ROCK HILL, S.C.-Winthrop University recently
selected Mark Dewalt as a recipient of the Bank of America Endowed
Professorship for the Richard W. Riley College of Education.
He will use the endowed professorship to continue the
next phase of his already 20-year research project of Amish education in the United States and Canada. During the professorship,
which is renewable for up to three years, Dewalt will begin his next book on
Amish Education, and write articles on Amish Mennonite Schools and the 1972 Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder which ruled that Amish children do not have to attend school after
eighth grade. In addition, he will
design two symposium courses for the Winthrop honors program.
University leaders chose Dewalt because of his continuous
record of excellence in teaching, scholarship and service. "Mark is well respected as a teacher,
scholar and contributor to the life of the university. His research is well grounded and addresses
a unique area of education in North America,"
said Patricia Graham, Dean of the Richard W. Riley College of Education.
The Winthrop professor of
education grew up in Pennsylvania near an
Amish community and has traveled to dozens of communities stretching from New York to Iowa to observe Amish schools. He used the information as the basis for his latest
book, Amish Education in the United States and Canada, which portrays the culture and
history of the one-room schoolhouses of the Amish community. National and local
media turned to Dewalt in the fall of 2006 to explain the Amish culture in the
wake of a horrific shooting in an Amish schoolhouse near Nickel Mines,Pa.
Dewalt will be the second recipient of the Bank of
America Endowed Professorship, which supports teaching and research for an
outstanding faculty member in education. Winthrop's
first recipient was Marshall G. Jones, who studied how those familiar with and
those unfamiliar with digital technologies learn differently.
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