Secondary school teachers across the country are invited to apply to the 2008 Summer Presidential Academy, a unique opportunity to study three pivotal moments in American history. This seventeen-day course, offered at no cost to the selected candidates, will focus on three seminal primary documents: the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. To better illuminate each document in its historical context, the course will take participants to the three cities in which each document was first made public: Philadelphia, Gettysburg, and Washington, D.C.

The course, now in its third year, allows students to explore the fundamental ideas relating three important eras in our nation's history: the American Revolution and Founding, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. Exceptional scholars and professors of history, including Pulitzer Prize winners David Hackett Fischer and James McPherson, will lead participants in lectures and seminar discussions.

Lucas Morel, Associate Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University, directs the program and co-instructs throughout it. The Academy is administered by the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University as a result of a 2005 grant from the U. S. Department of Education.

Fifty-two teachers, one from each state, the District of Columbia, and a U.S. territory, will be selected to participate in the Presidential Academy. To learn more about the program, including how to apply to participate, visit the website at presidentialacademy.org/about-the-program.html.