Project Team (directors and principal faculty)

Fred Dobney, professor of history at Western Michigan University,specializes in the history of technology.  He has held high administrative positions at five universities—most recently Provost at Western Michigan University.   Dr. Dobney has published two books and many articles and reviews.  He has served on the board of the Public Works Historical Society, the nominating committee of the Society for the History of Technology, and as a consultant to many universities on curriculum assessment.  In the past three summers, Dr. Dobney has been an instructor for Teaching American History institutes for high school teachers.

Lynne Heasley is associate professor of history and environmental studies at Western Michigan University and a member of the board of directors at Tillers International.  Dr. Heasley specializes in rural and environmental history and geography.  She has worked in the upper Midwest, the Great Lakes region (including Canada), and West Africa.  Her recent book, A Thousand Pieces of Paradise: Landscape and Property in the Kickapoo Valley (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), explores twentieth-century rural transformation: how the natural world has intersected with cultural ideas about community, freedom, sustainability, federal policy, and property rights debates. 

Richard Roosenberg, founder and Executive Director of Tillers International, contributes multifaceted expertise in agricultural history, architectural history, and the history of technology.  Having grown Tillers from a single team of oxen and a blacksmith forge in 1980 to an organization with $1,500,000 in assets, Mr. Roosenberg continues to teach classes to living history museum staff, history and industrial arts teachers, home-schooled high school students and their parents, farmers pursuing small-scale agriculture, and international extension workers in Africa and South America (often traveling to their home countries to work with them).  Mr. Roosenberg grew up on a Michigan dairy farm.  He holds a J.D. from Wayne State University and an M.A.from the University of Michigan.  

Wilson Warren Wilson Warren is associate professor of history at Western Michigan University.  Dr. Warren specializes in secondary history education as well as agricultural and labor history.  Dr. Warren is currently the project director for two Teaching American History grants from the U.S. Department of Education to carry out summer institutes for high school and middle school teachers.  At WMU he also contributes to curriculum development for the History Education major.  Before taking a position at WMU, Dr. Warren taught middle and high school history in Iowa and New York.  He is the author of Teaching History in the Digital Classroom, with D. Antonio Cantu (M.E. Sharpe, 2003); “Struggling with "Iowa's Pride":  Labor Relations, Unionism, and Politics in the Rural Midwest since 1877 (University of Iowa Press, 2000); and Tied to the Great Packing Machine: The Midwest and Meatpacking (University of Iowa Press, 2007).

Workshop Faculty

Sharon Carlson is director and university archivist of the Western Michigan Archives and the Regional History Collections, used by more than 4,000 researchers a year.  She has carried out dozens of community programs on how to preserve, use, and teach with primary source documents.  Among her numerous appointments, Dr. Carlson is on the board of the Historical Society of Michigan and the Michigan National Historical Publications and Records Commission.  For our NEH workshops, Dr. Carlson will work with teachers on primary source documents, including writings from Thomas Jefferson and James Fenimore Cooper, farm diaries, ledgers, deeds, architectural sketches, land surveys, plat maps, air photos, mail order catalogues (implements, seeds, livestock, and household  items), and agricultural statistics. 

Brian Donahue is associate professor of American Studies, as well as environmental historian for the Harvard Forest.  From 1994-1997 he was director of education at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.  Dr. Donahue is a long-time farmer and co-founder of Land’s Sake, a suburban community farm in Weston Massachusetts.  He chronicled the history of Land’s Sake and its impact on local youth in Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farming and Forestry in a New England Town (Yale University Press, 1999).  Dr. Donahue’s most recent book, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (Yale University Press, 2004), won the Theodore Saloutos award for best book in agricultural and rural history and the George Perkins Marsh prize in environmental history.

Robert Duke’s career in K-12 education began in 1974 as a high school social studies teacher in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.  From 1994-2003, Bob served as Superintendent of Mendon Community Schools and Gull Lake Community Schools.  He is currently completing his Ph.D. in American History at Western Michigan University.  Bob’s dissertation, "Passport from Poverty: The Political Journey of the Bilingual Education Act, 1964-1980," analyzes how school communities embrace or reject federal initiatives in public education at the local level.   He is an avid gardener, angler, and guitarist/songwriter.

Maynard Kaufman is emeritus faculty at Western Michigan University in comparative religion and environmental studies.  Dr. Kaufman is widely respected for his work on sustainable land use and regional food systems.  A long-time organic farmer, Dr. Kaufman founded the experimental School of Homesteading in southwestern Michigan, co-founded the Organic Growers of Michigan, and co-founded the Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance.  Dr. Kaufman’s off-the-grid solar house is regularly featured in the Michigan Solar Tour of Homes.  He is currently writing a book entitled Adapting to the End of Oil: Toward an Earth-Centered Spirituality.

John Metz is Director of Historical Resources and Education at The Henry
Ford.  He specializes in the history and material culture of farm
communities in the American South, Midwest, and East, including Native
American settlements.  Prior to his appointment at the Henry Ford, Mr.
Metz worked in the research divisions of the Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation, Monticello, and the National Museum of the Civil War
Soldier.  He co-authored Upon the Palisado and Other Stories from Bruton
Heights (Colonial Williamsburg Research Publications, 1998), which
reinterprets the lives of Indians and colonists in colonial Virginia
based on archeological evidence.

Sally McMurry is head of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University.  From 1997-2003, Dr. McMurry was on the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Board.  She has been a leader in historic preservation efforts related to agriculture, including a 24-county study to establish criteria for evaluating and listing historic agricultural properties in northern Pennsylvania.  She is author of three acclaimed books: From Sugar Camp to Star Barn, Rural Life and Landscape in a Pennsylvania Community, 1780-1940 (Penn State University Press, 2001); Families and Farmhouses in Nineteenth-Century America: Vernacular Design and Social Change (Oxford University Press, 1988); and Transforming Rural Life: Dairying Families and Agricultural Change, 1820-1885 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), winner of the Theodore Saloutos award for best book in agricultural and rural history.

Marla Miller is associate professor and director of the Public History Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She specializes in colonial and women’s history and material culture.  In addition, Dr. Miller has experimented with pedagogical approaches to teaching with historic places.  The University of Massachusetts recently published her book, The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution (2006).  She is currently working on the first scholarly biography of early American craftswoman Betsy Ross.

Thomas Nehil is a professional engineer and a Principal and Co-Founder of Nehil•Sivak, P.C. He directs the analysis and design of concrete, steel, masonry, timber and other structural systems for new facilities, as well as the renovation of existing facilities.  Tom has a keen interest in traditional building forms, techniques, and materials.  He began his involvement with historic buildings as a carpenter working in New Hampshire and South Carolina.  Tom has been involved in the design of many of Tillers’ projects, including the Herb Nehring Blacksmith Shop and the new museum building.  He has been a co- instructor for classes in timber frame design, timber framing and raising, traditional stone masonry, and wood and tree identification.  Tom is a member of the Michigan Barn Preservation Network, the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, the Timber Framers Guild, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. 

Kenneth Pott, Executive Director of The Heritage Museum and Cultural Center in St. Joseph, Michigan coordinated the development of the award winning exhibit, “World’s Largest” The Benton Harbor Fruit Market and Southwest Michigan’s Fruit Belt. A specialist in the study of Great Lakes culture, Mr. Pott holds BA and MA degrees in Anthropology from Western Michigan University.  Ken has also served on working committees of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Council of American Maritime Museums, the Society of Professional Archaeologists, and as President of the Historical Society of Michigan.   

Steve Stier  is curator of the Abbey Collection at Tillers International and a research associate in the Traditional Arts Program at Michigan State University.  He is a licensed builder specializing in historic preservation and traditional construction methods and materials.  An expert on traditional barns, he wrote The Michigan Barn and Farmstead Survey Manual.  Mr. Stier also taught middle and high school for five years.  He holds an M.A. in Historic Preservation and an M.E. in Industrial Arts Education.  He is on the Board of the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, and is a co-founder of the Michigan Barn Preservation Network.

Sarah Stewart is an acclaimed writer and children’s book author whose third book, The Gardener, won the prestigious Christopher Medal and was among the School Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. In June of 2007 she won the Michigan Author Award, which recognized  Stewart for her full body of work. Over the last two decades she has spoken in hundreds of schools across the U.S. with her husband, the well-known artist David Small.  In her hometown of Mendon, Michigan, Stewart cultivates a celebrated heritage garden.  Her life is a continual balancing act between the demands of her desk and the call of her gardens. 

Kristin Szylvian, associate professor of history at Western Michigan University, is a public historian and former executive director of the Michigan Maritime Museum.  Dr. Szylvian will lead the workshop fieldtrip, which will include her most recent museum exhibit, ‘World’s Largest’: the Benton Harbor Market and the Southwest Michigan Fruit Belt.The exhibit includes a teacher’s guide, which we will include in workshop materials.  Dr. Szylvian is co-curator of two other acclaimed exhibits: Shared Waters: Natives and French Newcomers on the Great Lakes; and Fish For All.  She is also co-author of Fish For All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment (Michigan State University Press, 2003), which won the Historical Society of Michigan’s Award of Merit.