News of the OAH

At its 2006 fall meeting in Minneapolis, the OAH executive board took the following actions:

  • Approved the minutes of the April 19-22, 2006 executive board meeting in Washington, as well as the minutes of actions taken subsequent to the meeting.
  • Selected the recipients of the Distinguished Service and Friend of History awards who will be announced at the annual meeting in Minneapolis on March 31, 2007.
  • Thanked ninety-one OAH members who graciously gave their time to deliver more than one hundred OAH Distinguished lectures from July 2005 through June 2006; and especially to Fred Anderson, Robert Bain, Roger Daniels, Adrienne D. Davis, Lloyd C. Gardner, Wanda A. Hendricks, Virginia Sanchez Korrol, Jack N. Rakove, Vicki L. Ruiz, and Bruce J. Schulman, who each gave more than one lecture during the last fiscal year. The board also extended heartiest thanks and highest recognition to OAH Distinguished Lecturer Allida Black for giving more than one lecture each year in 2005-2006 as well as in 2004-2005.
  • Approved resolutions setting up a brokerage account for OAH with Raymond James Financial Services at Monroe Bank, OAH’s bank in Bloomington, allowing OAH to accept gifts of stock to go into the general operating fund.
  • Approved signing on to a working group, created at a Social Studies Summit in Arlington, VA, in September 2006, whose mission is to “advocate for greater recognition of the core social studies—civics, economics, geography, history—within the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.”
  • Agreed to ask University of Missouri, Kansas City, Department of History to submit a formal proposal for resuming the Talking History program as a podcast.
  • Agreed to discontinue biennial regional conferences.
  • Approved accepting a challenge grant from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History 1) for the OAH Magazine of History and 2) to provide copies of the OAH Magazine to members of the National Council for History Education for the rest of FY 2007.
  • Agreed to adopt the revised budget for FY 2007 that will cover the FY 2006 deficit of $179,000. The executive director is encouraged to consider further savings for FY 2007.
  • Agreed that OAH should not reapply for the NEH challenge grant for community college regional workshops.
  • Approved a motion instructing the Finance Committee to investigate and report to the board on restructuring current membership dues.
  • Endorsed the white paper, “The Next Generation of History Teachers: A Message to Departments of History at American Colleges and Universities,” which was prepared following a June 2006 conference in Charlottesville, Virginia on “How College History Departments Can Produce the Best K-12 History Teachers.” The document will be widely distributed, especially to history departments at American institutions of higher education.
  • Agreed to have a session at every annual meeting about current national issues or crises.
  • Commended Bruce Craig of the National Coalition for History for his years of service and dedication to the history profession.
  • Began a discussion on strategic planning.