritt Roe Smith, Historian of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-author of the acclaimed U.S. History text Inventing America; Dr. Patrick Malone, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and American Civilization, and preeminent authority on Lowell’s canal system; and UMass Lowell professors Dr. Robert Forrant, Labor Historian and Professor of Regional, Economic, and Social Development; Dr. Melissa Pennell, Professor of English and American Studies, whose research interest is 19th-century American literature; Dr. Bridget Marshall, Professor of English, who specializes in teaching with primary sources, and Dr. Marie Frank, Assistant Professor of Art History, whose engaging, illustrated talk draws from NEH's "Picturing America" initiative.
To start the week’s activities, Roe Smith will engage teachers in thinking about the transformation of such New England industries as shoes, machine tools, and guns in a newly developing market and cash economy. Later in the day, Pat Malone presents a slide overview and leads a teacher favorite: a trolley-and-boat tour of Lowell’s canals and Merrimack River. We finish with a look at the Suffolk Mill turbines, flywheel, and belt-and-pulley system of powering looms, and a visit to the Boott Mills boardinghouse. On Tuesday, at Old Sturbridge Village, Jack Larkin illuminates the transition to a market-based economy. In the Village, teachers discover how farming towns and traditional apprenticeships were affected by the growing market and by industrialization. Back in Lowell, on Wednesday, we will examine with Gray Fitzsimons the mill management hierarchy and the volatility of textile manufacturing before the Civil War, discussing the consequences of competition and market fluctuations on prices, wages, and working conditions. Gray will also co-lead (with teacher Dave McKean) our immigration study tour on Friday, the last day of the workshop. Wednesday's schedule also includes a hands-on assembly line simulation that Bob Forrant builds upon by looking at labor’s responses to the new industrial order: from early “turnouts” to the formation of labor associations to a series of petitions for a ten-hour workday. In the afternoon, teachers select from various primary-source-based activities, and in the evening they are entertained by an outstanding role player who "becomes" three different mill girls. On Thursday, Melissa Pennell and Chad Montrie lay the intellectual groundwork for our explorations at two Concord sites in talks on Industrialization and Nature. During the week, master teachers are available to assist with resource collection and lesson planning during curriculum development time.
Eligibility and Selection Criteria
This workshop is designed principally for classroom teachers and librarians in public, private, parochial, and charter schools, as well as home-schooling parents. Other K-12 school personnel, including administrators, substitute teachers, and classroom paraprofessionals, are also eligible to participate, subject to available space.
Teachers at schools in the United States or its territorial possessions or Americans teaching in foreign schools where at least 50 percent of the students are American nationals are eligible for this program. Applicants must be United States citizens, residents of U.S. jurisdictions, or foreign nationals who have been residing in the United States or its territories for at least the three years immediately preceding the application deadline. Foreign nationals teaching abroad at non-U.S. chartered institutions are not eligible to apply. Individuals may not apply to participate in a Workshop given by the same director on the same topic in which they have previously participated; in other words, they should not apply to attend the same Workshop twice. Individuals may not apply to study with a director of a Landmarks project who is a family member. Preference will be given to applicants who have never participated in an NEH Landmarks Workshop.
Applicants must complete the NEH application cover sheet and provide all of the information requested below to be considered eligible. An individual may apply to and participate in no more than two Landmarks projects.
Preference will be given to those applicants whose participation in the Workshop is likely not only to enhance their classroom teaching but also to be incorporated into the school’s curriculum and thereby benefit more students.
SYLLABUS
Pre-Workshop Readings and Activities:
1.Meier, Pauline, and others. Inventing America: A History of the United States, Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006 (2nd ed.). Read pages 283-286 of Chapter 9 (“The Fabric of Change”); pages. 291-302, 305-310 of Chapter 10 (“A New Epoch”); pages 319-339 of Chapter 11 (“Political Innovation in a Mechanical Age”); and pages 340-366 of Chapter 12 (“Worker Worlds in Antebellum America”). Corresponding pages in 2003 (1st) edition: 310-314, 317-330 and 335-341, 351-371, 373-450.
2.Dublin, Thomas. Lowell: The Story of an Industrial City. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2001. (Lowell National Historical Park Handbook 140)
3.Read one of the following works of historical fiction: Paterson, Katherine. Lyddie. New York: Puffin Books, 1991; Avi. Beyond the Western Sea, Book Two, Lord Kirkle's Money. New York: Orchard Books, 1996; OR Denenberg, Barry. So Far From Home – The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl. New York: Scholastic, 1997.
4.Web-Based Introduction and Orientation: Two weeks prior to each Workshop, participants will use the electronic Workshop website to:
•Read the Workshop Syllabus and register for optional graduate credit or professional development points/continuing education units.
•Learn to navigate the webpage by introducing themselves, posting or describing a favorite historical primary source, and responding to other participants using the class discussion board.
•Download and read “The Letters of Mary Paul” from the Tsongas Industrial History Center “Lowell and the American Industrial Revolution” source packet.
Sunday Evening: Introduction to the Workshop and to Lowell
4:30 Welcome Reception, Boott Cotton Mills
5:30Dinner
6:30“Mary Paul Comes to Lowell”
Imagining the transition from farm to factory life through picking and carding wool and hand-weaving cloth; analyzing "mill girl" artifacts in a reproduction band box.
7:30 Depart
Readings for Monday:
Review Inventing America: A History of the United States, Vol. 1., Chapter 12, pp. 373-405.
Malone, Patrick M. "Canals and Industry." In The Continuing Revolution, Robert Weible, ed., Lowell, MA: Lowell Historical Society, 1991. pp. 137-153 (2nd ed. 340-366).
Monday: American Industrialization: Lowell, Massachusetts and Manchester, England
8:15 Continental Breakfast, Announcements
9:00 Dr. Merritt Roe Smith
The Rise of American Industrial Capitalism in International Context and the Emergence of the American System of Manufacturing. --Lecture and Discussion
10:30Suffolk Mill Tour: Participants examine a water turbine, complete power train, waterpower and environmental exhibits, and learning stations (with gears, belts/pulleys, flywheels and cams).
12:00 Lunch and Curriculum Resource Browsing
12:45 Dr. Patrick Malone: Harnessing the Merrimack River: Lowell’s Dams, Canals, Powerhouses, and Machinery. Dr. Malone will provide a slide tour of the development of Lowell’s water power system and then take participants on tour using National Park Service boats.
(Concurrent with Water Power Boat Tour) Water Power Workshop and Boardinghouse Tour: Hands-on workshop to build canal systems and regulate water flow, test the efficiency of water wheels, and determine how much to charge mills for the use of the water. Costumed interpretive tour of restored Boott Mill boardinghouse.
5:30 Boardinghouse Dinner at the Boott Cotton Mills, with costumed “keepers” and discussion about teaching history through culinary activities (7 p.m. depart)
Readings for Tuesday:
“A Busy, Bustling, Industrious Population,” in Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790-1840. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. (Selected pages.)
Old Sturbridge Village: “The New England Family,” Nancy Osterud. Monograph.
Old Sturbridge Village Primary Source Packets: “Farm Family Life,” “Youth,” “Choosing Work.”
Optional Reading: Folsom, Michael and Steven Lubar. The Philosophy of Manufactures: Early Debates over Industrialization in the United States. North Andover, MA: Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, 1982.
TUESDAY: Comparing Farm and Factory Life, and Cash and Market Economies - A Field Study at Old Sturbridge Village
7:45 Continental Breakfast
8:30 Bus to Old Sturbridge Village
10:00 Old Sturbridge Village Chief Historian and Museum Scholar Jack Larkin: Farms and Families in New England
11:00 Fireplace Cooking vs. Boarding House Dinner: Participants will cook their dinner over open hearths, eat together, and reflect on domestic work on farms in mid-century New England.
2:00Field Research at Old Sturbridge Village to investigate farm schedules of work, work roles, the family as an economic system for struggling, comfortable, and wealthy farm families, and the effects of factory textile production on the work of young women.
4:00Jack Larkin: Industrialization, Markets, and the Reshaping of Everyday Life—Reflection and Discussion (“How were rural families in New England affected by industrialization? How did the growth of cities and commercial villages affect apprenticeship and other patterns of choosing work?”)
4:45 Depart for Lowell
Readings for Wednesday:
Sources for Annenberg/CPB Workshop 2, “The Lowell System: Women in a New Industrial Society”: Selections from the Lowell Offering, excerpts from the memoirs of Harriet Hanson Robinson and Lucy Larcom, a selection from The Harbinger (1836), and an excerpt from Charles Dickens’ American Notes.
“The Ten Hour Movement,” Tsongas Industrial History Center Primary Source Kit.
Optional Reading: Gordon, Wendy M. Mill Girls and Strangers. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. Chapter 3.
WEDNESDAY: Market Volatility and Worker Responses to the New Industrial Order
8:15Continental Breakfast and Announcements
9:00 Historian Gray Fitzsimons: Managing Markets, Managing Workers: The Volatility of Textile Manufacturing--Lecture and Discussion
10:00 Hands-On Simulation / Museum Exploration (11:20 Break)
Group I Workers on the Line workshop: Teachers are assigned to an assembly line and experience high wages and increased purchasing power (compared with farm work) followed by market-induced speed-ups, stretch-outs, and lay-offs. Workers consider alternative ways to gain control over their working conditions and wages.
Group II Boott Cotton Mills Museum second-floor exhibits (mill work, strikes and protests, unions, workers and managers, child labor, globalization)
10:45Group I Boott Cotton Mills Museum exhibits
Group II Workers on the Line workshop
11:30 Dr. Robert Forrant, UML Regional Economic and Social Development: Labor Responses to the New Industrial Order—Lecture, Discussion
12:30Lunch
1:15Dr. Marie Frank, UML Cultural Studies: Art and Industrialization: Two Works from NEH's "Picturing America"
2:15Dr. Bridget Marshall, UML English Dept.: Using Primary Sources: An Introduction
2:45Option I, Primary Sources: Annenberg/CPB Debate: Participants use primary source documents to debate the question, “Was Lowell an opportunity for working women or a dead end?” (Dr. Bridget Marshall)
Option II, Primary Sources: Ten Hour Movement: Participants use primary sources and take roles as the Committee on Manufactures and as Lowell workers presenting testimony in 1845 to limit the work day to ten hours. (TIHC Staff)
Option III, Especially for Elementary: “Farm to Factory” Curriculum: Participants examine primary sources and related lessons designed especially for younger learners. (TIHC Staff)
Option IV, Curriculum Development Time (Master Teachers and resources available)
4-5:00 “The World of Barilla Taylor” Activity (Tsongas Center primary source -based rental kit) OR
4-5:30 Curriculum Development Time (Master Teachers and resources available)
5:30-8 Dinner-Theater: “Three Mill Girls” Marcia Estabrook, performer.
Participants meet two Lowell mill operatives they have already read about: "mill girl" Mary Paul, labor activist Sarah Bagley, and Irish "mill girl" Mary Harvey. The program explores aspects of immigration, industrialization, labor history, prejudice, and women’s history.
Readings for Thursday:
Montrie, Chad. "'I Think Less of the Factory than of My Native Dell": Labor, Nature, and the Lowell 'Mill Girls.'" Environmental History 9.2 (2004)
Steinberg, Theodore. Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. Amherst: UMass Press, 1994. pp. 1-17.
Excerpts from “Natural History of Massachusetts,” “Winter Walk,” “Walking,” and “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” Henry David Thoreau
Excerpts from Mosses from an Old Manse, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Excerpts from "Nature" and “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson
THURSDAY: Industrialization and Nature: A Comparison of Lowell and Concord
8:15 Continental Breakfast and Announcements
8:45 Literary Responses to Industrialization: Dr. Melissa Pennell (UML English Dept. Chair): Dr. Pennell explores the theme of Continuity and Change: Industrialization, Individualism, and Nature as revealed in nineteenth-century literature.
9:45Bus to Concord, MA, via Pawtucket Falls, Lowell Cemetery, and Wamesit Falls in Lowell
Dr. Chad Montrie, UML labor and environmental historian, leads a tour of three key sites in Lowell, exploring how industrialization changed the Lower Concord River and land along its banks, and the ways in which mill labor altered young women workers' experience with the natural world.
11:30 “Meet the Author” at Walden Pond: Presentation and discussion by Richard Smith who portrays Henry David Thoreau at replica of Thoreau’s cabin. Interpreters lead walks to the actual cabin site, where participants learn more about Thoreau’s Walden experience.
12:30Picnic with the Author Participants enjoy a picnic with "Thoreau" on the grounds at Walden Pond.
1:15"Meet the Author" and Walk to Cabin Site, II (second of two groups)
2:15Bus to Minute Man National Historical Park, North Bridge, historical/literary talk by Concord River
4:00 Return to Lowell
4:45Curriculum Development Time/Dinner (on your own): In preparation for Friday's activities, participants dine in one of Lowell’s ethnic restaurants (their choice), discuss strategies for teaching about immigration (Friday's theme), and reflect on the week’s activities.
Readings for Friday:
Thernstrom, Stephan. Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. Read introduction and Chapter 3, “The Promise of Mobility.”
Lowell National Historical Park Handbook: "Immigrant Lowell," pp. 65-76.
Optional Reading:
Mitchell, Brian C. The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell 1821-61. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. pp. 35-55.
Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. pp. 145-164.
FRIDAY: Immigration and Industrialization: Poverty or Upward Mobility?
8:15Continental Breakfast, Announcements
9:00 “Immigration, Class, and Industrialization: Lowell’s Irish and French Canadians as Case Studies” Local historian and master teacher David McKean takes participants on a tour of St. Patrick’s Church and “the Acre,” Lowell’s immigrant neighborhood, and uses historical accounts and personal experience to explore interactions of the first residents of Lowell with the Irish and with the next immigrant work force, the French Canadians.
11:00Evaluation, Lunch, Follow-Up On-line Activities and Deadlines
1:00 Workshop Ends
Post-Workshop Options:
•From 1-4:30 p.m., participants can return to resource rooms or the computer lab to do any of the following: work on lessons, do research, consult with curriculum advisors, preview David Macaulay's Mill Times video (filmed partly in Lowell), or examine “Millopoly,” an economics simulation in which players play roles as either cotton textile manufacturers, mill workers or cotton plantation owners.
•Re-visit Boott or Suffolk Mill Exhibits or boardinghouse.
•Visit American Textile History Museum or New England Quilt Museum.
Academic Resources
Participants have easy access to the many resources available in the Tsongas Center Teacher Resource Room and Lowell National Historical Park’s library, as well as at the city library and UMass Lowell’s Center for Lowell History (a short walk across Boardinghouse Park near the Boott Mills). Both the Park and the Center for Lowell History have significant collections of primary sources, many of which are available online (http://nps.gov/lowe and http://library.uml.edu/clh). Computer facilities with Internet/e-mail access are available at the Tsongas Center, city library, and Doubletree Hotel.
Workshop Products
The Tsongas Center makes available many lesson plans and sources from which teachers can choose in preparing their Workshop product: a “portfolio” of lesson plans using workshop content (though not necessarily focused on Lowell) for three classroom periods of instruction. Teachers will (1) develop or adapt sources or lessons and submit them to the Tsongas Center by September 1, 2009, (2) choose one lesson they developed or adapted and nominate it for posting on the workshop website, (3) implement lessons with students, and (4) respond to an April 2010 survey about the impact of the Workshop on their teaching and student learning. Optional online discussions are offered in September ("Cotton, Cloth, and Conflict: Meaning of Slavery in a Northern Textile City) and January ("Globalization of Textiles").
Housing and Meals
Lodging will be provided at the Doubletree Hotel, within walking distance (three blocks), for $88 x 5 days = $440 (or $220 if two share a room; the Tsongas Center will arrange sharing for those interested), including air conditioning and all usual services, including Internet access. Should participants wish to come earlier than Sunday or stay beyond Friday, they may need to pay a higher room rate for the extra days. The Workshop budget covers one dinner and two lunches ( “mill girl” boardinghouse dinner, 1830 fireplace lunch, and a “Meet the Author” box lunch). The remainder of the meal plan is provided by Aramark, UMass Lowell’s caterer, at an estimated cost of $130 for the week (five breakfasts, morning and afternoon coffee breaks, three lunches, and two dinners at the Tsongas Center). Participants will be on their own for dinner Tuesday and Thursday night.
Credit
The Tsongas Industrial History Center will provide participants a certificate for up to forty professional development points (CEUs/PDPs) for the face-to-face portion of the Workshop and up to forty additional points if pre/post Workshop assignments are completed, including the submission of a copy of a curriculum portfolio of at least five class periods of instruction. At additional cost, teachers wishing graduate credit may earn up to three graduate credits for the Workshop through the UMass Lowell Graduate School of Education.
Cultural and Recreational Resources
Lowell offers a rich array of cultural and recreational offerings. Not far from the Boott Cotton Mills Museum are the American Textile History Museum, New England Quilt Museum, Revolving Museum and National Streetcar Museum of Lowell. Lowell’s arts scene continues to grow and thrive, with such institutions as the Whistler House Museum of Art, Brush Art Gallery and Studios, and Merrimack Repertory Theater drawing visitors from throughout the region. Lowell’s downtown historic district is lined with shops, antique stores, and a variety of ethnic restaurants, often housed in beautifully restored buildings. Lowell is also home to a minor-league ballpark and sports arena. Other downtown-area attractions include Kerouac Park and the nearby Riverwalk along the Merrimack.
Application Procedure and Deadline
Application information is included with this letter. You will need to complete the application, following the instructions outlined in the NEH instruction sheets.
A completed application consists of three copies of the following collated items:
(1) the completed application cover sheet (filled out online, then printed), at http://www.neh.gov/online/education/participants.
(2) a résumé
(3) an application essay (no longer than one double-spaced page) as outlined below
(4) one reference letter as described below
Application Essay
Perhaps the most important part of the completed application is an essay of up to one double-spaced page. This essay should include information about 1) your professional background and interest in the subject of the Workshop; 2) special perspectives, skills, or experiences of yours that would contribute to the Workshop; and 3) how the experience would enhance your own--and possibly others’--teaching or school service. Please send, by mail, three (3) hard copies to the Tsongas Industrial History Center.
Reference Letter
This letter of recommendation from the principal or department head of your teaching institution or the head of a home schooling association should describe the positive impact of your participation in this NEH Workshop on the school.
Please ask your referee to sign his/her name across the seal on the back of the envelope containing the letter, and enclose the letter with your application.
Application information is included with this letter. Please collate your application in the following order: 1) cover sheet, 2) résumé, and 3) essay (three copies of each), and 4) letter of recommendation (sealed as described above). Your completed application must be postmarked no later than March 16, 2009 and addressed as follows:
Ellen Anstey, Administrative Assistant
Tsongas Industrial History Center
Boott Cotton Mills
115 John St.
Lowell, MA 01852
978-970-5080
Questions and comments should be directed to Ellen Anstey at Ellen_Anstey@uml.edu or 978-970-5080.
Successful candidates will be notified by April 15, 2009, and will have until April 22, 2009 to accept or decline the offer. Once you confirm your participation, you will receive a packet of information that includes a detailed agenda, Workshop readings, and travel and housing information.
We look forward to welcoming you to historic Lowell!
Sincerely,
Sheila Kirschbaum
Co-Director: Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution
Tsongas Industrial History Center
Beryl Rosenthal
Co-Director: Inventing America: Lowell and the Industrial Revolution
Tsongas Industrial History Center
This project is funded as part of the We the People initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Sharing the lessons of history with all Americans.
