FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW YORK, NY (OCTOBER 12, 2006) – On Thursday, October 12, at the Academy of American Studies, a public high school in Long Island City, students, educators, and elected officials participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Gilder Lehrman Research Center, a student-run history research center. The Academy of American Studies, the flagship school of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, is the first history high school in the U.S.

The center, located in a renovated classroom in the school, will serve students at the Academy of American Studies, as well as students at Long Island City High School, Frank Sinatra High School of the Arts, and Newcomers High School. It houses books, DVDs, CD-ROMs, and reproductions of primary source materials. Six seniors enrolled in AP U.S. History at the Academy of American Studies will spend time working in the center on weekday afternoons and Saturdays. These students will field questions via phone and email and provide direction for other students working on papers and research projects in their history courses. Students from all four schools also will be able to check out materials from the research center.

Over the summer, the six students received instruction at the Gilder Lehrman Collection in Manhattan on how to conduct online research of the Collection and other archives. They also learned how to use document transcriptions and indexes and prepared two primary document binders – one on slavery and one on Thomas Jefferson.

“I think that this opportunity will help me to work with other students in a mentorship role,” said Robert Wohner, a senior at the school who will work in the center. “Looking at the wide array of primary sources available can open their eyes to the tangibility of history, and enhance their own ability to use these documents in an educational way.”

Social Studies teacher John Maggio added: “The research center provides an educational oasis where students will have a first-hand opportunity to link themselves to the past through the use of primary documents and to assist other students in their pursuit of the study of American history.”

“This research center will be a model for similar endeavors in our other history schools across the country,” said Lesley S. Herrmann, Executive Director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony was followed by the school’s tenth anniversary celebration which included remarks by Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and New York State Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute currently sponsors 45 history schools nationwide. These schools are rigorous, college-preparatory schools centered on American history. They have a track record of raising test scores and sending more than 90 percent of graduating seniors to college. At the core of these schools is a four-year sequence of courses in American history. In many of these schools, including the Academy of American Studies, the entire student body participates in the Gilder Lehrman program. In other schools, a select portion of the student body participates.

Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. Increasingly national and international in scope, the Institute targets audiences ranging from students to scholars to the general public. It creates history-centered schools and academic research centers, organizes seminars and enrichment programs for educators, partners with school districts to implement Teaching American History grants, produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions, and sponsors lectures by eminent historians. The Institute also funds awards including the Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and George Washington Book Prizes and offers fellowships for scholars to work in history archives. The Gilder Lehrman Collection contains more than 60,000 documents detailing the political and social history of the United States. The collection's holdings include manuscript letters, diaries, maps, photographs, printed books and pamphlets ranging from 1493 through the Twentieth Century.

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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
19 West 44th Street, Suite 500
New York, NY 10036
www.gilderlehrman.org