Derek Chang received the Community-Engaged Practice & Innovation Award for his work on a team of faculty that developed Cornell’s Public History Minor, which provides students opportunities to think critically about diverse modes of historical learning and storytelling and the many ways historical knowledge circulates in public life.

Chang also seamlessly integrates community-engaged learning into a number of his courses, including HIST/AAS 2043: Asian American Oral History, where students examine the place of oral methods in Asian American historiography, consider theoretical and practical scholarship on oral history and work on storytelling and modes of presentation. Students develop their own oral history research projects in six stages that culminate in a proposal and workshop on their storytelling ideas. Students interviewed four different groups for their oral histories: Asian American alumni from the 1980s, family members, Cornell Asian language instructors and Asian immigrant employees of Cornell’s dining services.