Service and Symbols: America’s Cincinnatus and the American Revolution

Denver Brunsman

Denver Brunsman writes on the politics and social history of the American Revolution, early American republic, and British Atlantic world. His courses include “George Washington and His World,” taught annually at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. His honors include the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Prize for Teaching Excellence and induction into the George Washington University Academy of Distinguished Teachers, as well as selection to the College Board AP U.S. History Development Committee (2018-23; Higher Ed Chair, 2021-23). He is co-director of the Albert H. Small Normandy Institute at GW and frequently leads K-12 professional development programs for organizations such as Humanities Texas, the George Washington Teacher Institute at Mount Vernon, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, with whom he has twice partnered to lead the NEH Summer Institute “The Making of America: Colonial Era to Reconstruction.”

Raymond Hamilton

Allison Wickens

K. Allison Wickens, Vice President for Education, joined George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the summer of 2014. She currently leads the Education and Guest Services division and oversees the learning goals for the institution for onsite, offsite, and digital outreach programs.  She represents Mount Vernon in national discussions about museums, historic sites and how they relate to history and civics education today.  

Before arriving at Mount Vernon, she had been at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum, serving as their Director or Education and Visitor Services. She received her Master’s Degree in History at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she got a certificate in Museum Studies. Between her undergraduate work at Grinnell College and graduate school, she lived and worked in Washington D.C. at a wide variety of Smithsonian museums and offices.

Stacia Smith

Stacia Smith is the Director of Education of the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati. Stacia began her work with the Society in 2017 after a twenty-three-year career serving the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a public educator and town administrator. As a classroom teacher she worked extensively with the education departments at Mount Vernon and the Massachusetts Historical Society, was a research fellow at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, and wrote lessons for the American Studies Institute co-hosted by the University of Massachusetts and the JFK Library. Stacia’s lesson plans were twice honored by the History Channel, in 2008 and 2013. Her undergraduate degree is from Grove City College and her master’s degree is from the University of Connecticut.