Dr. Stanley Adamiak

Office: LA204B
Phone: 405-974-5514
Email: sadamiak@uco.edu

Dr. Adamiak joined the UCO faculty in 1998 to teach early American and military history. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Vermont and both his Masters and Doctorate are from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was a Fellow at the 1999 West Point Summer Seminar in Military History.

Dr. James F. Baker

Office: LA204F
Phone: 405-974-5356
Email: jbaker@uco.edu

Education

Subject Area

U.S. History

Courses

HIST 1483: History of the U.S. to 1877

HIST 1493: History of the U.S. since 1877

HIST 4913: World War II in Film and Literature

HIST 5913: Major Interpretations of American History

HIST 3213: World War II

Socst 4843: Social Studies Methods

Dr. Kenny L. Brown

Office: LA204F
Phone: 405-974-5356
Email: kebrown@uco.edu

Dr. Kenny L. Brown is Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History and Geography at the University of Central Oklahoma. He earned his Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University in 1985 and has taught at three universities in Oklahoma (Cameron, Panhandle State, and UCO). He is a specialist in the American West, Oklahoma, Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. He has published several articles and books on topics in his field and has served on several state boards, such as the OK Humanities Council, the OK Historical Society, and the OK Historical Records Advisory Board. He received the Provost's "Modeling the Way" Award in 2003.

Courses

Oklahoma History
Historical Research

Dr. Michelle Brym

Office: LA204D
Phone: 405-974-5665
Email:mbrym@uco.edu

Education

MA, Geography, Miami University (Ohio)

PhD, Geography, University of Tennessee

Subject Area

Geography

Courses

Dr. Lindsey Churchill

Lindsey Churchill received her PhD in Latin American History from Florida State University in 2010. She has worked as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Ghana and was a Research Associate at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center at Mount Holyoke College. Her forthcoming work "Becoming the Tupamaros: Solidarity and Transnational Revolutionaries in Uruguay and the United States" will be published in Fall 2013 by Vanderbilt University Press. Using social and cultural history, Churchill examines the relationship between state repression and revolutionary resistance, the transnational connections between the Uruguayan Tupamaro revolutionaries and leftist groups in the U.S. as well as issues of gender and sexuality within radical movements.

Dr. Douglas Hurt

Office: LA204C
Phone: 405-974-5273
Email: dhurt1@uco.edu

Douglas A. Hurt (BSEd, magna cum laude, Missouri, 1994; M.A. (Geography), Missouri, 1995; Ph.D. (Geography), Oklahoma, 2000) is a third-generation educator pursing interests in historical geography, cultural geography, and geography education. In 2003, he was awarded the National Council for Geographic Education's Distinguished Teaching Achievement Award for "outstanding contributions to geographic education" and in 2009 he received the Herbert S. Dordick Outstanding Mentor Award from the University of Central Oklahoma. He served as the co-founder and contributing editor of The North American Geographer from 1998 until 2006. In addition to developing curriculum materials for K-16 geography, he has published more than a dozen articles in journals including Geographical Review, Journal of Cultural Geography, Journal of Geography, and Historical Geography.

Born in St. Louis County, Missouri, he had a suburban childhood. Annual summer trips across the United States fed his curiosity about different places. Portions of each summer were spent on the maternal family farm in East Tennessee and increased his appreciation for intimate, local geographies and rural, agricultural landscapes.

He attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, receiving a degree and teaching certification in secondary social studies education in 1994. Two undergraduate geography classes reinforced academically latent interests in regions, places, and landscapes. A Master's in geography, with a thesis on geography education, ensued in 1995 at the University of Missouri. Gail Ludwig (chair), Kit Salter, and Linda Bennett (education-curriculum and instruction) provided committee guidance, although Walter Schroeder and Robert Kaiser were influential faculty as well. During this time, he became interested in the geography alliance program and provided support to the Missouri Geographic Alliance in its curriculum development and teacher training efforts.

An interest in historical geography and the homeland concept led to work at the University of Oklahoma. Dick Nostrand (chair), Bret Wallach, Bruce Hoagland, Bob Rundstrom, Morris Foster (anthropology) steered his dissertation work-a historical geography of the Creek (Muscogee) Nation-that was completed in 2000. In addition to research on historical and cultural topics, he developed and participated in programs for the Oklahoma Alliance for Geographic Education, again focusing efforts in teacher training and writing curriculum materials. In 1998, he co-founded The North American Geographer, a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the cultural, historical, and regional study of North America. The hope was to provide a publishing outlet for emerging scholars and graduate students authoring original research about the human geography of North America.

After graduation, he accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Political Science and Geography at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. While at SFA, he led recruitment and retention efforts that tripled the number of geography majors and minors in three years. In part, this achievement was accomplished by emphasizing field work in his courses, including a yearly class that traveled to El Cerrito, New Mexico to participate in la limpia, the annual cleaning of the village irrigation ditch. In 2003 his cultural geography graduate seminar class published their edited papers as The Nacogdoches Project: Geographic Interpretations of an East Texas Downtown. That same year he left the Piney Woods and migrated westward to the Central Valley of California in search of a heightened sense of place.

While teaching in the Department of Geography at California State University, Fresno ( Fresno State) from 2003 until 2005 he revived the Geography Club from extinction until it was an active organization engaged in service projects and field trips throughout California. Although he enjoyed the close proximity to the Sierra Nevada and nearby Pacific beaches (but not smog, Tule fog, nor Mediterranean climate summers), his time in Fresno was brief thanks to valuable lessons learned about state budget crises and administrators hostile to geography. When the opportunity to return to Oklahoma arose, he was thrilled to return to the open spaces of the Great Plains.

Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Geography at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma. He teaches lower- and upper-division courses in human geography and promotes regular field courses and experiences to New Mexico and throughout Oklahoma. During the past ten years he has taught six field courses involving fifty-five students and has led seven one to three-day field trips involving fifty students. He sponsors the Geography Student Organization and is part of a team that has quadrupled the number of geography majors since 2005. His research interests continue to revolve around the themes of sense of place, landscape, popular culture, and teacher training. Regionally, he remains focused on North America with growing curiosity about Latin America. At the heart of his teaching and research is a fascination and curiosity about contemporary and historic places and landscapes and their meanings and implications to people in present and past times.

Katrina Lacher

Office: LA202A
Phone: 405-974-5864
Email: klacher@uco.edu

Education

MA, History, Boston College (2003)

BA, History, Sewanee (1998)

Subject Area

Environmental History, 20^th-century U.S.

Courses

U.S. History Since 1877

American Environmental History

U.S. History for History Education Majors

Dr. Xiao-Bing Li, Department Chair

Office: LA202G
Phone: 405-974-5483
Email: bli@uco.edu

Dr. Xiao-Bing Li is a professor in the Department of History and Geography and director of the Western Pacific Institute at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) in Edmond, Oklahoma. After he received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) in 1991, Dr. Li taught at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, for two years. In 1993, he joined the faculty of UCO. He teaches Asian History, Eastern Civilizations, U.S. History, and the Cold War history classes. His research includes the history of Modern China, Chinese military, Vietnam War, Korean War, and Asian Americans. Among his recent books are A History of the Chinese Army (University of Kentucky Press, 2007), Voices from the Korean War: Personal Stories of American, Korean and Chinese Soldiers, co-authored with Richard Peters (University of Kentucky Press, 2004), Taiwan in the 21st Century, co-editor with Pan (2003), Mao's Generals Remember Korea, co-editor with Millett and Yu (University Press of Kansas, 2001), and Asia's Crisis and New Paradigm, co-editor with Jung (2000). Currently, he is President of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (SWCAS) and President of the Oklahoma Chinese Professionals and Scholars Association. He is also editor of the American Review of China Studies and of the Western Pacific Journal for many years.

Dr. Patricia Loughlin

Patricia Loughlin, Ph.D.
Professor of History

Office: LA202H
Phone: 405-974-5491
Email: ploughlin@uco.edu
brief cv

Patti Loughlin discussing the history of the University of Central Oklahoma at the Edmond Historical Society.

Patti Loughlin is Professor of History and a board member of the Oklahoma Historical Society. She specializes in twentieth-century U.S. history, American Indian history, and the history of the American West. She participates as a scholar in the Oklahoma Humanities Council’s Let’s Talk About It Oklahoma book discussion program.

From 2007-2013, Loughlin served as the campus director of the American Democracy Project. Established in 2003 by The New York Times and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, with UCO as a charter member, the American Democracy Project is a national civic engagement initiative that focuses on higher education’s role in preparing the next generation of informed, engaged citizens for our democracy. In addition to hosting speakers from The New York Times such as Thom Shanker, Anthony Shadid, and Michael Slackman, ADP coordinates campus participation in the Oklahoma Campus Compact Voter Registration Contest (winning the contest in 2010, 2011, and 2012), hosts naturalization ceremonies as part of Constitution Day programming, and facilitates campus and community conversations.

Kathryn Kunc and Patti Loughlin

In partnership with Oklahoma Campus Compact and the National Conference on Citizenship, a research team from UCO co-directed by Loughlin and Janelle Grellner, Ph.D., produced the first-ever Oklahoma Civic Health Index: Strengthening Oklahoma’s Civic Energy (2010) and the second report, Oklahoma Civic Health Index: Civic Skills and Voter Education (2012). By assembling a research team with students as civic scholars working alongside faculty, students participated in community-based research and shared their findings in the Oklahoma Civic Health Index with plans to continue the conversation in community forums throughout the state. For a copy of the 2012 Oklahoma Civic Health Index, please visit www.ncoc.net/OK.

Loughlin’s book, Hidden Treasures of the American West: Muriel H. Wright, Angie Debo and Alice Marriott (University of New Mexico Press, 2005), offers a concise examination of Oklahoma historiography and the place of women public intellectuals in shaping regional identity. In 2006, Hidden Treasures received the Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History from the Oklahoma Historical Society, the Director's Award and Finalist in Nonfiction from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, and Finalist for the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize. In addition, she coauthored Building Traditions, Educating Generations: A History of the University of Central Oklahoma (Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2007) with Bob Burke as an official Oklahoma Centennial Commission project. In consultation with Nicole Willard, Director of Archives and Special Collections at UCO, Loughlin and her students conducted over 75 oral history interviews as a central research component for the book.

Loughlin’s current research includes Main Street Oklahoma, an anthology co-edited by Linda Reese for the University of Oklahoma Press, a collaborative project with artist Marvin Martinez, the great-grandson of Julian and Maria Martinez, a collaborative project with Kiowa elder Jim Anquoe, and an Angie Debo children's book.

Members of the Oklahoma Civic Health Index research team in the Blue Room of the Oklahoma State Capitol for the public release event in 2012.

Dr. Jeff Plaks

Office: LA202E
Phone: 405-974-5357
Email: jplaks@uco.edu

Dr. Jeff Plaks received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Connecticut and his Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University (1998). His research specialty is nineteenth-century Russia. Dr. Plaks lived and researched his dissertation in Moscow and St. Petersburg as an IREX Fellow in 1995 and 1996. He has presented numerous papers at scholarly conferences. His teaching fields at UCO are modern Europe and Russia. He was the recipient of the College of Liberal Arts' Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award for 2000-2001 and the UCO Faculty Enhancement Center's Teaching Excellence Award for 2001-2002.  Dr. Plaks is the director of UCO's International Studies Program and the editor of an online journal, the Southwest Social Science Review. He also serves as faculty sponsor of Rho Lambda, UCO's chapter of Phi Alpha Theta (history honor society). Rho Lambda received Best Chapter Commendation Awards in 2001 and 2002.

Dr. Carolyn G. Pool

Program Coordinator, Museum Studies

Office: LA202I
Phone: 405-974-5671
Email: cpool@uco.edu

Dr. Carolyn Garrett Pool, Professor, teaches museum studies, Native American history, American history, and archaeology courses and is the Program Coordinator for Museum Studies.  She holds a M.A. and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma; her research interests include Plains and Southwest Indian ethnohistory, public history interpretation, and cultural property issues. Dr. Pool serves on the board of the Mountain Plains Museums Association and represents the 10-state region on the national board of the Committee on Museum Professional Training.  Her work in developing museum training programs and professional services has been recognized by the Oklahoma Museums Association's Streich Award for Service to the Profession, the Governor's Arts Award, the Oklahoma Historical Society, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of State Programs.

Dr. Jere Roberson

Office: LA202K
Phone: 405-974-5675
Email: jroberson@uco.edu

Dr. Jere W. Roberson is a native Tennessean (Nashville) who received his military experience (U.S. Army) and education in Tennessee (BA, Tennessee Technological University), Alabama (MA, Auburn) and Georgia (Ph.D., University of Georgia).

He began his university teaching experience in the Southeast (1966-69) before arriving in Oklahoma. Professor Roberson specializes in African AmericanStudies, Constitutional History, and the Antebellum Social/Cultural Experience. He is an active member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity (Eta Iota) and serves on the Board of Directors of Inner City Dance Company. His professional memberships include the Southern Historical Association (Regional Membership Chair), Western Historical Association and Organization of American Historians.

Dr. Roberson is past president of the Faculty Senate and is an avid promoter of Student-Faculty Relations and Academic programming. Among his professional publications are histories of the Antebellum Transcontinental Railroad Projects, the Frontier African American Experience and the Anti-Slavery Movement. Dr. Roberson is also a published poet and an aspiring historical novelist.

Dr. Jessica Sheetz-Nguyen

Office: LA202D
Phone: 405-974-5451
Email: jsheetznguyen@uco.edu

Education

PhD Marquette University (1999)

Subject Area

History of Britain, Women's History, and World History

Courses

Social Studies Methods

Historiography

Women's History: European

Dr. Michael S. Springer

Office: LA202C
Phone: 405-974-5453
Email: mspringer@uco.edu

Education

PhD, History, University of St Andrews (2005)

MA, History, Portland State University (2000)

BA, Telecommunications & Film, University of Oregon (1991)

Subject Area

Early Modern Europe, Late Middle Ages

Courses

HIST 1103 Early Western Civilization to 1350

HIST 1203 Europe - Renaissance to Reformation

HIST 3383 The Middle Ages

HIST 3483 Absolutism and Enlightenment in Europe

HIST 4773 Modern German History

HIST 4883 The Reformation, 1500-1648

HIST 4910 Topics: Tolerance in Europe c.1200-1800

HIST 4790 Germany Study Tour

HIST 5910 Seminar: Readings in Early Modern Europe

Dr. Brad Watkins

Office: LA202B
Phone: 405-974-5842
Email: bwatkins8@uco.edu

Education

PhD (Geography) Oklahoma State University, 2007

MA (Geography) University of Oklahoma, 2002

BA (Geography) University of Oklahoma, 2000

Subject Area

Geospatial Techniques, Historical and Cultural Geography, GIS for Historical Geography, Settlement, American Indian Geography

Courses

Introduction to Geography

Regional Geography of the World

Physical Geography

Map Analysis and Cartography

Introduction to Geographic Information Systems

Advanced GIS

American Indian Geography

Dr. David D. Webb

Office: LA204B
Phone: 405-974-5514
Email: dwebb@uco.edu

Dr. Webb received his BA from Pepperdine in Los Angeles and his MA and PhD from the University of Oklahoma. His classes include United States History: 1917-1939; Modern World Leaders and graduate seminars on the 1920s and '30s. He has directed numerous MA theses, has served on a variety of university committees and has taught at UCO since 1968.

Dr. Patrick E. McGinnis

Office: LA202K
Phone: 405-974-5675

Dr. Patrick E. McGinnis is Emeritus Professor of History.  He joined the faculty of UCO (then Central State College) in 1968 and retired from full-time teaching in 2000.  He earned a BA degree from the University of Arkansas and  MA and Ph.D. degrees from The Tulane University of Louisiana.

Syllabus for History 1483

• Review Questions Chapters 1-4
• Review Questions Chapters 5-8
• Review Questions Chapters 9-11
• Review Questions Chapters 12-15

Dr. Byung "Walter" Jung

Office: LA202K
Phone: 405-974-5675

Education

 Ph.D. University of Oklahoma

Subject Area

 Urban Geography, Economic Geography, Geography of Asia, World Regional Geography

Dr. John Osburn

Office: LA202E
Phone: 405-974-5357

Dr. John Osburn holds the rank of Professor of History at the University of Central University, where he has taught British and European history since 1969. Previously he taught at Panhandle State University and the University of Missouri at Kansas City. 

Dr. Osburn has a special interest in Roman Britain. His research interest concerns British working-class history, and has published several articles in Great Britain, such as "The Full Name of Lloyd Jones: Reflections of Nineteenth-Century Working-Class Religion and Politics," Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 46 (November, 1973): 221-226; as well as as a number of articles in the United States, such as "McKenzie College," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 63 (April, 1960), 533-553.

Memberships include Phi Alpha Theta and Kappa Kappa Psi. Awards include English & Speaking Union Scholarship and Parriott Graduate Fellowship. Also "Teacher of the Year" at Panhandle State University, and nominee for the same at the University of Central Oklahoma. B.A., B.S., and M.A. degrees were earned at Southern Methodist University, and the Ph.D. at the University of Oklahoma.

Dr. Richard Peters

Office: LA202C
Phone: 405-974-5453

Dr. Richard Peters is an emeriti instructor at UCO. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. He is the current program coordinator for the Applied Liberal Arts degree in the history department.  

He has taught courses on Weimar and Nazy Germany; Modern Euprope; and The French Revolution and Napoleon

Heidi Vaughn

Office: LA202F
Phone: 405-974-5789

In 2008, Heidi Vaughn was hired as first full-time director of the museum. She received her M.A. in History/Museum Studies from UCO in 1998. Before returning to UCO, she was a curator at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and prior to that was director of the Cherokee Strip Museum in Enid.

Dr. Oscar de la Torre

Office: LA204A
Phone: 405-974-5416
Email: odelatorre@uco.edu

Oscar de la Torre is originally from Barcelona, Spain. After obtaining his BA from the University of Barcelona in 2005, he moved to the US in order to pursue postgraduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh, PA. Six years later he obtained his PhD, and in August 2011 he relocated again to the University of Central Oklahoma, where he became an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and History.

His dissertation “Freedom in Amazonia: The Black Peasantry of the Amazon, 1850-1950” analyzes the emergence and early conflicts of Afro-descendant peasants (both plantation- and maroon-descendants) in the Amazon. After working on a book manuscript based on the dissertation, he is planning on doing a comparative analysis of two borderlands in the Atlantic, with a special focus on race and state policies. 

Subject Area

Latin America (Brazil, Amazon, Andes)

Atlantic History

Comparative race

Slavery and maroonage

Courses

HIST 4153 / 5153 Latin American history

HIST 1493 US history from 1877

Links

Dr. de la Torre's research blog

Dr. de la Torre's CV

Dr. Shirletta Kinchen

Office: LA202A
Phone: 405-974-5864
Email: skinchen@uco.edu

Born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, She received her B.S. in History and Geography and M.A in History and from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida. She received and her Ph.D. in history in 2011 from the University of Memphis.

She teaches The African American Experience, The History of African Americans, and US History. Her areas of interests are: African American history, with particular focus on the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement, and 20th Century US History. Specifically her dissertation, "We want what people generally refer to as Black Power": Youth and Student Activism and the Impact of the Black Power Movement in Memphis, Tennessee, 1965-1975 and continuing research examines the impact, influence, and intersection of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements on youth and student activism in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dr. Alison Nazzal

Program Coordinator, History Education

Office: LA204E
Phone: 405-974-5279
Email: 

Education

Subject Area

Courses