Ron Heller is one of 16 teachers chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities for a four-week program entitled Charles Dickens: Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities.

ST. PETERSBURG – Ron Heller, a local teacher from Shorecrest Preparatory School, has been selected as an NEH Summer Scholar from a national applicant pool to attend one of 26 seminars and institutes supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Endowment is a federal agency that, each summer, supports these enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities, and cultural institutions so that teachers can study with experts in humanities disciplines. Mr. Heller will participate in a (seminar or institute) entitled Charles Dickens: Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities.The four-week program will be held at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It is hosted by the Dickens Project and directed by Marty Gould, associate professor of English at the University of South Florida.

The 16 teachers selected to participate in the program each receive a stipend of $3,300 to cover their travel, study, and living expenses. Topics for the 26 seminars and institutes offered for teachers this summer include A Reverence for Words: Muslim Cultures and the Arts; Abolition and Women’s Suffrage, 1830s–1920s; Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad; The African-American Freedom Struggle from Plessy to Brown; America’s Gilded Age and Progressive Era; Appalachia: Land, Literature, and Culture; Central Asia in World History; The Chinese Exclusion Act; Communism and American Life; The Dutch Republic, Britain, and the World Economy; Existentialism; Hannah Arendt; Immigration in California: Literature and Theater; Immigration, Industrialization, and Illness in 19th-Century America; John Steinbeck: Social Critic and Ecologist; Philosophers of Education; Punishment, Politics, and Culture; Race and Mental Health in History and Literature; Religious Worlds of New York; Roman Daily Life: Petronius and Pompeii; Shakespeare; Slavery, Equality, and the Constitution; and U.S.- Russian/Soviet Relations, 1776-Present.

The approximately 544 NEH Summer Scholars who participate in these programs of study will teach almost 68,000 American students the following year.

Heller has been on the Upper School faculty at Shorecrest since 1999. He holds a BA in History from New York University and an MA in History from Harvard University. Named a 2007 Teacher of Merit for the state of Florida, Heller participated in the 2010 NEH program for his essay Interpretations of the Industrial Revolution.

For more, go to tampabaynewswire.com. For more about Shorecrest Preparatory School, go to shorecrest.org.

Story and photograph of Ron Heller courtesy of Tampa Bay Newswire.

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