Welcome
Welcome to the Institute for Heritage Education! We are a group of educators and education supporters who, with the help of colleagues around the country, launched this non-profit organization to foster and support excellence in cultural heritage education. We believe that understanding and appreciating our own cultural heritage and the cultural heritage of others is a route to a better, more peaceful world. We have two basic programs that we see now as best advancing our mission.
* First, IHE supports and helps implement the outstanding heritage education program Project Archaeology. The program is managed and implemented by a partnership consisting of Southern Utah University (its administrative home); the Project Archaeology Leadership Team (which represents the national network of educators, archaeologists, museum professionals, descendant community members, and others who carry out the program); the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (a significant program funder in the western states for its emphasis on stewardship of heritage sites on public lands); and IHE (the national 501 (c) (3) nonprofit partner).
We directly support the program by securing funding for and organizing teacher workshops and institutes; these events deliver the program’s professionally created and research-supported materials to teachers, and through them, to their students. Where needed, we also create new, geographically relevant Project Archaeology curricula for specific states and regions.
Why Project Archaeology? The program’s most significant and lasting impact is its unique ability to foster cultural understanding, promote scientific and historical inquiry, encourage ethical reasoning and citizenship, and enhance understanding of the need for heritage preservation. Project Archaeology’s classroom investigation approach allows students to investigate past cultures using authentic data including artifacts, maps, and oral histories. These materials and methods are well designed, and they work.
* Second, we award a round of grants each year to help fund professional development workshops for educators, supporting heritage education programs of all kinds. (See the lists of previous grantees here.) The educators who put on these workshops provide teachers with specific heritage education materials and methods and enable them to use the materials effectively in the classroom and other venues.
The focus of funded events has been broad and diverse. Many are based on archaeological sites representative of Indigenous occupation, including in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, North and South Carolina, and Utah. Other examples are a WWII Japanese-American internment camp in Colorado; a Montana homestead-era farmhouse; a historic home and museum in Denver; and broad regional heritage, for example in Arizona and southwest Colorado. These grants have enabled dozens of educators to reach thousands of learners with quality heritage education materials.
If our mission and programs resonate, we invite you to visit this blog from time to time to follow our progress. And if you agree that this work is important, we would welcome your contribution via the Get Involved tab on the home page. Thanks for your support!
* The Institute for Heritage Education (EIN 47-1973475) is a private, non-profit organization and is tax exempt under Section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code. As such, donations to IHE qualify as charitable contributions and may be tax deductible, depending on the specific situation of the donor.