Bowling Green State University is one of only nine universities nationwide to receive a $1.95 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to strengthen civic education and American history instruction for K-12 educators, the university announced.
The three-year award will support Living CIVICs, a professional learning initiative that will provide yearlong development for K-12 teachers through seminars, public programming, mentoring and access to original classroom resources produced by BGSU faculty, staff and students, according to the university’s announcement.
Up to 30 teachers will be selected for each cohort, with recruitment beginning in December and the first group starting in January 2027. Across the three years of funding, up to 90 teachers will take part — and, the university said, carry the experience back to classrooms reaching thousands of Ohio students.
The program will culminate in a weeklong immersion in which participants travel to historical sites throughout Ohio to deepen their knowledge of American history, founding principles and civic life, according to BGSU. “Rather than bringing teachers to campus for a week, as we do with our CIVICs 250 cohort, we are going to take them on a tour through Ohio,” Robert Alexander, a political science professor and the grant’s principal investigator, said in the university’s announcement. “We hope to inspire them to be able to bring that knowledge and experience back to their students and classrooms.”
The award builds on a federal grant of more than $620,000 that BGSU received last year to develop CIVICs 250, a project designed to deepen understanding of the country’s founding and evolution over the past 250 years, the university said. Together, the two awards expand the work of BGSU’s Democracy and Public Policy Network, founded in 2024.
“Since its founding in 2024, the Democracy and Public Policy Network has been focused on ensuring students at BGSU, K-12 teachers, high school students and community members have opportunities to meaningfully engage with civics education,” Ellen Schendel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said in the university’s announcement. “The Living CIVICs grant is both a validation of this good work and an opportunity to expand it.”
Alexander said the project will equip educators to use original documents in their teaching, along with original public opinion polling, podcasts and research produced by BGSU faculty, according to the announcement. “Public opinion polling has become a valuable resource that teachers can use in their classrooms to bring politics and history to life for their students,” he said in the announcement.
What happens next is teacher recruitment in December, ahead of the first Living CIVICs cohort beginning in January 2027.
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