My name is Andrew Hutsko (you can call me Drew) and I am excited to be a student in HIST 689 Teaching and Learning History in the Digital Age this semester. I am taking this course as part of the masters program. I am pursuing a Master of Arts in Applied History with New Media and Information Technology Emphasis and a specialization in the United States. In addition, I am also pursuing the graduate certificate in Digital Public Humanities. I already have a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Minor in Political Science from American University, that I received in May 2019.
I mostly interested in United States and European history, with my main research interest being European immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In both HIST 680 and 694 my final projects focused on one particular Eastern European ethnic group, the Carpatho-Rusyns, that came to the United States in large numbers between 1880 and 1920. My final project in HIST 680 involved mapping the historic Carpatho-Rusyn villages in what is today Eastern Slovakia. For my final project in HIST 694, I created an online digital exhibit that told the story of the immigration and Americanization process of the Carpatho-Rusyn people during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Carpatho-Rusyns is a topic that I am deeply interested in and have personal connections, as I am the descendent of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants who came to the United States in 1883 and 1910. I hope that this class will allow me to present my personal research interests to a larger public audience in new ways.
By taking HIST 689, I would like to gain new skills and knowledge about how people learn history and what are the most effective ways to teach history to a variety of different audiences. I am interested in pursuing a future career that involves educating the public about the past in the setting of either a museum or a historical site. I have always enjoyed sharing historical knowledge and information with other, and my goal with taking this class is to be able to more effectively engage a public audience with history.
