VANCOUVER, Wash. — A $2.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, will allow Washington State University Vancouver professor Candice Goucher to join with Portland State University professor Linda Walton as the co-lead scholars for the production of a multi-media series designed to help teachers learn more about world history.
The series, “Bridging World History,” will be structured into 26 units, each organized by a study guide and including video- and text-based content. The series broadcast will be available worldwide, and video and print materials will also be available online. Project production will begin in March with completion projected for the fall of 2004.
The grant was made to Oregon Public Broadcasting by the Annenberg Foundation and CPB, a non-profit partnership whose mandate is to create and distribute media and telecommunications to advance excellent teaching in American schools. This is the fourth grant that OPB has received from Annenberg/CPB since 2000, each for the production of a nationally distributed educational series.
Cindy Knowles, senior producer for OPB, spearheaded the grant request. “We’re especially happy about this grant, since we were competing against some of the other top-producing PBS stations,” she said. “This is a huge vote of confidence in our ability to create nationally recognized productions.”
Goucher and Walton are heading the project. Goucher is the director of the liberal arts programs and a professor of history at WSU Vancouver. She teaches courses in African history and Caribbean studies. Her publications include numerous articles and reviews in African history, African art and archaeology and African-Caribbean technology and culture. She is co-producer of the award winning video, “Blooms of Banjeli: Technology and Gender in African Iron-making” (1983). Her current research project is based on the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Goucher co-authored the two-volume book, “In the Balance: Themes in Global History” (McGraw-Hill, 1998), with Walton.
Walton is the chair of the history department at PSU. She teaches courses on East Asian civilization and Chinese social religious and intellectual history. Her research includes articles and book chapters in middle period Chinese social and intellectual history and her current work reflects cultural accommodation under Mongols (ca.1275-1350s). Walton authored the book, “Academies and Society in Southern Sung China” (Hawaii, 1999).
WSU Vancouver is in its 14th year serving southwest Washington and local Oregon communities. Thirteen bachelor’s and nine master’s degrees are attainable through junior-, senior- and graduate-level courses in more than 35 fields of study. The 351-acre campus is located seven miles north of the Vancouver-Portland metropolitan area.
