Simpson College History Department

05/25/2026

Belated congratulations to our 2026 History graduates: Skyler Blessman, Izzy Brown, Cade Clark, Joe Degen, Caden Elliott, Caden Kingery, Nick MacKrell, and Jenna Woodward. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to have you in our classes these past four years!

05/25/2026

Congratulations to our new members of Phi Alpha Theta, who were inducted several weeks ago with the appropriate amounts of pomp and silliness. We welcomed Dylan Baldwin, Tristan Blair, Ava Carnes, Logan Cooper, Lily McMahon, Luna Rowe, and Corbin Thoms to our chapter by crowning them with the Heavy Hat of Facts and Imagination and sharing the Chalice of Enlightenment (insert ironic quotation marks as desired).

08/08/2025

Simpson History major Izzy Brown is one of the student-athletes featured in this profile of our men's & women's gymnastics teams. Go Izzy!

Meet the men’s and women’s gymnastics teams at Simpson College in Indianola.

05/08/2025

Leopold is traveling again! He’s in Spain, and today he visited El Escorial, Phillip II’s 16th-century monastery/palace. Leopold particularly appreciated the Royal Library and the monastic archives.

05/04/2025

We invented a new tradition this year: in addition to the squeaky serpent and the thorny rose, we present The Crowning with the Heavy Hat.

05/04/2025

Last week our Phi Alpha Theta chapter welcomed six new members: Elijah Keopuhiwa-Carvalho, Kaleb Harvey, Jake Lamb, Mya Postel, and Izzy Brown and Caden Kingery (not pictured). Congratulations to these awesome history students!

05/04/2025

Congratulations to our 2025 History graduates: Jay Ceperley, Hannah Curtis, Katherine Hendrickson, David Hollingsworth, Bodhi Mains, Max Monroe, Jesse Pladsden, and Anaka Wamstad-Evans. We have the best students!

04/23/2025

Congratulations to our History majors & minors who were honored at today's Honors Convocation: Izzy Brown (History/Education Studies) received the Owen Duncan Award in History (formerly the Leopold Award) for the outstanding sophomore or junior history major; Anaka Wamstad-Evans (History/Music minor) received the Joe Walt Senior History Award; Hannah Curtis (History/English) received the Outstanding Senior in Humanities; Jenna Woodward (History/Comp Sci) received the Doft Science Honor Award; Maude Steinbeck (Psych/History minor) received the Carl Halgren Certificate of Excellence in Psychology; and Devan Monger (History/WaGS minor) received the Women's and Gender Studies Activism Award.

That's a lot of awards! We have amazing students.

04/06/2025

Many of our history alums and faculty have connections to National History Day - some competed in middle and high school, some work with their own secondary students on NHD projects, and some have served as judges in district and state competitions. This is a great program that sparks engagement with history and historical research. (The 2025 NHD theme, "Rights and Responsibilities," seems particularly resonant this year.)

If you can afford to send some financial support to NHD, there are some history-loving middle and high schoolers who will benefit from your generosity!

National History Day's updated statement on NEH funding cuts affecting our organization and History Day affiliate programs across the United States and the world.

Please share widely among your networks and donate now at nhd.org/donate. Thank you so much for your support.

03/27/2025

We're sad to share the news that Owen Duncan passed away last week. Owen taught in the History department at Simpson from 1969-2007 and was one of the co-founders of Simpson's chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society.

Owen Duncan lived life to the fullest. An historian who had deep respect for the traditions and ideas of the past, he also jumped into the future. Born in 1940, during WW II, he celebrated his 80th birthday with a drive by card shower as COVID took hold. Within weeks,