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Amy Tillerson
New History Professor Brings Diversity to Department
When Mary Baldwin College Professor of History Kenneth Keller helped secure a $700,000 academic grant from the U.S. Department of Education, he not only brought to campus an innovative graduate program for teachers, he also brought Instructor of History Amy Tillerson. Tillerson is director of the new Institute for Decisive Events in American History; she also teaches undergraduate history courses, specifically African American history.
The Institute for Decisive Events in American History is a unique approach to teaching history that highlights the events that most influenced the country's development and covers material in Virginia's Standards of Learning. For the next three years, Tillerson will help lead workshops and trips to many of Virginia's historic sites with teachers from Staunton, Waynesboro, Augusta County, and Rockbridge County.
Tillerson taught various history courses at the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Morgan State University, and Piedmont Virginia Community College. She earned her B.A. from Virginia Tech with a major in African American History. She earned her master's from the same university and is working on a Ph.D. from Morgan State University in Baltimore. For her dissertation, Tillerson is researching the activism of African American women in Prince William County, Virginia, during the racially tense era between 1930 and 1965, when students went on strike from school to protest "separate but equal" conditions. "Women in that situation were dealt a double-blow of oppression - race and gender - and yet they came together to be activists," she said.
The Institute for Decisive Events gives Tillerson the opportunity to recruit and work with local history teachers looking to liven up their lesson plans or brush up on historical knowledge. The one-week kickoff session on the revolutionary Era was hosted by MBC in summer 2004; teachers will continue to attend classes and visit sites such as Monticello, the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace, and other places in Virginia where critical events took place.
In addition to her work with the Institute, Tillerson teaches African American History and US History. She helped reshape one course that covered three centuries of African American history to two courses so the information can be examined in more depth. She hopes that African American history will soon become a requirement not only for African American studies minors, but for all history majors. "My courses challenge students to investigate and critically analyze the history of a group of Americans whose experiences have often been omitted from a larger understanding of American history," she said.
Tillerson hopes to introduce a course in the next few semesters - perhaps in conjunction with the music department - on the Harlem Renaissance. Since her arrival on campus, volumes of primary sources from African Americans have been added to the microfiche collection at MBC's Grafton Library. She hopes the resources will encourage her students to find new, unknown voices speaking about familiar topics.
"It is my objective to convince students that you can "do" history. It is an active discipline where they do not have to just be passive acceptors of facts and figures," she said.
History major Kareema Mays '05 said part of Tillerson's skill is in her ability to draw out her students' strengths in the classroom and sense when someone is struggling. "She is so easy to talk to," Kareema said. "She has helped me a lot with what I will do after graduation by pointing out resources and being realistic with me about what will benefit me.
Freshman Barbara Jackson said Tillerson became her teacher even before
Jackson took a class with the professor. "She spent at least an
hour helping me with a paper and I was virtually a stranger to her
at that point," said Barbara, who is enrolled in the second part
of Tillerson's African American history survey course. "It is
special to have someone with her knowledge and personal background
teaching African American history here," she said.