This roundtable panel involves a variety of perspectives that collectively advance the way that the public engages with the past. Several of the panelists have worked with the California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP), which is a statewide organization housed at UC Davis that promotes quality history-social science instruction at the TK-12 level. Historically, the distance between TK-12 teacher training and academic historical research has often appeared quite wide, to the detriment of both. One effort to shrink this divide has been the Marchand Public Engagement Initiative, a partnership between the UC Davis History Department, the California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP), the Office of Academic Diversity and the Hispanic Serving Institutions Initiative. The initiative is designed to improve classroom instruction at both the K-12 and postsecondary level, apprentice students in community-based historical research and public service, and inform public discourse through increased and regular access to relevant historical scholarship.

Panelists will discuss how the initiative has taken shape in coursework, graduate student and teacher training, and public history projects. Lisa Materson will describe teaching a research seminar focused on the 1977 International Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas. Undergraduate students participated in a multicampus effort to produce a digital exhibit featuring the biographies of participants in the 1977 conference. Daniel Castaneda details the process of forming a partnership with various on-campus resources, including the Special Collections and Archives Department and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Daniel initially organized an exhibit about the first Latino Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, Cruz Reynoso. Vanessa Madrigal-Lauchland will share her experiences working with TK-12th grade Ethnic Studies development. Samantha de Vera, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Pennsylvania State University, will discuss her involvement with the Colored Conventions Project and her efforts to collaborate with K-12 teachers in Philadelphia to create teaching guides around this important public history project. And Beth Slutsky will share how her experiences with the CHSSP and the Marchand Initiative have successfully enhanced educators’ content knowledge, disciplinary understanding, pedagogical skills, and academic literacy expertise. The results of collaborations like those in this roundtable are that a complex and engaging understanding of the past is being imparted to students at all grade levels.

Collectively, these efforts demonstrate the promise of research that invites the public to be active participants in the production of historical knowledge and deepens their understanding of broader historical concepts.