Brian Collier, Ph.D.

Brian S Collier is a faculty member for the Institute for Educational Initiatives with the Education, Schooling, and Society supplementary minor, and a former member of the graduate student faculty with the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) at at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to coming to work for ACE, Collier was an assistant professor of history at Northern Arizona University. Collier's academic work focuses on Native Education, an interest that started when he was a teacher and dorm parent at St. Catherine Indian School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Collier has published on Catholic Native American Schools, education, and on American Indian Running (including a piece about Steve Gachupin and Jemez Pueblo), Native people at Notre Dame, American history, and sports history tpoics. He is also a founding member and long-time former chair of the Committee on Teaching and Public Education for the Western History Association. 

Collier holds degrees from Loyola University Chicago (B.A. History with an emphasis in Women's studies, Philosophy, and Theology), Colorado State University (M.A. History with an emphasis in literature of the American West and Environmental History), and Arizona State University (Ph.D. with an emphasis in American Indian History, the American West, Gender History, and Education). Collier regularly teaches undergraduate courses on the History of Education in America, American Indian History, American Indian Education, and a new course entitled: God, Country, and Notre Dame - The Story of America told through one Catholic University. Collier taught graduate courses with the Alliance for Catholic Education for a dozen years that included: Curriculum and Instruction, Active Teaching Methods, Assessment, Educational Psychology, and a History of Education course that is inclusive of race, class, and gender dynamics in schools.

A fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, he also teaches the History of Education in America and American Indian History courses. Collier's research interests include American Indian education, race, class, and gender. He has been honored with the Graduate and Professional Student Association Founder's Award for University Service during the 2004-2005 academic year and received the 2014 "Award of Merit" for outstanding service to the field of Western History and to the Western History Association, Western History Association. 

Awards

• National Council of History Educators, Paul Gagnon Prize (2020)
• Africana Studies, “Academic Freedom Award” given to the Native American Student Association of Notre Dame (NASAND) and their sponsors for preserving the academic integrity and freedom of the University (2018)
• Club Coordination Council, Advisor of the Year, Native American Student Association of Notre Dame (2018)
• Men’s Lacrosse Professor Appreciation Day Professor (2018)
• Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C. Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2016)
• Ryan Family Hall Faculty Fellow  (2014-current)
• "Award of Merit” for outstanding service to the field of Western History and to the Western History Association, Western History Association (2014)

 

Publications

College Student Voices on Educational Reform: Challenging and Changing Conversations, Burke, Kevin, Brian S Collier, Maria McKenna. New York, NY: Palgrave 2013. (This is a collaborative publication with Notre Dame undergraduates and Notre Dame colleagues Maria McKenna and Kevin Burke).

Special Edition, with Collin Gortner, and Will Newkirk, “Native American Catholic Schools in the West” Journal of the West, 59, no 3. (Summer 2020), entire edition.

Special Edition, with Lindsey Passenger Wieck, “Teaching the American West” Journal of the West 49, no. 3 (Summer 2010), entire edition.

“In Memoriam Peter James Iverson (1944-2021),” Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 52, Issue 3, (Autumn 2021): 331-334.

"Acknowledgement is Knowing Our Place in The World and Acknowledging the Costs Associated with that Place" in Accomplice. Notre Dame, IN: Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Spring 2021.  

Collier, Brian, Collin Gortner, and Will Newkirk, “American Indian Catholics Schools in the American West.” Journal of the West, 59, no 3. (Summer 2020): 11-15.

"Narvaez, Darcia, Four Arrows, Eugene Halton, Brian S Collier, Georges Enderle", Psychology Today, 2019, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/moral-landscapes/201904/sustainable-wisdom-indigenous-style (This is largely excerpted from a book chapter we co-authored).

“Notre Dame is a Potawatomi Place,” ND Works: News for the Notre Dame Faculty, Staff, and their families (November 2017 reprinted from Notre Dame Magazine): 15. 

“The Passing of Ancestral Lands,” Notre Dame Magazine (Summer 2017): 32-35. 

Collier, Brian, and Lindsey Passenger Wieck. “Teaching the American West.” Journal of the West 49, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 8-9. 

"American Catholicism." American History. ABC-CLIO, 2013.

Review of Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts. Higher Education & Society. Edited by Lester F. Goodchild, Richard W. Jonsen, Patty Limerick, and David A Longanecker. Western Historical Quarterly (Forthcoming).

Teaching the American West, Special Edition of Journal of the West (49.3 2010) (released Summer, 2011.)

"The Battle for Socialism continues on into the 21st century." American History.  ABC-CLIO.  September 10, 2010. <http://americanhistory2.abc-clio.com/>

Icons of Black America, "Harlem Globetrotters," book chapter, Greenwood Publishing Group, expected 2010.
African American Icons of Sport: Triumph, Courage, and Excellence, "The Harlem Globetrotters," book chapter Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008.

ABC Clio Essay for High School Students on "Frontier History as False Nationalism." American History. ABC-CLIO. http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com (accessed February 24, 2009).

"To Bring Honor to My Village": Steve Gachupin the community of Jemez, Running and the Pikes Peak Marathon, Journal of the West (46:4 Fall, 2007).

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