UPPER FREEHOLD – Resident Sue Kozel has been selected from a national applicant pool to attend one of six summer study opportunities supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The endowment is a federal agency that supports “Landmarks of American History and Culture” workshops each summer to give faculty the opportunity to work in collaboration and study with experts in humanities-related disciplines.
Kozel, an adjunct professor with Ocean County College in Toms River, Brookdale Community College in Lincroft and Mercer County Community College in West Windsor, will participate in a workshop titled “Revolution to Republic: Philadelphia’s Place in Early America.”
Designed for community college faculty, the one-week program will be held June 15-21. The Society for the Historians of the Early Republic (SHEAR) will host the program, which will be directed by Dr. RoderickMcDonald, professor of history at Rider University in Lawrenceville and editor of the Journal of the Early Republic.
“In being selected to study in Philadelphia for one week, I will be able to pursue further research on Philadelphia commerce and a Philadelphia entrepreneur who operated businesses in Upper Freehold, New Jersey, during the late Colonial through early Republic period,” Kozel, who is studying slavery in Upper Freehold and Allentown, said.
She continued, “The prestigious workshop will help me better understand the relationship between Philadelphia commerce and slavery, Caribbean commerce and trade, and abolitionist movements in both Philadelphia and New Jersey.”
Each of the 50 faculty members selected to participate in the programreceive a stipend of $500 to cover their study and living expenses.
Topics for the other five “Landmarks of American History and Culture” workshops offered for community college faculty this summer are “Transcendentalism in Concord, Mass.,” “Henry Ford and American Industry,” “African American History and Culture in the Georgia Low Country,” “The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi,” and “Political Cartoons and the Press in the Gilded Age.”
The approximately 300 faculty members who participate in these studies are estimated to teach over 50,000 American students the following year, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Kozel said she will be able to bring the new knowledge she learns at the workshop into her classrooms.
“I am grateful to the National Endowment of the Arts and SHEAR for this wonderful opportunity,” Kozel said.
For more information on SHEAR’s NEH “Landmarks of American History and Culture” workshops, contact Patrick Spero at 215-546-0754 or e-mail nehlandmarks@ shear.org.