Two professors awarded national humanities grant

Grant will fund workshops for K-12 teachers highlighting regional landmarks

By California State University, Bakersfield

August 31^st, 2021

Two local professors are looking to bring more national awareness of some of the region’s historical and cultural landmarks.

Dr. Adam Sawyer — assistant professor of teacher education and director of the Liberal Studies program at California State University, Bakersfield — and Bakersfield College History Professor Dr. Oliver Rosales have received a $190,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to hold two workshops focused on migration and agricultural labor history in the San Joaquin Valley.

The professors are partnering to lead two one-week, place-based workshops for 72 K-12 teachers titled “California Dreamin’: Migration, Work, and Settlement in the ‘Other’ California.” The workshops will be available to local educators as well as teachers across the nation.

“To be able to create an experience for local teachers but also to showcase this region to a broader national audience, we couldn’t be happier that the NEH chose to give us that opportunity,” Dr. Sawyer said.

The workshops are being funded through a Landmarks of American History and Culture grant from the NEH, a federal agency that supports research, education and public programs in the humanities. Dr. Rosales said this is the first time the grant has been awarded to a Valley project.

“I don’t think that in history of the National Endowment for the Humanities that there’s ever been a landmarks grant issued within this particular region of California, so I think that’s really significant,” he said.

The workshops will give educators a guided, first-hand experience at several sites in Kern County and the surrounding area, including The Forty Acres in Delano, the National Chavez Center in Keene, the Sunset Labor Camp near Weedpatch and Allensworth State Historical Park in Earlimart.

“These are amazing places of historical significance in rural America and the multi-ethnic, multi-racial history of the United States,” Dr. Sawyer said.

Besides the site visits, the workshops will also include presentations, lectures and group seminars with site experts. The CSUB Historical Research Center will also provide access to digital archival materials relevant to each site.

Teachers from outside of the region will have the option to stay in a CSUB dormitory for the duration of the workshop they are participating in, Dr. Rosales said. They will also be provided meals during the five-day program.

“It’s a paid summer professional development experience,” he said. “The NEH knows how hard teachers work and how infrequent opportunities are for quality, in-depth humanities programs.”

An 'iconic' region

Dr. Sawyer and Dr. Rosales first crossed paths in 2010, when they were both faculty members at Bard College in Delano and taught a course together. Dr. Sawyer had moved to Kern County from the Bay Area in 2009.

“What drew me to Delano was in many ways how iconic a place it was in the setting of the farmworkers movement,” he said. “I was very inspired to come here to work but I was also disheartened in my engagement with K-12 education that there wasn’t nearly the awareness I expected of the iconic nature of this region. I didn’t see that reflected in how students spoke about being here in the community.”

Dr. Rosales, a native of the region, had similar concerns. After he began working at Bakersfield College in 2012, Dr. Rosales started incorporating oral history and first-hand research of the Valley labor movement into his courses.

When Dr. Sawyer learned about the work Dr. Rosales was doing, he said he brought up the idea of a collaboration that resulted in the publication of a research article in 2019 titled “Improving Schooling Outcomes for Latinos in Rural California: A Place-Based Approach to Farm Workers History.”

The idea for the workshops came out of working together on that project, Dr. Sawyer said.

The application window for the workshops will open on Nov. 15, 2021 and last through March 1, 2022. A project website with information about the application process is expected to go live in October. Dr. Rosales said the workshops will likely be held sometime during summer 2022.

Dr. Sawyer said he hopes teachers who participate in the program will gain a better understanding of what rural America is and how the Valley reflects the diversity of the nation.

“In many ways, the political discourse in this country has painted rural America as this White monolith, when it truly is multi-ethnic and multi-racial,” he said. “Part of what we’re trying to do is break apart some of these stereotypes of what might divide urban and rural places and what rural America really looks like.”

Oliver said one of the primary goals of the workshops is that participating educators will incorporate what they’ve learned about the region’s historical sites into their teachings so that students will have a better awareness and understanding of the Valley’s history.

“We want teachers to be able to visit these sites and then implement a revised or new curriculum that’s leveraging these rural landmarks,” he said. “The goal is to make sure these landmark sites can surface within curriculum that especially deals with rural communities, agriculture and migration.”

Dr. Bre Evans-Santiago, chair of CSUB's Teacher Education Department, said she is excited about what this project will bring to the community.

“Understanding that this grant seeks to preserve historical and cultural societies, this is perfect for Kern County!" she said. "Dr. Sawyer and his team will not only contribute place-based workshops on migration and agricultural labor history for K-12 teachers, but our community will benefit for decades based on what our teachers will learn and pass on to their students and generations that follow. We are honored to have this project within Teacher Education and look forward to the fruit it will bear.”

While the NEH grant only funds two workshops, Sawyer and Rosales both hope the program won’t end there. They plan to reapply for additional funding to be able to offer more workshops in the future.

“My hope is that Adam and I can set a foundation for something that will be sustained and continued,” Dr. Rosales said.

Regardless of the future of the program, the professors are grateful that the National Endowment for the Humanities decided to fund this project.

“I’m so glad that they are extending funding opportunities to rural communities, to multi-lingual communities and underserved communities,” Rosales said. “It’s important that the dollars go not just to Los Angeles or San Francisco, but that they serve all of California and all of the United States.”