Posted: Thursday, April 4, 2013

In collaboration with the Notre Dame Club of the Tri-State, the University of Evansville will host the area’s inaugural Hesburgh Lecture, featuring University of Notre Dame educator and historian Brian S. Collier.

Collier will present “Save Our Schools, Save Our Country, and Save Your Family” at 7 p.m. Friday, April 12 in Eykamp Hall, Room 251 in the Ridgway University Center. His lecture is free and open to the public and will be introduced by University of Evansville President Thomas A. Kazee.

“How did we get to the point where so many American schools struggle and yet so many kids are busier than any time since World War II?” Collier said. “As families race to soccer practices and Scouts, wait in drop-off lines and at oboe lessons, and sit through recitals, parents wonder how this is the fulfillment of the American dream. This lecture traces American education since the turn of the 20th century and shows what has changed and what some of our predecessors did really well to raise ‘the greatest generation.’ What lessons can be learned from the schools that trained humans to go to the moon, write novels, plays, and create television programming?”

Named for Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, the Hesburgh Lecture Series is a major community outreach program of Notre Dame alumni clubs around the nation. The series features Notre Dame faculty members discussing topics ranging from art and architecture to economics to social concerns.

Collier holds a PhD in American Indian history and the history of education in America from Arizona State University. He is a faculty member of supervision and instruction for Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Service through Teaching program, which trains recent college graduates to work as teachers at underserved Catholic schools while earning master’s degrees in education from Notre Dame. He also works with current teachers to develop curriculum for their classrooms and teaches courses on the history of education in America and American Indian history.

Collier’s research interests include American Indian education, race, class, and gender. His research in education is at the intersection of where families and teachers can partner to take back their families, their schools, and their neighborhoods. Collier has written articles and book chapters on Native Americans, the American West, teaching in the American West, race relations, gender, and the Harlem Globetrotters.

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