The six new members of the OAH executive board and nominating board bring years of service and dedication to the organization. The new executive board members are Linda Shopes, David Trask, and David J. Weber. Shopes, a historian for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, served on the OAH Nominating Board from 1992 through 1994 and is currently on the Ad Hoc Committee on the OAH Constitution. She plans to use her time on the Executive Board to help the organization reach a broader audience. Shopes observed, “Throughout my career, I have worked to democratize the content and practice of history and the audience for it. While much divides professional and popular understandings of the past, public history is an important means of bridging this gap. I have thus come to advocate a professional ethic that recognizes engagement with the public as a normal part of historians’ working lives, wherever we’re employed.” Specifically, she promised to help the OAH “work with the board to advance the particular interests of public historians, as well as address the many other concerns pressing upon all historians, including the impact of changing technologies and globalization on our craft; the corporatization of educational institutions; the quality of history education in the schools; threats to intellectual freedom; and an OAH that encourages diversity and serves all privileged to be historians.”
David Trask, a professor of history and chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, North Carolina, served on the OAH Committee on Community Colleges from 2000 through 2003. In 2002, he chaired the committee. Trask has also written articles in the OAH Newsletter and the OAH’s Community College Historians in the United States (1999) about the importance of the college survey course in history instruction. Trask hopes to bring to the board a greater awareness of the potential for history to reach wider audiences. He noted recently that “historians need to be more aware of those moments when we work with nonhistorians. Although we have a good handle on the study of the past itself and our lives within the community of historians, we are often not as effective in explaining our work and its fruits to the general public.” Whether in “the survey course, the museum exhibit, the lecture or the commentary, we need to prepare historians to be more effective ambassadors of history in those settings.”
The third incoming member of the Executive Board is David J. Weber. Weber is the Robert and Nancy Dedman Professor of History and Director at the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Weber served on the OAH Ray Billington Prize Committee from 1993 through 1995 and also as an OAH Distinguished Lecturer from 1995 through 2001. Weber has published over sixty articles and twenty-one books, and was the guest editor of the “Spanish Frontier in North America” issue of the OAH Magazine of History (Summer 2000). His book, The Mexican Frontier (1982), won numerous awards including the OAH Ray Billington Prize. As a teacher and historian for thirty-nine years, Weber brings a wide range of knowledge and experience including service on various editorial boards, program committees, prize committees, and on other boards ranging from the state (Texas State Historical) to the national (Omohundro and Conference on Latin American History). He was president of the Western History Association (1990-1991). He hopes that his “approach to American history through Latin American and Mexican American history would bring a different angle of vision to the board.”
New to the nominating board are Donna Gabaccia, James A. Percoco, and George J. Sanchez. In preparation for the upcoming duties, all three members elected to sit in on the spring 2006 meeting of the Nominating Board.
Gabaccia, who is Rudolph J. Vecoli Professor at the University of Minnesota, was cochair of the 2000 OAH Annual Meeting Program Committee and is currently an OAH Distinguished Lecturer. Gabaccia notes that she brings an “eclectic and broad range of scholarly networks” to the Nominating Board and seeks, in all her professional service “to identify and involve in scholarly organizations good researchers who may be little known because they are younger or working outside the mainstream either independently, in other disciplines, in other countries, or at teaching-oriented colleges.”
Jim Percoco, a history teacher at West Springfield High School in Springfield, Virginia, and an adjunct professor in the College of Education and History Department at American University, brings a range of experiences to the Nominating Board. Percoco served on the OAH Teaching Committee from 2000 through 2003—chairing of the committee in 2002. He was also an OAH Distinguished Lecturer from 2000 through 2003. Percoco has written several articles for the OAH Newsletter (see page 1) and served as the guest editor of the “Public History” issue of the OAH Magazine of History (Winter 2002). Percoco pledges to “work hard to insure that diversity in the elected governing bodies and the general membership are honored, be it race, gender, themes of history, or place of profession—the K-12 classroom, the historic site or museum, college or university.”
George J. Sanchez, an associate professor of history and director of the program in American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, brings seventeen years of OAH service to the Nominating Board. From 1989 through 1992, he served on the Minority Committee and was chair of that committee in 1991. From 1997 to 2000, he served on the Elliott Rudwick Prize Committee—in 1998 he chaired the committee. He also served on the Best American History Essays Editorial Board from 2004 to 2005. He is currently on the Committee on the Status of African American, Latino/a, Asian American, and Native American Historians (ALANA) and ALANA History and is also an OAH Distinguished Lecturer. As a member of the Nominating Board, Sanchez aims to “broaden the participation of various members of the professional historical community in the organization” by seeking “a diversity of experience and background for service and positions.” “Having worked with a wide variety of museums, schools, and practitioners of public history in my career,” he notes, “I appreciate the perspective that those outside colleges and universities can make to our collective mission to convey U.S. history to a wide variety of audiences.”
Phillip Guerty is interim editor of the OAH Magazine of History and assistant to the OAH Executive Director.
