Historical Group to Honor Crimm
 Caroline Castillo Crimm,
associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University,
has been named the recipient of the Mary Jon and J. P. Bryan
Leadership in Education Award.
The award is given annually by the Texas State Historical Association to recognize
and honor the outstanding teacher in Texas. History teachers at the middle
school, high school and college levels are eligible to receive the award.
Crimm will receive a plaque and a $2,500 honorarium at the annual meeting of the
Texas State Historical Association, which will take place Saturday (March 8) in
El Paso.
"This is a prestigious award and is quite coveted in the Texas history community,"
said James Olson, department chair and professor of history at SHSU.
Crimm has taught at Sam Houston State since 1992. She was awarded the university's
Excellence in Teaching Award for 1998-99, and was named Outstanding Young Educator
early in her teaching career by the Winter Park, Fla. Jaycees. In 1997 she
received an SHSU Student Activities "Sammy Award" for being the outstanding faculty
sponsor of the year.
Although her area of expertise is in history and the study of the past, Crimm
has done much to incorporate modern technology into the way she teaches.
She recently designed and developed an internet course on log cabin preservation,
and she created the internet site on Patricia de la Garza, a survivor of the Battle
of the Alamo, for the Institute of Texan Cultures. She has also developed
material for Texas and United States history for a Web Course in a Box series.
Her Sam Houston State University teaching evaluations have ranked high consistently.
At the university she has taught U. S. history, the history of Texas and the Southwest,
colonial and contemporary Latin American history, the history of Mexico and the
Caribbean, the National Period history of South America, the history of Texas
borderlands, local and family history, frontiers and cultural contact, and Spanish
language.
Crimm has also taught high school social studies and biology and was a history
lecturer at Victoria Community College.
In 2001 she coordinated a project to preserve Walker County's oldest log cabin,
located about 15 miles west of Huntsville. The project involved moving the
cabin from its original location to downtown Huntsville, where it was reconstructed
on the historical site of Huntsville founder Pleasant Gray's log cabin trading
post.
Two of Crimm's graduate and undergraduate university history classes removed the
side sheds and roof of the cabin in preparation for its relocation. Once
it was moved, the students helped to reconstruct the roof under supervision of
historical architects and preservation experts.
The students who were involved with the project conducted research in family letters,
local deed records and wills at the Walker County Courthouse. They
also learned how settlers built cabins and lived during the years of early Texas,
as well as modern techniques of preservation and restoration of log cabins.
Crimm earned the bachelor of arts in history at the University of Miami.
She has a master of arts degree in architectural preservation from Texas Tech
University and a doctorate in Latin American history from the University of Texas.
- END -
SHSU Media Contact: Julia May
March 7, 2003
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