2025 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRANT AWARDS

Earlier this year, IHE awarded six grants for professional development in cultural heritage education to these organizations and individuals:

* Arizona Site Stewards Program Foundation, the home of the state’s Project Archaeology program, for working with the Arizona Library Association to host four regional Project Archaeology workshops in the state, with a goal of providing nonformal educators and library professionals the tools for integrating cultural heritage education in homeschool and afterschool programs.

* The Arkansas Archaeological Survey (ARAS), working with the Arkansas Archaeological Society, for a two-day archaeology education workshop for middle and high school teachers. The Gardening, Gathering, and Agriculture curriculum ARAS developed for the state will be one of the featured topics. IHE supported the rollout workshop for the curriculum in 2022.

* ASM Public Archaeology, for Maui Voyaging Heritage, a one-day event in collaboration with descendant community members, to describe and demonstrate the Native Hawaiian traditions of wayfinding on sailing canoe voyages, local plant knowledge, and woodworking with traditional tools. The workshop is designed to engage educators and through them, young people; it is part of a multi-event plan to keep these traditions alive.

* Julia Berg, a Maryland teacher, for a multi-day archaeology workshop designed by and for Maryland K-12 educators, consisting of hands-on experiences in the field, the lab, and the classroom. The goal is to enable teachers to incorporate archaeology lessons into existing curricula, supporting new state standards that increase focus on pre-contact societies.

* Montana State University-Northern (Havre, MT), for a three-day workshop to introduce area teachers to the significance of two local archaeological sites – a bison-drive site and a petroglyph site. Instructors will provide teachers with methods and materials for including Indigenous culture and archaeology in K-12 social studies.

* The Alliance for Heritage Conservation (North Carolina), for its annual summer teacher institute, providing teachers with materials on Native American experiences in the Carolinas from European contact to the Indian Removal Act era. IHE has helped support this successful institute each year since 2022.

Thanks very much to these educators for outstanding contributions to heritage education!