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Media Relations
Kansas State University
9 Anderson Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506
785-532-6415
media@k-state.edu

Information provided by K-State Media Relations, K-State's news service, may be reproduced without permission. The marks and names of Kansas State University are protected trademarks and may not be used in any commercial or private endeavor without the approval of the university.

Sources: David Stone, 785-532-2978, stone@k-state.edu
http://www.k-state.edu/media/mediaguide/bios/stonebio.html
Photo available. Contact media@k-state.edu or 785-532-6415.
News release prepared by: Megan Wilson, 785-532-6415, media@k-state.edu

Monday, Oct. 27, 2008

K-STATE'S DAVID STONE AWARDED PICKETT CHAIR FOR EXCEPTIONAL FACULTY

MANHATTAN -- David Stone, professor of history, has been awarded the Richard A. and Greta Bauer Pickett Chair for Exceptional Faculty at Kansas State University.

The Richard A. and Greta Bauer Pickett Chair is one of five chairs endowed by Frank and Elizabeth Burke. It has been put at the disposal of the university president, provost and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who awarded it to the department of history and the Military History Institute. The recipient of the chair was then chosen by the administration based on recommendations from the department of history. The chair is supported by a mixture of contributions, including the chair's endowment, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and state funding.

"I am tremendously excited because it is such a great honor," Stone said. "This is only the second endowed chair in the history department, so I'm quite conscious of what this represents.

I'm also excited because this is an opportunity to do some ambitious things," he said. "One of the sources of funding behind this is a federal grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which gave the money in part for outreach -- to bring the humanities, and history in particular, to a broader audience. One of my responsibilities in this chair is to think about ways to take what historians do and reach the general public. I'm looking forward to doing that."

Stone teaches courses on the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, India and South Asia, and Western civilization. This semester he is teaching the first part of the Russian survey course, an introductory course for graduate students, and the final project course for master's students in K-State's security studies program.

Beyond teaching the students the historical content of his courses, Stone hopes to teach them the value of intellectual commitment.

"I'm really passionate about what I do," he said. "While I'm not necessarily asking my students to dedicate their lives to what I get passionate about, I want them to get passionate about something. Whatever they do, I want them to devote themselves to it and take it seriously."

Among Stone's passions is Russian history.

"Russia has a complex and fascinating history, with important implications for the daily lives of my students -- even though they live in the 21st-century United States," he said. "Studying Russia raises big issues that students need to wrestle with, like what is a good political system and how does it work? What's the proper relationship between a people and their government? How do religion and ideology play into politics? I cover those issues in the specific context of Russian history, but I hope my students can understand the relevance of those questions for today's world."

Stone's interest in Russian history first came from studying Russian as an undergraduate student, but flowered in his graduate work in the 1990s. At that time, sources who had been unavailable before the fall of the Soviet Union became accessible to scholars for the first time.

Stone is currently working on a book about Leon Trotsky, a communist revolutionary who created the Soviet military. Stone said the project is a great example of being able to tap previously unavailable records to tell Trotsky's story. He is also in involved in two editing projects: a book about the Russian home front during World War II, and a book on the military history of the Russian Civil War.

Stone said serving as the Pickett Chair will not only allow him to continue his teaching and research, but also help the history department expand its growing military history program.

Stone, who joined K-State in 1999, also serves as a faculty member in the department of history's Institute for Military and 20th Century Studies. He is an award-winning historian and teacher. He was named a Top Young Historian by the History News Network in 2007, and received the K-State Presidential Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2001.

His books include "A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to War in Chechnya" in August 2006, and "Hammer and Rifle: the Militarization of the Soviet Union 1926-1933," which was the winner of the inaugural Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society in 2001 and the co-winner of the 2001 Shulman Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

Stone received a bachelor's in history and mathematics from Wabash College, and a master's and a doctorate in history, both from Yale University.