Professor Appointed

Professor Appointed to Library of Congress Education Panel

SIU Daily Egyptian By BARTON LORIMOR

When he first came to SIUC as a student in 1961, Jerry Hostetler said he spent most of his time in the basement of Morris Library.

But the associate professor of education said Tuesday he now spends more time in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin and Barack Obama and Congressman Jerry Costello appointed Hostetler to the Professional-Development Curriculum, a panel charged to instruct teachers how to access the library's digital resources and use them in K-12 classrooms.

"Professor Hostetler will provide a talented and experienced voice to ensure the success of this innovative effort," Obama said in a Tuesday news release.

The panel, made up of 14 teachers from across the nation, will report about the value of using primary source material - accounts of a historic event documented at the time of its happening - in K-12 classes, according to a news release from the library.

The report is scheduled for presentation at the National Education Computing Conference in June 2009.

"One of the great benefits of my job is I get to go to Washington (D.C.) a couple times a year," said Hostetler, who has earned his bachelor's, master's and doctorate from SIUC.

Hostetler said some of the congressional archives that have been made available online include pictures of southern Illinois during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Hostetler said he began working with digital resources at SIUC in 2002 through the Teaching with Primary Sources program. He said at that time, the Library of Congress had 5 million digitized materials instead of the 14 million it has now.

Five years ago, Hostetler began working for the College of Education and Human Services to teach graduate students how to locate and download digital resources and use them in their classrooms.

Hostetler also served as director of the university's Regional Center for Distance Learning when it formed in 1996.

The panel members, who met in person for the first time in October, want to find a way to communicate online, Hostetler said.