Our Staff

Emma is currently a junior at Newman University majoring in Elementary Education. She has been an active participant on Newman’s campus and has participated in a variety of different leadership roles including: Newman Softball, Student-Athlete Advisory Committees, Student Government Association, First Year Experience Leader, and Facilitator for Reacting to the Past games.

She has had the opportunity to play and assist games such as:

• Changing the Game: Title IX, Gender, and College Athletics
• The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations, and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994
• Confucianism and the Succession Crisis of the Wanli Emperor, 1587
• Chicago, 1968
• Teapot Dome: Presidential Scandal and Tensions in Government, 1921-22

Emma believes that Reacting to the Past outlines a positive method of education for all students. She admires the project-based learning style the games provide and hopes to see Reacting to the Past integrate into more classrooms in the future.

Kayla is from Plainville, Kansas, and is currently junior standing at Newman University. She is an Honors student majoring in both Business Data Analytics and Management Information Systems. She also works with graphic design and has already created a couple of murals, several t-shirts, and countless Newman flyers.

Kayla participated in her first Reacting game in the Fall of 2018. Since then, she has attended the Nineteenth Annual Institute at Barnard College and facilitated a freshman game-based course in the Fall of 2019. Kayla has played and/or facilitated the following games:

• Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791
• Changing the Game: Title IX, Gender, and College Athletics
• The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations, and Intervention in Rwanda, 1994
• The North Korean Hunger Games: Famine, Rogue Regimes and the Ethics of Aid,
  1995-1998
• Chicago, 1968

Kayla has never been the biggest fan of history, but she still claims that her first game-based course was one of her favorites. She believes Reacting to the Past is the best possible way to learn strategy, critical thinking, and other life skills not approached in your average lecture hall.

Elliot is a sophomore at Barnard College majoring in Computer Science and Visual Arts. They have been interning for Reacting to the Past since the Fall 2018 semester and are a student worker for the Reacting Consortium. Their responsibilities include updating and maintaining the Reacting website, as well as designing the registration websites for conferences. They also occasionally handle fun financial documents and design newsletters.

Elliot precepted games at the Eighteenth Annual Faculty Institute at Barnard College. They have experience with the following games:

• The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C.E.
• The Constitutional Convention of 1787: Constructing the American Republic
• Building the Italian Renaissance: Brunelleschi’s Dome and the Florence Cathedral
• Rousseau, Burke, and Revolution in France, 1791
• Greenwich Village, 1913: Suffrage, Labor, and the New Woman

Elliot thinks that Reacting to the Past is a fantastic pedagogy that combines their interests in theatre, debate, and history seamlessly. They hope to participate in games such as Art in Paris, Fountain, and Guerilla Girls in the future