ABOUT IHE

Meet Our Team

Our Board of Directors’ core competencies are in heritage education, archaeology, and nonprofit organization management. We have more than 120 years of combined experience relevant to IHE’s work. Three members of our Board (Franklin, Labrador, and Moe) are published authors in cultural heritage education.

Featured
Elaine Franklin
Elaine Franklin

SECRETARY

I believe that everybody’s history matters and that we cannot fully understand the present state of our world without looking to the events of yesterday and the yesterdays before.

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Angela Labrador
Angela Labrador

MEMBER AT LARGE

I believe that heritage and education go hand in hand. The stories and values we ascribe to heritage are learned, whether at the knee of a grandparent, at the dinner table, in a museum gallery, or in a classroom.

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Dean Littlepage
Dean Littlepage

TREASURER

The first time I fully realized how deeply heritage education and interpretation can affect people came during the run of a major Alaska history exhibition I organized for the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in 1997. I loved giving public walkthroughs of the exhibit, and found it really entertaining to just wander

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Michael D. Metcalf
Michael D. Metcalf

MEMBER AT LARGE

My passion for embedding education in the practice of archaeology stems from three sources: public interest in field projects, involvement with K-12 students, and teaching introductory college courses.

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Jeanne M. Moe
Jeanne M. Moe

CHAIR

I saw a moment when kids made the connection between the past and present and the feelings of living descendants. They achieved cultural understanding at a deep conceptual level. I knew then that cultural heritage education would be my life’s work and I have never looked back.

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Rebecca Simon
Rebecca Simon

MEMBER AT LARGE

I participate in this work because public archaeology and heritage education are not just about professionals presenting their work to the general public, but about putting “people first”

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IHE History

A group of Project Archaeology supporters incorporated the Institute of Heritage Education (IHE) in Montana in 2014.

The original purpose was primarily to provide a safe home for Project Archaeology at a time the program’s existing partnerships were under significant stress. As time passed, the need for an alternative organizational home for Project Archaeology faded, and the Board of Directors chose to go inactive.

In 2019, we realized a clear need for both a partner nonprofit for Project Archaeology and an umbrella support group for cultural heritage education programs of all kinds. A newly organized Board revised IHE’s Articles of Incorporation and revived the organization. The Board applied for and received tax exempt status as a 501 (c) (3) organization under the Internal Revenue Code on October 24, 2019.

Project Archaeology’s primary partners, including IHE, significantly reorganized the partnership structure in 2022, and IHE became the program’s designated national nonprofit partner. In January 2024 we significantly revised our previous Strategic Plan to emphasize this relationship with Project Archaeology while maintaining the objective to assist a broad range of cultural heritage programs and projects.