Meet the CSAA Board of Directors
Dr. Veronica Ent, President
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Dr. Veronica Ent chairs the Saint Vincent College Education Department in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and teaches graduate courses in instructional technology, curriculum design, and visual thinking and learning. Dr. Ent’s research areas are the evolution of technology and visual media for instruction, human –computer interaction, innovative instructional design and technology, and curriculum. She also is an accomplished equestrian and coach of the college’s intercollegiate equestrian team. Dr. Ent is a member of the International Society for Technology and Education, Association of Education Communications and Technology, and the Association of Teacher Education. She has served as the president of the Country School Association of America since 2013.
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Joan Prouty, Vice President and 2021 Conference Co-Chair, and Dale Prouty, Director
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Joan and Dale Prouty are long time educators and museum programmers in upstate New York who have enjoyed interacting with youth of all ages. Dale is a retired Elementary School educator who taught in the Slate Valley. Joan is the education coordinator at the Farm Museum and Perkins Hollow Schoolhouse located at the Washington County Fairgrounds where both work with children’s programs and exhibits. Preparing for the 200th year of New York country schooling in 2012 they worked on locating, photographing and documenting the sites and surviving buildings which were included in their exhibition at The Farm Museum in Greenwich, NY.
They are charter members of the Country School Association of America and both serve on its Board of Directors. They have presented at various local and national conferences and in 2015 they hosted the CSAA National Conference at Saratoga Springs, New York. Other historic interests include the Washington County Historical Society, the Hebron Preservation Society and the Association of Living History Farms And Museums. (ALHFAM). Dale served as a member of the Washington County Advisory Council on Historic Preservation where he produced the annual awards booklets. Since becoming members of the Country School Association of America, visitations to various historic sites have given them the opportunity to note the great variety of student slates that had been available to young scholars a century ago |
Dr. Mary Outlaw, Secretary
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Beginning her career in the elementary classroom, Mary Outlaw gained valuable experience that served her well as she earned advanced degrees and became a professor of education, teaching courses in curriculum and methods for elementary education majors. Her interest in the history of teacher education, particularly the development of normal schools and teachers' colleges, provided the topic for her dissertation and ongoing research. A founding member of the CSAA, she serves as the secretary for the organization, and hosted the 2013 CSAA conference at Berry College in Rome, Georgia.
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Maureen O’Connor Leach, Treasurer
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Maureen O’Connor Leach has chaired and presented at CSAA conferences since 2007. As the Executive Director for the NSCDA-NJ she oversaw the operation of the oldest (1759) one room schoolhouse on its original site in New Jersey. She presented the living history school program at that site for over 9 years; currently she is involved with the Freehold Township Heritage Society which owns the West Freehold School and the Georgia Road School.
Maureen has been a historic interpreter for over 30 years and has presented a variety of programs at historic schoolhouses throughout the New York/New Jersey area as well as at various local and national conferences. She was appointed to the New Jersey Living History Advisory Council by Governor Corzine and is a Commissioner for the Monmouth County Historical Commission. Ms. Leach holds a BA in History and a Juris Doctor. She studied women and the law while at Brooklyn Law School, clerked in Family Court, and worked with abused women as a prosecutor. When changing careers to the museum field these interests led her, through course work in historic preservation and the women’s movement in America, to a passion for one room schoolhouses. |
Dr. Lucy Townsend, Founding Director Emerita and Founding Editor, Country School Journal
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Dr. Lucy Townsend earned a Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago. For 23 years, she taught at Northern Illinois University (IL), and for 10 years she also curated the University’s Blackwell History of Education Museum. She is now a retired professor. A founding Country School Association of America board member, she was CSAA executive director from 2006 to 2013. She has authored and edited several books including More Than 200,000 Country Schools: A Guide for Research, Preservation and Education and has published articles, plays, poetry, and curriculum. With Nick Shudak, she founded and was the first editor the Country School Journal.
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Liz Ferris, Director and 2022 Conference co-chair
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Liz Ferris is a high school special education teacher in Western Pennsylvania. She has a BS in Mathematics, MS in Curriculum and Instruction, MS in Special Education, and Pennsylvania teacher certifications in Mathematics (7-12) and Special Education (N-12). Liz also has held positions as the assistant varsity softball coach, ski club advisor, junior/senior class co-advisor, Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) co-advisor, and Student Assistance Program (SAP) team member. She has been a member of CSAA since 2009 after assisting with the annual conference in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Liz enjoys snowboarding, running, gardening, and riding horses.
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Susan Fineman, Director, Conference Liaison/Advisor
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Susan Fineman is a retired teacher from the Lowell (MA) Public Schools where she taught for 31 years. Upon retirement she became involved with programming at the District #1 Schoolhouse, a restored 1841 one-room school in Nashua, NH, where she lives. She has served as a docent schoolmarm in the school’s 4th grade living history program since 2005 hosting over 1,800 students each year.
A founding member of the Country School Association of America in 2005, Susan has served on the Board of Directors of the CSAA since its official launch in 2006, and has presented at numerous CSAA annual conferences and historical societies on a variety of country school topics. She has published the online CSAA newsletter since 2006 and recently shifted that content to the CSAA blog, The Report Card. In addition to photographing schoolhouses across the United States, Susan has chaired two national CSAA conferences in New Hampshire, 2007 and 2017. She also co-chaired the 2021 Virtual Conference on the CSAA website. |
Myrna Grove, Director
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Myrna Grove’s career in education spanned 35 years as an elementary classroom teacher in Northwest Ohio. She has a B.A. in Education from Manchester University and a Masters degree in Library Science from Kent State University. She has authored four nonfiction books and contributed to three others. Among them is Legacy of One-Room Schools (Masthof Press). Her website is www.mgrovebooks.com .
Since 2002, Myrna has attended the annual Country School Association of America conferences held at various locations in the U. S. She has served on the Board of Directors since 2011 and also serves on three CSAA committees. For a number of years, she conducted one-room school re-enactments in the summer through her county’s historical society in a 1901 frame schoolhouse. Students in grades one through eight dressed in early 1900s clothing and came for a day to experience lessons. As a member of Alpha Delta Kappa, an international honorary sorority for women educators, Myrna has served her chapter as President. She has been listed in various editions of Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Education and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers since the 1990s. |
Sarah Bent, Director and 2025 Schoolhouse Tour Coordinator
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In her career with the Monmouth County, NJ Park System, Sarah worked as an historic sites interpreter and supervisor at sites that highlighted historical activities from the late 18th century through the early 20th century. Through her involvement with local and regional history and with the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums - ALHFAM - she met Dale and Joan Prouty, and Maureen Leach, who led her to CSAA. She attended my first conference at St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, PA. Now retired and relocated to Ohio, Sarah remains interested in historic preservation, passionate about accurate, engaging interpretation, and educational history.
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Richard and Catharin Lewis, Directors
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Richard and Catharin Lewis are charter members of the Country School Association of America and both serve on the Board of Directors; Catharin as the archivist for the organization at our Headquarters location in Texas and Richard as chair of the National Schoolhouse Registry.
Richard has a B.A. in business economics from Hood College, and M.B.A. studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is a Vietnam veteran who worked 30 years for IBM and 18 more as the manager of the Software Help Desk for the International Space Station at NASA JSC in Houston. Catharin has a B.S. in family and child development from Hood College. After graduation, she was a Director of Christian Education for ten years while raising her children. In 1993 she co-founded with her husband Richard the West Bay Common School Children’s Museum in League City, Texas, which is now the headquarters of the Country School Association of America. The centerpiece of the museum is a fully restored 1898 one-room schoolhouse where children can step back in time and experience reading, writing, and arithmetic as they did in the 1890s. Catharin, the director and curator of the museum, developed a “living history” curriculum for museum visitors called the Hands-On-History program. In 1996, she received commendation for her program by the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH). In 1994 she received the Museum Award from the Texas Historical Commission for her accomplishments in interpreting and preserving Texas heritage, and in 2006 she was an inductee into the Pioneers of the State of Texas Hall of Honor. Richard’s interests include historic preservation and artifact restoration. He was in charge of moving and restored the schoolhouse and considered it just the largest antique he has ever restored. |
Dr. Mark Dewalt, Director
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Mark W. Dewalt is Professor Emeritus at Winthrop University. He earned an undergraduate degree in Social Sciences from Muhlenberg College and a PhD in Educational Research from the University of Virginia. He has been studying Amish and Mennonite culture for over 50 years. Mark’s publications include books such as: Amish Education in the United States and Canada and The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson. Recent articles include: Prevalence of Accidents in Smaller Amish Settlements: 2015–2022, and Amish Mortality Rates in the Twenty-First Century. Both published in The Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities. https://plainanabaptistjournal.org/index.php/JPAC/index
Mark is a founding member of the Country School Association of America and has presented at numerous CSAA conferences. In addition to his research and writing, he does presentations as Abe Lincoln, volunteers at the Charlotte Airport and teaches English to young adults in South Korea. |
Dr. Kathy Brabson, Director and 2023 Conference Co-chair
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Following 35 years as a teacher and principal, Kathy Brabson focuses her retirement interests on early Pennsylvania schooling. She has authored and coauthored several articles about instructional practices of specific country schoolmasters for publications of LancasterHistory and Conestoga Area Historical Society, and she delivered a presentation at the 2019 CSAA conference. Kathy published Life of Thad Stevens: What Part of “All Men Are Created Equal” Do You Not Understand?
Dr. Brabson holds a B.S. in Elementary Education from Millersville University, and an M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Pennsylvania State University. She serves on the boards of Conestoga Area Historical Society and Millersville Area Historical Society, and she volunteers weekly at LancasterHistory. |
Debbie Schaefer-Jacobs, Director
Debbie Schaefer-Jacobs is curator of the history of education collections at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, as well as curating several other collections like the America on Stone 19th Century Print Collections, domestic visual arts, childhood artifacts (dolls, toys, & games) and other American material culture. As the history of education curator for the past 15 years she has developed an expertise in material and visual culture of the American classroom. She has a BA with distinction (2 separate majors: history & art history) from University of Rhode Island, an MA in Museum Science from Texas Tech University with minors in historic preservation, history, and art history, and predoctoral studies in public history at George Mason University. Debbie has had a long career at the Smithsonian, spending 4 years as a National Portrait Gallery cataloguer before returning to the National Museum of American History where she interned. She then spent the next 25 years at the Smithsonian assisting with the development of the museum’s collections information system, cataloguing standards, and classification structures, serving on data modeling and information structure committees both SI wide and internationally before returning to work directly again with the collections. At the Smithsonian she has curated education collections in numerous exhibitions, including Many Voices, One Nation, Giving in America: Who Pays for Education, Girlhood, Its Complicated! and American Democracy. Debbie has also contributed articles to Smithsonian American Woman, Many Voices, One Nation, and Smithsonian’s Civil War: Inside the National Collection, and been quoted in numerous publications across the country.
Debbie is the granddaughter of a country schoolteacher. She first corresponded with CSAA members in 2011 and when possible, has attended CSAA conferences since 2015 as a conference speaker at the Country School Association of America. Her presentations to CSAA, History of Education Society, , Organization for Educational Historians and other professional organizations on topics such as Exhibition Interpretations of Segregated Schooling, Americanization in the Classroom, the History of the American School Desk, Western Themed Lunch Boxes, Spelling Boards-An Enduring Educational Toy, Yearbooks and School Souvenirs, Year End Traditions, History of the Humble Flashcard, Teaching Black Heritage to Children 1960-2000, and Civil War Popular Prints.
Debbie is the granddaughter of a country schoolteacher. She first corresponded with CSAA members in 2011 and when possible, has attended CSAA conferences since 2015 as a conference speaker at the Country School Association of America. Her presentations to CSAA, History of Education Society, , Organization for Educational Historians and other professional organizations on topics such as Exhibition Interpretations of Segregated Schooling, Americanization in the Classroom, the History of the American School Desk, Western Themed Lunch Boxes, Spelling Boards-An Enduring Educational Toy, Yearbooks and School Souvenirs, Year End Traditions, History of the Humble Flashcard, Teaching Black Heritage to Children 1960-2000, and Civil War Popular Prints.
William Sherman, Director
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William L. Sherman worked for more than 35 years as public relations specialist for the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA) is a private advocacy organization representing public education employees. As part of his final work for the ISEA, Sherman coordinated publication of a book on the status of Iowa’s one and two-room country school, “Iowa’s Country Schools: Landmarks of Learning.” Since retiring for ISEA in 2000, Sherman has continued to work for the preservation of Iowa’s remaining country schools. He has also done research on the standard school movement with May Francis, the first woman elected to statewide office in Iowa.
He is a founding member of the CSAA, served 6 years on the State Historical Society of Iowa Board of Trustees, and was a member of the Preservation Iowa Executive Board from 2000 to 2001. Since that time, he has organized annual country school preservation conferences for Preservation Iowa. In 2010, as president of the Polk Historical Society, Sherman coordinated efforts to get a 33 by 4 foot tall mural placed on a wall to help mark the birthplace of Des Moines. Sherman received B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Iowa and has taken additional hours of graduate work at Iowa State University. He was accredited by the Public Relations Society of America in 1993. In 2000 he received an award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History for his work on country school preservation. Sherman is married and the father of two grown children. He and his wife live in Des Moines. |
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Robert Spooner, Director
Robert retired from the United States Marine Corps in 1984, having served 25 years. As a pilot, he served in Vietnam, and later onboard the USS Midway. After graduate school he taught in the Math and Science Department at the U. S. Naval Academy, his alma mater. American Airlines was home until 2002 when he retired as an International Captain. Then, and until 2011, as Chief Pilot of a charter company he flew flights around the world to every continent. During time at home and for almost 45 years he umpired and refereed high school and college, basketball, soccer, and softball.
His country school interest originated from his mother's stories of her one room school in Byron, Illinois. As a member and now President of the local historical society for 25 years he has originated and directed two major volunteer restoration projects. The first received a county award for historic adaptive reuse restoration of an 1870 farmhouse into a community center on the lake. The second, saved and relocated an 1886 one room school back to the 1843 site of the original log school. The four year volunteer effort restored the school to the 1920's era for use as a museum and local school re-enactment site. The restored school is recognized as a county historic landmark and is listed on the CSAA National Schoolhouse Registry. Robert has been actively presenting local history programs to multiple organizations such as, DAR, Kiwanis, Libraries and Parks and Recreation Districts. Robert has been an active CSAA member since 2014 and serves on the Preservation Grant Committee. |
Ralph Buglass, Director
Ralph Buglass has been a CSAA member since 2014, when he received the organization’s annual Service Award for his work as a volunteer docent at a one-room schoolhouse in Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC. He is also a speaker on early public education for the county’s historical society and has presented on related topics at CSAA conferences as well as lifelong learning institutes and other venues in the nation’s capital area. He organized the 2019 CSAA conference in Maryland. A retired communications professional, he has a bachelor’s degree in American history from Cornell University and a master’s in journalism from American University.
Dr. Teresa Eagle, Ex Officio Director, 2025 Conference Chair
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Dr. Teresa Eagle is currently serving as the Dean of the College of Education and Professional Development at Marshall University in Huntington, WV. The granddaughter of a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in Lincoln County WV, Teresa has always been proud of her connection to the history of education in rural America. She has a B.S. in Mathematics from Morris Harvey College (now the University of Charleston, WV), an M.A. in Educational Leadership from the WV College of Graduate Studies, an EdS in Supervision of Instruction from Marshall University, and an EdD in Educational Leadership from WV University. After teaching and serving as an administrator in Kanawha County WV, she joined the faculty of MU and eventually moved into the role of Dean.
A “cold call” from Veronica Ent provided the outlet for her passion for the history of education in working toward the 2025 conference to be hosted at Marshall U. Her first conference in Toledo will hopefully be the start of a long and fulfilling involvement with CSAA! |
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Susan Webb was a charter member of CSAA and served on its Board of Directors. Susan had offered presentations for most of the CSAA conferences. The topics for her presentations have ranged from Noah Webster; William McGuffey; Rosenwald Schools; Latta teacher resource books; reward of merit certificates; reenactment lesson plans; early schoolhouse textbooks; and schoolmarm diaries.
Drawing on her more than 20 years of experience as a classroom teacher on all grade levels, and her background of theatre productions, Susan was aware of various methods to draw an audience into a presentation setting. She engaged audience members in oral recitations and activities as well as provided members with related printed materials for personal files. Susan has presented her own one-room school programs School Days with the Traveling Schoolmarm; Masterful McGuffe; A Rosenwald School Primer; Country School Copybook; and Noah Webster to various historical societies, civic clubs, and academic institutions throughout the country. She also presented a one-room school museum program for an international schooling conference in Bremen, Germany. |