CNU professor's dissertation named most outstanding

News Release - Sept. 12, 2006

Media Contact:
Karen L. Gill
Office of Communications and Public Relations
(757) 594-8428

(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) — Research by a Christopher Newport University history professor on West Germany has been named the most outstanding dissertation on the history of education for 2006.

The dissertation on how West Germany became a democratic society after World War II by Dr. Brian Puaca, assistant professor of history, won the 2006 Claude A. Eggertsen dissertation prize from the History of Education Society.

The dissertation was chosen for the quality of the research and writing, the contribution to theory, and the contribution to the history of education.

Puaca will accept the national prize in October at the History of Education Society conference in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Puaca will receive an honorarium, and a special session at the conference will be devoted to his work.

Puaca’s dissertation, “Learning Democracy: Education Reform in Postwar Germany, 1945-1965,” argues that schools played a pivotal role in the process of converting West Germany to democracy. Through the introduction of educational reforms such as student government, student newspapers, exchange programs, social studies as a subject of study, and new history textbooks, young Germans acquired experience with democratic ideas and processes.