Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Cara Flodmand.  She was born and raised in Hamilton, New Jersey.  She attended public schools and graduated in 2004 from Steinert High School (Hamilton East).  Her father is the Deputy Director of Property Management and Construction Contracts for the State of New Jersey, overseeing in particular building and construction projects.  Her mother worked as a secretary for publishing firm McGraw Hill and later managed the office at St. John the Evangelist Church before recently retiring.  After graduating from Rowan in 2008, she became a social studies middle school teacher for ten years, with the bulk of her teaching experience in New Brunswick.  In 2013, she won a spot in a seminar sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center and hosted by the University of California of Los Angeles (UCLA) and led by Gary Nash entitled “The American Revolution.”  In 2016, she participated in a seminar called “History Quest,” which was sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson Center and Princeton University.  The seminar focused on game design theory and how to include games in the social studies curriculum.  In New Brunswick, someone rolled a Chromebook cart into her classroom, and she became fascinated with technology and began using the latest tech in her courses.  Other teachers noticed and asked her to help them introduce tech into their classrooms.  She found that she liked this work and applied for a position as an Instructional Technology Facilitator in her old hometown of Hamilton.  She began in that program in 2018 and became the Coordinator of it in 2020.  In 2018, Cara earned a Master’s of Science in Instructional Technology from the New York Institute of Technology and a post-masters certificate in Supervision. She has participated in many exciting educational technology focused programs, most notably the Google Innovator Academy in 2019. She is one of only 2,500 Innovators worldwide. Today, she oversees four Instructional Technology Facilitators, and they service the needs of 24 different K-12 schools in the district. She also consults for a Google for Education partner, Kiker Learning, and delivers professional development globally for teachers in the area of edtech as MissEduTech. While, her passion has shifted to educational technology, she remains engaged in K-12 education and was recently named to the founding class of Emerging Leaders by the NJ Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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I knew that I wanted to be a history teacher.  One of the things that appealed to me about Rowan was that the history classes were all going to be relatively small.  I didn’t want to be in large lecture halls.  I wanted to get to know my faculty members and my peers.  The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) was too close to my home, only about fifteen minutes, and I didn’t want to go to some place that close.  At the same time, I didn’t want to go to someplace too far away.  Since I wanted to become a history teacher in New Jersey, it also made sense to stay in state and get New Jersey certification.  Rowan was perfect for all these reasons.

I remember wishing that my dorm had air conditioning.  I think I moved in on my 18^th birthday.  My first semester I had a United States to 1865 class with you, Dr. Carrigan.  It was a small class of only about fifteen students.  It was a Rowan Seminar, and I still have friends from that class to this day, particularly Mark Walter and Itéa Bell.  That should tell you something about how much we bonded in that class.  Dr. Carrigan pushed us hard and taught us how college classes could be different from high school history classes.

I took Historical Methods with Dr. Blake.  It took things to yet another level.  It taught me how to read and write in a new, more advanced and different way.  It was very challenging, and the first time that I had to write such a long paper.

That same year, I began working as your research assistant, along with three other students, including Mark.  I remember your library office with the map of the Southwest with all the pins representing lynching cases of Mexicans.  Eventually, we did quite a bit of research on microfilm, seeking more information on particular cases.  We then did archival research on our trip to Texas.  I remember so many things from that trip, including a great breakfast burrito that I ordered somewhere.  I also remember your constant ordering chicken-fried steak to eat.  I also remember visiting your family farm and meeting your father and brother.  It was an exciting trip, and it made me really feel like we were seeing how historical scholarship was created.  It illuminated the whole process, from finding and collecting the data all the way to synthesizing, analyzing and, eventually, publishing it.  I remember coming back to Rowan when the book was finally published and seeing my name in the acknowledgments, happy to have been a part of the long process that created it.

Another way in which I was involved outside of the classroom was through the Student History Association and Phi Alpha Theta.  I was an officer for multiple years, including co-President with Mark one year, I believe. I remember organizing some service activities and helping support the various programs of the Department. I really enjoyed being part of that small community on campus.

Another class that really made a great impression on me was your Civil War and Reconstruction course. I liked that course so much that I switched from planning to pursue a position teaching world history to seeking to teach United States history. I loved the way that you taught the class through a series of turning points.  The way that you incorporated film into the class was also new to me, and it later became a foundational part of my own teaching.

I took two classes with Dr. Heinzen, one on Russian history and the other Senior Seminar.  I wrote my final paper on Stalin.  Dr. Heinzen used novels in his classes, and I liked the way that he used literature as a way to understand the culture that produced it.  It has been a few years, but I think the one that we read was Doctor Zhivago. 

I would certainly relive my four years at Rowan.  It was more fun than high school.  I had better friends and was more engaged in the community through clubs and activities.  I felt confident and well prepared when I graduated and able to move on smoothly into my teaching career.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  Thanks to Laurie Lahey for helping proofread and edit the final versions.  Email carrigan@rowan.edu with questions or corrections.  You can find the Link to all of the Project 100 entries on the Web:  https://chss.rowan.edu/departments/history/alumni_highlights/project_100/