National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference

Event Overview

After several successful Teacher Seminars over the past year, we’re excited to host a panel at the 2022 National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Conference for educators all over the country.

During our panel discussion on Saturday, December 3, CSS vice president of education Dr. Murray Bessette and CSS senior fellows Dr. David C. Rose and the Hon. Jon Parrish Peede will share ongoing and upcoming civics initiatives that offer strategies for teaching history, economic development, entrepreneurship, government, civic institutions, and civic culture to students, grades K-12. Why did America’s national story actually begin long before America? What role do beliefs, institutions, rights, and competitive political economic systems play in our thriving free-market constitutional republic? How can educators better equip students to understand all the pieces of America’s story and see how they fit together to produce effective cooperation and prosperous communities? Don’t miss the discussion from 2:15 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown.

If you are already planning to be at the conference, stop by booth 312 and say hello. We will have more information about our resources and professional development opportunities for teachers.

Please contact Petria Hoffpauir at petria@commonsensesociety.org with any questions.

Featured Session Speakers

Dr. Murray Bessette is vice president of education at Common Sense Society, where he oversees its international fellowships and professional development programs, directs its middle school and high school curricular initiatives, and plans the programming for its academic events. In his eighteen years in the academic and non-profits sectors, Dr. Bessette has edited or authored numerous books, chapters, articles, and reviews; organized and presented at dozens of international and national conferences and panels; and co-directed more than $3 million in U.S. federal grants. He was previously an associate professor at Morehead State University and director of academic programs at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He was also a Lincoln Fellow of the Claremont Institute, an academic fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the co-director of the Bluegrass State Intelligence Community Center of Academic Excellence, president of the Kentucky Political Science Association, and an academic advisory board member of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions. Dr. Bessette earned a Ph.D. in political science and an M.A. in American government from Claremont Graduate University and an M.A. and B.A. in political science from the University of Alberta.

The Honorable Jon Parrish Peede is a senior fellow at Common Sense Society and the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (N.E.H.), a federal grant-making agency. Nominated by President Donald J. Trump and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Chairman Peede awarded more than $500 million to universities, museums, libraries, scholars, and cultural nonprofits nationwide. He has served in an ex officio capacity on boards of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and other federal bodies. His previous positions include publisher of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia, literature grants director at the National Endowment for the Arts (N.E.A.), counselor to N.E.A. Chairman Dana Gioia, and director of the N.E.A.’s Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience program. In addition to writing speeches and proclamations for President George W. Bush and Laura Bush, he is the co-editor of Inside the Church of Flannery O’Connor: Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The New York Times, Stars & Stripes, Inside Higher Education, NPR, Bloomberg Radio, BBC, CSPAN, PBS, and other media outlets. He completed his B.S. at Vanderbilt University and M.A. at the University of Mississippi. He is the visiting writer in residence at Mississippi Valley State University, a public HBCU institution.

Dr. David C. Rose is a senior fellow at Common Sense Society and a professor of economics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He has served as the department director of graduate studies and as the department chair. His primary areas of research interest are behavioral economics, political economy, and organization theory. He regularly teaches principles, price theory, graduate microeconomic theory, mathematical economics, and a course on the theory of the firm. He has been a member of the Missouri Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission since 2016. In 2008, Dr. Rose received the St. Louis Business Journal’s Economic Educator of the year award. His book, The Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior, was selected as one of CHOICE’s outstanding titles of 2012 and was nominated for the Hayek Book Prize. Dr. Rose frequently contributes to policy debates through radio and television interviews as well as in op-eds in outlets such as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Word on Business, The School Choice Advocate, Forbes, The Washington Times, and The Christian Science Monitor on topics ranging from social security, monetary policy, fiscal policy, judicial philosophy, education reform, and healthcare reform. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia and his B.S. from Southwest Missouri State University.