If there is one thing Melissane Parm Schrems wants her students to learn, it’s the impact the past has on their present-day lives.

The assistant professor of history specializes in Native American and African American history in New England during the colonial and early republic periods, focusing on politics and religion. Her interest in Native American studies led to her become a member of the inaugural faculty of the St. Lawrence Akwesasne Semester in 2006.

“My most rewarding experience as a teacher at St. Lawrence has been helping students discover their interest in American history and helping them pursue that interest,” she says.  She especially enjoys working one-on-one with students. “Sometimes students’ interest in their own history is realized as an honors project, an independent study or a desire to continue their scholarship in graduate school,” Prof. Schrems points out. She has thus far worked with five students on such projects.

Any moment she sees a student realize this appreciation for the past is very gratifying for her. “Sometimes it happens in class after a question is answered, other times in my office while discussing a paper or independent project,” she says.

In 2006 she gave a paper titled “How Independence Was Stolen: The Mashpee Post-Revolutionary Nightmare, 1787-1790,” at the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, and her article “’We…Will Rule Ourselves’: The Mashpee-Wampanoag Indians Claim Independence, 1776-1834” will be published in Cercles, October 2007.

Her interests are not limited to the past. She enjoys singing, dancing and entertaining, as well as home renovation, comic books and embroidery.