Project Team

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have postponed Kent State's 2020 "Making Meaning of May 4" workshops until Summer 2021. This workshop information page will be updated for 2021.
Project Directors
Laura L. Davis, PhD, project co-director, is a Kent State professor emerita of English, and co-creator of the May 4 Walking Tour and May 4 Visitors Center, for which she received $300,000 in NEH funding through its America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations implementation grant program. A witness to the May 4 shootings, she team-taught Kent State’s May 4, 1970 & Its Aftermath course and co-authored successful nominations of the May 4 site for the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmark status. In 2019, she received Kent State’s President’s Medal for documenting, educating the public about, and preserving the history and site of the May 4 shootings. She will present in the opening night program on the context of the sixties and sessions on the meaning of the NHL designation, the site and Visitors Center, the counterculture, small group work, and the final teachers workshop.
Todd S. Hawley, PhD, project co-director, a high school social studies teacher for seven years, is associate professor of social studies teacher education at Kent State University. He integrates the Kent State May 4 digital archives into his secondary social studies methods courses and co-developed a workshop for teachers titled Using the Kent State Shootings Digital Archives to Spark Inquiry and Action. He is co-project director for a Jennings Foundation grant, May 4, 1970 Then & Now: Voices for Change, which funded an August 2019 workshop about May 4 for middle and high school teachers. For the NEH workshops in 2020, he will lead inquiry pedagogy instruction and guide teaching projects.
Project Faculty and Presenters
Lori Boes, MLIS, assistant director of the May 4 Visitors Center, oversees K–12 and college tours and the museum’s outreach. She participated in the workshop funded by Jennings Foundation mentioned above, and on the project team for Annette Kratcoski’s NEH-funded grant titled Layers of History, which is described below. For the 50th Commemoration, she has curated exhibits that honor each student who died on May 4 and a Twitter feed (@KSUVoices1970) translating experience of students then into tweets now. During the NEH workshop she will co-lead discussion of Fire in the Heartland, co-guide visits to the May 4 Visitors Center, and assist with small group work sessions and the archives visit on accessing and using May 4 sources.
Alan Canfora, MLIS, a surviving casualty of the May 4 shootings, is library director of the Akron Law Library. As a student, he co-founded the May 4 Task Force, which began organizing annual May 4 commemorations since 1975, and the May 4 Coalition, which led efforts 1976–78 to limit construction within the site. He has spoken at more than 150 colleges and provided countless interviews to K–12 students. He will provide the site tour and co-present in the activism session. 
Roseann “Chic” Canfora, PhD, a witness to the Kent State shootings, remains a stalwart advocate for remembrance May 4 and its place in history. A 28-year high school journalism teacher and now chief communications officer for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, she served as a crisis communications consultant following the Parkland shooting. She will address her roles in the Kent State history and activism today.
Shannon Christen-Syed, MAT and MA, grades 7–12 integrated language arts and English, teaches classroom Pan-African sections of English courses (primarily college writing) and online and classroom Pan-African Studies courses ranging from Black Experience I & II, The Legacy of Slavery, to Oral and Written Discourses. She will co-lead sessions on movements of 1965–75 and the counterculture.
Cara Gilgenbach, MLIS, head of Kent State’s Special Collections & Archives, has provided research services to thousands of users of the May 4 Collection and hundreds of instructional sessions teaching students how to access and use archival resources. She will share these skills with workshop teachers.
Mark Goodman, JD, Duke University School of Law, is Kent State’s first Knight Chair in scholastic journalism. Each year he speaks to over a dozen groups of high school journalists and journalism teachers about how their rights and responsibilities are defined by cases decided in the era of May 4, 1970. He will lead a session on a landmark case related to the First Amendment that will be compared to May 4.
Thomas M. Grace, PhD, a surviving casualty of the May 4 shootings, followed a career as a social worker and union representative and became adjunct professor of history at Erie Community College and author of the definitive Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties, which workshop teachers will receive. His book and workshop presentation contextualize the history of May 4 within the activism of Kent State students during the long sixties. He also will address key bibliographic sources and impact of the shootings.
Annette Kratcoski, PhD, director of Kent State’s Research Center for Educational Technology, oversees research and outreach related to K–12 curriculum and technology integration and leads K–12 teacher professional development. She is co-PI for an NEH-funded grant titled Layers of History: Experiencing May 4, 1970 and its Legacy and is co-project director with Todd Hawley for the 2019 Jennings Foundation grant to offer workshops on May 4 for middle and high school teachers. She will collaborate on workshop content, help define and deliver services in operational areas, and mentor teachers as they work in small groups.
Mike Levicky, MEd, taught high school civics and psychology for nine years and now is a lecturer on teaching methods and research practices in Kent State’s School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies. He will apply his background in art to workshop discussions of the culture of the 1960s and help guide teachers’ development of class projects related to May 4/civics, writing objectives and outcomes, and employing the SCIM–C five-step process to evaluate primary sources so as to not reinforce hegemony.
Mwatabu Okantah, MA, a freshman at Kent State when the campus reopened in 1970, is associate professor and poet-in-residence in the Kent State Department of Pan-African Studies. A widely published poet, he has conducted residencies and workshops at numerous middle and high schools. He is a product of the Black Student Movement and the Black Arts Movement, which he will discuss in sessions on sixties movements and the counterculture.
Mark Seeman, PhD, Kent State professor emeritus of anthropology, is co-author of the NR and NHL nominations and This We Know: A Chronology of Shootings at Kent State, May 1970, a copy of which workshop participants will receive. He has led tours of the site, served on discussion panels, and presented on the history of May 4, at times to grades 6–12. He will co-present on May 4 in the context of other Landmark sites and its place in U.S. history. 
James Ronald Snyder, Ohio National Guard (ret.), was a 32-year-old detective for the Portage County Sheriff’s Office and captain in the 145th Infantry, Ohio National Guard, stationed on the campus on May 4, 1970. Just after noon, Capt. Snyder led Company C from the skirmish line behind Oscar Ritchie Hall to the left of Taylor Hall. He and his company closed off the space between Taylor and Prentice Halls and remained in place there during the shootings. He and his troops had views of the parking lot side of Taylor Hall, where the shootings took place. He has participated at Kent State previously as co-discussant on a panel with Laura Davis for the May 4 Task Force. 
Idris Kabir Syed, MEd in community counseling and MFA, is associate professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies and curator of the Uumbaji Gallery in Oscar Ritchie Hall. As an undergraduate at Kent State, he was editor of Black United Students' Uhuru periodical and more recently served as Middle East Chair of Progressive Students Network, long-time active member of and faculty advisor for the May 4th Task Force, and team-teacher of Kent State’s course May 4, 1970 & Its Aftermath. For the workshop, he will present on the long sixties, movements for change, cultural consciousness, the arts, and Fire in the Heartland and participate in the final teachers workshop.