David L. Ghere
Associate professor

I am a teacher and have known that was what I wanted to be since I was eight years old. I got a B. S. in Education and a M.Ed. in Social Studies from the University of Illinois expecting to be a high school social studies teacher and football coach. During my four year commitment to the U. S. Army I had a number of teaching assignments, including "Opposing Forces" instructor on the Soviet military and director of the Battle Simulation Center where I created, adapted and conducted simulations for both small and large unit training exercises. I also had the opportunity to teach college level history classes on the fort and this led to my decision to pursue a history Ph.D. so I could teach at the college level. I got a M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Maine and a scholarship to the Newberry Library in Chicago to complete my dissertation. My first college teaching position was at Jefferson Community College in upstate New York and I benefited greatly from six years of interaction with the outstanding faculty there.

I joined the faculty in the General College of the University of Minnesota in 1991. I was attracted to the college because of its focus on developmental education and my professional dreams were realized a decade later when General College was recognized as the best program in the entire nation. I have taught courses in American History, World History and Economics with relatively small class sizes (35 to 40 students) that facilitate the use of a variety of active learning methods. The administration supports and rewards creativity and innovation in the classroom which has resulted in my creation and development of fifteen classroom simulations and my conduct of numerous teacher workshops in the classroom use of simulations and other active learning techniques. My historical research focuses on American Indians during the colonial period and my publications and conference presentations are about evenly divided between history topics and teaching pedagogy. In 2006, General College was converted into the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning and I am currently revising my courses to shift from a developmental education focus to an emphasis on multicultural and multidisciplinary education.