People at NCHS

Dr. Gary B. Nash has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for over 40 years and is the author or co-author of over 25 books on history and history education. He is a founding member and council officer of the National Council for History Education, and a former president of the Organization of American Historians. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Society of American Historians. He has published widely on precollegiate history education and was awarded the annual prize for Academic Freedom by the National Council for Social Studies in 2001.

Dr. Nash is also Director of The National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS), founded over 20 years ago with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). NCHS is currently affiliated with the Department of History at UCLA. Under Dr. Nash, the mission of NCHS has been to bridge the gap between academic historians and K-12 teachers. In addition to supervising the production of the NCHS teaching units, in the last few years Dr. Nash has served as a consultant for dozens of curriculum writing projects in different parts of the country and has partnered, along with NCHS, with several Teaching American History Grant programs.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez is associate professor in the UCLA Department of History. Her research interests are in twentieth-century U.S. history with a concentration upon race, migration, and police and prison systems in the American West and U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Her new book, MIGRA! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (University of California Press, 2010) is the first book to tell the story of how and why the U.S. Border Patrol concentrates its resources upon policing unsanctioned Mexican immigration despite the many possible targets and strategies of U.S. migration control. Her current research focuses upon exploring the social world of incarceration in Los Angeles between 1876 and 1965.

Before joining the UCLA History Department in 2007, Tobias Higbie worked with teachers, adult learners, and the public in Chicago and central Illinois.  He was the Academic Director for two Teaching American History grants with the Chicago Public Schools and co-curator of the exhibition Outspoken: Chicago's Free Speech Tradition.  Higbie is the author of Indispensable Outcasts: Hobo Workers and Community in the American Midwest, 1880-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2003), a study of the marginal work force of the early twentieth century--so called hoboes--and their place in debates about class, manly responsibility, and citizenship.

Ross E. Dunn, Co-Director For World History

Ross Dunn is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University, where he taught African, Islamic, and world history for forty years. He has written on North African history, world history, and history education. His work includes The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century and the edited volume The New World History: A Teacher’s Companion. He served as first president of the World History Association. He directs World History for Us All, a web-based model curriculum for world history. Recently, he coauthored World History: The Big Eras with Edmund Burke III and David Christian. He is currently completing a university-level world history textbook with McGraw-Hill.

David Vigilante taught for middle and high school history for the San Diego Unified School District for 30 years and served as History-Social Science Coordinator for the San Diego County Office of Education.  He was the recipient of the Cooperation for Excellence in Public Education Award (1985), the Milkin Family Foundation California Education Award (1988), the San Diego Historical Society Institute of History Award (1989), the San Diego Press Club Headliner Award in Education (1989), and the Center for Civic Education's Roy Erickson Memorial Award (2007).

Vigilante served on the Curriculum Task Force that developed the National Standards for History.  He has developed teaching units for the National Center for History in the Schools and materials for several Department of Education Teaching American History grants, the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the Palm Springs Air Museum, and the Library of Congress’ National Digital Library.  He has also served as curriculum consultant for “Federal Trials and Great Debates” summer institute for teachers sponsored by the American Bar Association and the Federal Judicial History Office.  He has worked with The Huntington Library in the development of teacher materials to support special exhibits on Lincoln, Washington, and Treasures of the Library.  He has served as Chair of the California Department of Education Golden State Examination in American History and the California Assessment program in World History.

Marian McKenna Olivas has worked with NCHS since 1998, first serving as the publications editor and coming on as Program Manager in 2001. Marian also brings over 15 years of educational publishing/curriculum creation experience to the program having worked for University of California Press and done freelance work for the Huntington Library and Museum and the Getty Museum. She became the organizer of the College Connection program that NCHS began with the American Studies Academy (ASA) at Franklin High School in 2005-06. She has coordinated field trips and exposure for the students to such locations as the Autry National Center for the Study of the West and the National Center for Preservation of Democracy.