Consortium Member Showcase

TPS Consortium Member Showcase:
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE)

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) is a growing metropolitan university currently serving approximately 13,600 students. Situated on 2,660 acres, SIUE’s campus provides students with an idyllic academic setting while its proximity to St. Louis, Missouri, offers them access to extensive cultural and professional opportunities. SIUE offers a variety of undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Arts and Sciences, Business, Education, Engineering and Nursing and professional degrees in Dental Medicine and Pharmacy. The University’s mission underscores its dedication to “the communication, expansion and integration of knowledge through excellent undergraduate education as its first priority and complementary excellent graduate and professional academic programs; through the scholarly, creative research activity of its faculty, staff, and students; and through public service and cultural and arts programming in its region.”

The Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville began as a pilot program in 2002. TPS-SIUE works with K-12 teachers, librarians, media specialists, and pre-service teachers in urban, suburban and rural areas. The TPS program at SIUE offers different types of professional development opportunities to promote and perpetuate lifelong learning with the Library of Congress Web site. All professional development offerings are driven by TPS-SIUE’s mission to build collaborations between professional and local institutions, including school districts, universities, colleges, libraries, and educational organizations with K-12 teachers, librarians, and media specialists. TPS-SIUE’s workshop series and graduate course offer instruction on how best to use the Library’s digital collections and educational resources based on individual’s needs. Participants learn how to design activities that promote inquiry into a topic using digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress Web site. Themed summer institutes provide special opportunities for participants to work with multiple subject-matter experts in researching and inquiring into the Library’s digital collections more deeply. Opportunities to share effective strategies for using primary sources in the K-12 classroom are embedded throughout the institutes.

TPS-SIUE program participants collectively learn about the past, connect with the present, and plan for the future. The summer institute offers a unique opportunity for educators and professionals to reunite and collaborate in an in-depth study using the Library’s primary sources. The 2009 “Learning with Lincoln Institute” and “Conflict and War: The People’s Response Institute” fostered collaboration between archivists, librarians, K-12 educators and historians from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the SIUE Historical Studies Department, and the TPS programs at Eastern Illinois University, Quincy University and Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Several TPS-SIUE teacher participants are sharing their expertise through fellowships and conference presentations. New institute themes are developed and new collaborators are invited each year to continue building a network of educators and professionals sharing ideas and effective practices to promote life long learning and critical thinking with 21st century learners.

Back to top