The Vietnam War at 50: Reassessing America’s Lost War is a weeklong PD event for up to 40 K–12 teachers at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.
Application Deadline: March 7, 2025
Program Dates: July 27–August 2, 2025
Location: The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library & Museum, Austin, TX
Lead Scholar: Mark Atwood Lawrence, University of Texas at Austin
Master Teacher: Patrick Jacob
Image: The Great Hall at the LBJ Library (LBJ Library)
40 PD Hours
United Press International, American Marines in South Vietnam, 1966. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC09795.04)
Veterans Legacy Program Seminar: The Vietnam War at 50: Reassessing America’s Lost War is a weeklong PD event for up to 40 K–12 teachers at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas. The seminar will explore how understanding of the American war in Vietnam—its origins, outcomes, and legacies—has changed over the half century since the fighting ended in 1975. The program will consider decisions by political leaders and military commanders but will also focus on the experiences of the Americans and Vietnamese who fought the war. Participants will learn about new teaching resources, including primary sources from the LBJ Library’s collections.
Offered in partnership with the National Cemetery Administration (NCA), a division of the US Department of Veterans Affairs
Interested K–12 teachers should complete an application to be considered. Applications will be reviewed by Gilder Lehrman Institute and National Cemetery Administration staff. The deadline to submit an application is March 7, 2025. Selected teachers will be notified the week of April 7, 2025.
Mark Atwood Lawrence is a professor of history and holds the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin. He served as the director of the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum from January 2020 to September 2024. His most recent book is The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era. Lawrence is also author of Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam, which won the Paul Birdsall Prize for European military and strategic history and the George Louis Beer Prize for European international history, and The Vietnam War: A Concise International History, which was selected by the History Book Club and the Military History Book Club. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Foreign Affairs, and Commentary. In 2005, Lawrence was awarded the President’s Associates’ Award for Teaching Excellence at UT-Austin and in 2019 the Silver Spurs Centennial Teaching Fellowship from the UT College of Liberal Arts.
Patrick Jacob is an educator in North Little Rock, AR, as well as a military historian and military history instructor for the Arkansas National Guard, where he teaches classes on the French and Indian War, American Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, WWI and WWII, Cold War, Vietnam War, and the Global War on Terrorism. He is a member and former co-chair of the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce Education Committee as well as a 2020 United States Chamber of Commerce Business Leads Fellow. Additionally, Patrick is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.; Delta Mu Delta International Honor Society in Business Administration; Pi Lambda Theta International Honor and Professional Society for Educators; Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society in Education; National Constitution Center Teacher Advisory Council; and the American Battlefield Trust. He is an alumnus of the White House History Teacher Institute (2023) and was selected as one of sixty members for the Presidential Leadership Scholars Class of 2024. In his spare time, Patrick enjoys volunteering as a docent at the Clinton Presidential Center, reading, and visiting museums and battlefields.
Part of the National Cemetery Administration (NCA), a division of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the Veterans Legacy Program commemorates our nation’s veterans through the discovery and sharing of their stories. VLP encourages students and teachers at the university and K–12 levels around the country to immerse themselves in the rich historical resources found within NCA national cemeteries. Participants research veterans interred in national cemeteries and develop educational tools that increase public awareness of veteran service and sacrifice.
Founded on Memorial Day 2016, the Veterans Legacy Program has established itself as a leading model of community engagement. Partners from across the country have created VLP products and events that reflect the unique impact of veterans on their local community.
Please find more information and resources on the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s work with VLP here.