Don Buerk, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of History

Program: History

Phone: 419-783-2454

Email: dbuerk@defiance.edu 

Don Buerk

TEACHING INTERESTS

Modern Europe, Asia, Middle East

RESEARCH EXPERIENCES

U.T. doctoral dissertation research, Oxford and London, U.K., 2000
U.T. doctoral dissertation research, Berlin and Koblenz, Germany, 1999
German Academic Exchange Service, Munich and Augsburg, Germany, 1997
Summer Academic Exchange Program, Lehrerinstitüt des Baden-Württemburg, Germany, 1992
Colloquia research on education in multi-ethnic societies, Zurich and Lausanne, Switzerland, 1991

PRESENTATIONS

"Defiance 100 Years Ago" by Edwin Phelps, 1887

Town & Gown Lecture Series: "The History of Defiance College," 2017

With Barb Sedlock: "Teaching and Learning: How a Digitization Project Can be a Resource for Both Campus and the Local Community," at the 7th annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Academy, Winebrenner Theological Seminary, The University of Findlay, May 2016

"The Sturm und Drang of Bismarck’s Social Legislation: Germany’s Health Insurance Program of the 1880s and the Creation of Robust Teutons," at the Ohio Academy of History conference, April 2014

Town & Gown Series: "The Greatest Generation: Defiance College in the 1940s," Nov. 2014

Town & Gown Series: "What’s Going on up There at Defiance College?," March 2014

Participation in the Steinem/Nyce Series at the Fayette, OH Opera House, May, 2014 in which I helped to present "As Different as a Frog and a Grizzly," an imagined debate between Mark Twain and Theo. Roosevelt

From Killing Fields to Coca-Cola: Cambodia’s Struggle to Modernize, at the Midwest World History Association conference, Springfield, OH, 2013

Participation in the Bean Creek Ramble, in which participants traveled to Devil’s Lake, MI, Walker’s Tavern, St. Joseph Shrine, and An Grota Mor, a monument dedicated to the immigrants who came to America during the 19th century Irish famine

Town & Gown Series: "The McCann Years," 2012 

AWARDS & HONORS

Public Service and Political Training Competition Top Political Issue Presenters College Division
Life Member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Defiance College Service Leader Award
Bean Creek Valley Historical Association Citizen of the Year

ACADEMIC DEGREES

Ph.D. in European History, University of Toledo (2002)
M.A. in American History, Bowling Green State University (1987)