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Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of the United States, honors Estep as a national expert in Teaching with Primary Sources
| Dr. Sandi Estep was honored on Thanksgiving Day, 2010 by Dr. James Billington, the Librarian of the United States of America. He presented her with an award for the outstanding work she has done for the Library of Congress.
Dr. Estep has worked with the Library on their Teaching with Primary Sources(TPS) educational out-reach project for nearly 8 years and had received earlier statements of appreciation from Senator Durbin (D-IL) and President Obama in March of 2007 (see photo below). Dr. Billington stated that Dr. Estep is receiving this award because of “all she has done to promote the effectiveness of the Library’s Teaching with Primary Sources within the educational community.” This is the second time that Dr. Estep has been honored by Dr. Billington and the Library of Congress. |
Dr. Estep has been the Director of TPS at Governors State University. This year she returned full-time to teaching in the Graduate Program in Educational Administration at GSU. She has also served as the Coordinator of that program. As the TPS Director, she developed a program at GSU that has been held up as a national model. She developed partnerships with about 50 school districts and has conducted training sessions for more than 3,000 teachers and university professors. She secured over $3M in grant funding over the 8 years. Sandi is recognized as a national expert in teaching with primary sources. During the past year, the Library of Congress, asked her to work with the Educational Policy Institute (EPI) to develop the national metrics for the TPS program. She met with them in Washington D.C. where they designed the metrics that were adopted by the LOC. Estep says, “She was honored to be one of three directors selected to design this extremely important part of the TPS Program. The metrics we designed will be used for many years to determine if classroom teachers understand how to effectively use primary sources in their classroom.” The TPS program was first brought to GSU through the efforts of Senator Dick Durbin. It was initially called Adventure of the American Mind. Dr. Estep’s extensive experiences with curricular technology integration lead GSU to appoint her to direct the program.
| Dr. Estep noted that Senator Durbin has taken an expressed interest in helping teachers bring the rich resources of the Library of Congress into their classrooms. He feels that students can learn so much from doing things like reviewing the original Constitution with all the cross-outs and revisions. Estep stated, “It has been one of my great pleasures in life to work with and get to know Senator Durbin.” Estep arranged for Senator Durbin to come to GSU twice while she was the grant director. The TPS project reaches out to classroom teachers to train them on how to incorporate the 16 million digitized primary sources found at the Library of Congress into their own lesson plans. There are about 24 universities across the country that are currently TPS grant recipients. |
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 Jeffrey S. Kaiser UPI/GSU Webmaster j-kaiser@upigsu.org |