'Lockeford Elementary, a 500-student K-eight school, spent Covid funds for SIPPS books, flashcards and other materials, as well as training for teachers. “Her dedication inspired me to become the best history teacher I can be. How one California district invested its Covid funds in literacy, boosting student achievement and morale. DeWitt’s historiography class really stood out to me,” says James Trusler, Hist’16, who teaches social studies at Rolla Junior High School. Her S&T courses include the Making of Modern Germany, European Migration and Nationalism Formation, and Historiography. She spoke at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City on the 100th anniversary of the war’s end. “The Collaboratory assistantship will encourage the growth of significant, original research in the humanities.”ĭeWitt writes and speaks frequently about social issues and ethnicity during World War I.

in history from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a master’s degree in history from Truman State University. “My goal in creating the endowment was to fund a permanent position dedicated to encouraging humanities students to exchange ideas, solve problems and create innovative projects,” says DeWitt, who joined the S&T faculty in 2003 after earning a Ph.D. Her endowment established the DeWitt Collaboratory Undergraduate Student Assistantship. Now DeWitt is giving back to future generations of scholars through an endowment in support of the S&T Collaboratory, a new digital humanities lab in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Business. Her book, Degrees of Allegiance: Harassment and Loyalty in Missouri’s German-American Community during World War I, won the 2012 Missouri Book Award. Committed to ensuring that all students become readers, writers, and thinkers who learn from, care for, and respect one another. Louis area.ĭeWitt eventually turned her experience into scholarship as a specialist in immigration and ethnic history. She became a Missouri resident and soon discovered the state’s German-American culture, a legacy reaching back to the early 1800s with the influx of German immigrants who established communities along the Missouri River valley and in the St. Petra DeWitt’s journey from Germany to Missouri, student to faculty member and immigrant to scholar of migration embodies the mission of the S&T Collaboratory: encouraging humanities‑based research with the potential to challenge traditional ways of thinking.ĭeWitt, Hist’96, an S&T associate professor of history, immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1985 with her husband, an American soldier.

Collaboratory classroom