Project Team

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 museum, for which she received $300,000 in funding through NEH’s grant program titled America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations. 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.

Todd S. Hawley, PhD, project co-director, a high school social studies teacher for seven years, is 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 Kent State workshop for teachers titled Using the Kent State Shootings Digital Archives to Spark Inquiry and Action. He also served as co-project director for a Jennings Foundation grant that funded a 2019 workshop titled May 4, 1970 Then & Now: Voices for Change for middle and high school teachers.

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 Jennings Foundation workshop mentioned above titled May 4, 1970 Then & Now: Voices for Change and on the project team for Annette Kratcoski’s NEH-funded grant titled The May 4th Augmented Reality Experience, which is described below. For the 50th Commemoration, she curated exhibits that honor each student who died on May 4, along with a Twitter feed (@KSUVoices1970) translating experience of students then into tweets now.

Liz Campion, MLIS, May 4 Archivist of Kent State’s Special Collections and Archives, provides research support and reference services to users of the May 4 Collection. She participates in outreach programs and instructional sessions related to historically significant materials, in all formats, that are directly related to the legacy of the Kent State Shootings. She and Cara Gilgenbach will introduce teachers to the May 4 archive and provide virtual opportunities for digital exploration of the over 50,000 items available online.

Roseann “Chic” Canfora, PhD, a witness to the Kent State shootings, remains a stalwart advocate for remembrance of May 4 and the importance of connecting the lessons of the anti-war movement to emerging movements today, including Black Lives Matter and March for Our Lives. Indicted by the Ohio Grand Jury for her activism during the antiwar protests of May 1–4, 1970, she was later exonerated. Following the Parkland shooting on February 14, 2018, she served as a crisis communications consultant. A high school journalism teacher for 28 years, she now teaches in Kent State’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. At the same time, she serves as chief communications officer for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. In 2019, Kent State’s College of Education, Health and Human Services recognized her distinguished public service with its highest alumni award.

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 is also a scholar of Feminism, Black Feminism, and the culture of the 1960s. Pedagogically, she employs a multimodal, cross-disciplinary approach.

John Cleary, second closest to the Guard at 110 feet, fell at the base of a steel plate sculpture titled “Solar Totem #1,” itself pierced by a bullet. A photograph of the scene showing fellow students aiding him was published on the cover of Life magazine. It, like the iconic photo of Jeffrey Miller lying on the pavement with Mary Ann Vecchio calling out over his body, profoundly touched the American public. While John privately recovered and focused on his career as an architect after college, he talked during the 50th commemoration with the students in Kent State’s May 4 course about how his life was affected going forward. As examined by scholar W. James Booth in Communities of Memory: On Witness, Identity, and Justice, John Cleary chooses to act upon the obligation that is incumbent upon us as humans to remember those who have been lost. He, like Dean Kahler and Joe Lewis, will converse with the workshop K–12 teachers, inspiring their work with their students.

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. Cara Gilgenbach and Liz Campion will introduce teachers to the May 4 archive and guide virtual opportunities for digital exploration of the over 50,000 items available online.

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.

Thomas M. Grace, who has a PhD in history from SUNY Buffalo, is a surviving casualty of the May 4 shootings and 1972 graduate of Kent State University. Following a long, dedicated career as a social worker and union representative, he is now adjunct professor of history at Erie Community College. He contributed tirelessly over decades to projects preserving the May 4 site and history, including the May 4 Visitors Center and Walking Tour and the National Register and National Landmark nominations. He is author of the definitive and meticulously researched Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties. About Kent State, author Van Gosse asserts, “There is nothing else like it. It’s must reading for anyone concerned with the New Left and postwar political change.” With similar high praise, author Maurice Isserman calls the book “a work of genuine scholarly importance—the most complete account of the Kent State events to date.” Workshop teachers will receive a copy of the book.

Dean Kahler, a first-quarter freshman on May 4, 1970, decided to attend that day’s student demonstration, not because he had strong feelings about the war in Vietnam, but because, as a farm boy from Stark County, he had never seen a protest rally and was curious. The 20-year-old dove to the ground when the shooting started and was lying prone when he felt a bullet pierce his spine. The injury left him paralyzed. Kahler regularly takes part in May 4 commemorations and often conducts media interviews about the shootings and their legacy. A lifetime member of the Church of the Brethren, he is a pacifist and against all war; he believes in promoting peace. Kahler returned to the Kent Campus in fall 1970, earning a bachelor’s degree in education in 1977. He spent his life in public service, teaching school for 15 years, and working for the Ohio Industrial Commission, the Ohio Attorney General and the Ohio Secretary of State, as well as serving two terms as an elected Athens County Commissioner. He taught history and social studies and never shied from talking about the May 4 shootings in his classes.

William Kist, PhD, is professor emeritus of education at Kent State University, where he taught literacy courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and is the recipient of the 2017 Ohio Outstanding University English Language Arts Educator Award. A former high school English teacher and language arts and social studies curriculum coordinator, he has been working with schools and districts on a national level for more than fifteen years. An author of over fifty articles and four books, he has presented many keynote addresses for organizations including the National Dropout Prevention Conference, American Reading Forum, and Denver Comic-Con.

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 was co-project director with Todd Hawley for the 2019 Jennings Foundation grant titled May 4, 1970 Then & Now: Voices for Change that offered workshops on May 4 for middle and high school teachers. She also is co-PI for an NEH-funded grant titled The May 4th Augmented Reality Experience, which provides a virtual reality experience within the May 4 site.

Joseph Lewis, a KSU freshman, made his way to the campus Commons on May 4 conscious of his First Amendment rights. Unaware, as all students were, of what was about to happen, Joe was 60 feet away when he was shot by two different Guardsmen. Disappointed by the outcomes of the many legal struggles for justice, Joe was quiet on the subject of May 4, until he and Jim Russell, a fellow casualty and émigré to Oregon, decided it was necessary to start sharing their experiences with high school classes. He regularly told students, “There was no feeling of danger or impending catastrophe. . . . We were not doing anything that made us imagine the outcome.” A staunch proponent of inclusiveness in telling the story and representing all points of view, Joe Lewis, like Dean Kahler and John Cleary, will engage in an open, interactive conversation with workshop participants.

Mwatabu Okantah, MA, a freshman at Kent State when the campus reopened in 1970, is associate professor and poet-in-residence, along with serving as interim co-chair, in the Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University. 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.

Mark Seeman, PhD, Kent State professor emeritus of anthropology, is co-writer of the National Register and National Historic Landmark nominations for the May 4 site and co-author of 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 May 4 discussion panels, and presented on the history of May 4, to a wide variety of audiences, including grade 6–12 students.

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 Kent State’s student organization 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. A long-time active member of and faculty advisor for the May 4th Task Force, he has also team-taught Kent State’s course May 4, 1970 & Its Aftermath. He is the inaugural faculty advisor to a newly-organized Students for a Democratic Society at Kent State University.