UTPA wins community history grant

This story was first posted at 5:11 p.m. Dec. 5, 2011; it was updated Dec. 7.

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EDINBURG — The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the University of Texas-Pan American a nearly $100,000 grant to bolster its Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools, or CHAPS, program.

Created in 2009, the CHAPS program attempts to foster historically and archaeologically literate citizens who appreciate the value of the Rio Grande Valley’s natural and social past, Director Russell Skowronek said.

“If you’re older than 25, you have a very different image of this Valley than anybody that is under the age of 20,” he said. “This Valley was very commercial agriculture, row after row, orchard after orchard of lots of citrus, great vegetation.

“People lived and worked outside,” Skowronek added. “Now instead of growing oranges and grapefruits, we grow houses, Walgreens and H-E-Bs. Nobody wants to fight change, but if we don’t record that information … the memories of this land going back generations will be gone forever.”

Through the $99,425 grant, UTPA will connect with local schoolteachers to develop practical curriculum that Skowronek hopes will impart a stewardship of local non-renewable resources and historical and archaeological sites.

The funding will jump-start a series of summer workshops and modest stipends for middle school teachers that may one day expand to high school and fourth-grade educators, Skowronek said.

“We want to point out how pivotal and how interesting life in this Valley is,” he said, “whether we are talking about Texas history, American as in U.S. history, U.S.-Mexico relations or the sciences and issues with earth science, geology, biology.

“We need to teach children the value of things, because we live very much in a throwaway society,” the professor said. “If you never go outside, if you don’t see this stuff out there, respect what’s older, you won’t get a second chance before it’s gone.”

Skowronek imagined one particular point of interest he would like to take local teachers to visit is the Palo Alto Battlefield, just north of Brownsville, where initial skirmishes between the Mexican and American armies later led to Texas’s statehood.

“The CHAPS program offers students hands-on lessons about their environment and culture,” U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa said in a statement announcing the grant award. “I congratulated everyone involved in keeping this innovative program that also teaches the importance of preserving and protecting our land.”

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Neal Morton covers education and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at nmorton@themonitor.com and (956) 683-4472.

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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Click here for more on UTPA’s Community Historical Archaeology Project with Schools program.