April 3, 2025–Dr. Evan Elizabeth Hart, associate professor of history, is Missouri Western State University’s recipient of the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. The Governor’s Award is sponsored by the Missouri Council on Public Higher Education and will be presented this week in Jefferson City.
Dr. Hart has been at Missouri Western since 2017, teaching general studies history as well as more specialized upper-division courses.
“MO West is fortunate to have such a compassionate and creative leader as Dr. Hart,” said Dr. Elizabeth Kennedy, Missouri Western’s president. “Furthering our state-appointed applied learning mission, she provides unique learning opportunities outside of the classroom, including museum and cemetery tours, and alternative assignments that tap into students’ strengths in producing scholarly research projects. And she is beloved by her students.”
Dr. Hart views the teaching of history as “helping students understand how we arrived here, wherever ‘here’ is. What happened in the past continues to impact who we are.” She believes history goes beyond memorizing names and dates. “We try to answer the hows and whys, and to humanize the past,” she said. “I’m a social historian, so I’m really interested in history from the ‘bottom up’ – how did everyday people experience the world around them?”
To help her students develop critical thinking skills, she makes sure they engage with historical sources deeper than surface level. “These sources are making arguments,” she said. “What are they trying to convince you of, and how? What can we read between the lines, and how can we connect all of the pieces together? And they can ask the same questions of current sources, approaching news stories and speeches the way they do historical documents.”
Dr. Hart received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Indiana, and both her master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Cincinnati. She previously taught as a visiting professor at the University of Florida, and as adjunct faculty at the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University.
Missouri Western State University is a student-centered learning community preparing individuals for lives of excellence through applied learning. Missouri Western is located in St. Joseph, Mo., and is committed to the educational, economic, cultural and social development of the region it serves. Visit missouriwestern.edu.