The Girl Scouts of America try to empower girls in different ways, including community service projects. The annual Women of Courage, Confidence and Character award honors women who are role models for girls in their community.

UW-Eau Claire Associate Professor of History Selika Ducksworth-Lawton was one of the three annual Women of Courage, Confidence and Character honorees from the Girl Scouts of the Northwestern Great Lakes chapter.

Ducksworth-Lawton is not only involved in many Eau Claire organizations and programs, including the Chancellor’s Diversity Council and adviser to the Black Student Alliance. She is also coordinator for the ClearVision Empowerment Summit and is responsible for creating supplemental education plans for the Chippewa Valley Museum.

Ducksworth-Lawton believes in building bridges between not only the community, but within the university as an adviser to the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

“I’m trying to build bridges not just out in the community between groups,” she said. “Here at the university bridging academic and the backside, the student services side, is really important to me.”

Along with her work as a coordinator in the community and at the university, Ducksworth-Lawton often delivers lectures, ranging in topic from the Vietnam War to lynching, at local schools.

She is often drawn into many of her community engagements through connections with local teachers and with her church. She also tends to bring some of the public history students she advises with her when speaking out in the community.

Kate Lang, chair of the history department, described Ducksworth-Lawton ss an engaging lecturer.

“She’s very exciting,” Lang said. “Dr. Ducksworth-Lawton is one of the very best lecturers I have ever seen. Since before I came to UW-Eau Claire in the late 90s, she had been inspiring many, many students to get excited about African-American history.”

Ducksworth-Lawton says she is a lecturer when it comes to her teaching style. She will give her students the facts and let them make up their mind on what the facts mean.

“I do not feel it’s my job to indoctrinate,” she said. “I’m someone who will give you the content and let you make up your mind.”

Ducksworth-Lawton also said it is okay to disagree with her interpretation of history, but it is not okay to disagree with the facts.

Josh Thomas, a senior broadfield social studies education major, took African-American history with Ducksworth-Lawton his junior year.

“(Ducksworth-Lawton was the) best history professor I’ve ever had at this university,” Thomas said. “(She was) very, very interesting to listen to. I was almost never bored.”

Thomas said Ducksworth-Lawton wasn’t afraid to discuss controversial issues in class.

Ducksworth-Lawton said, while half of the students that come to Eau Claire will be Republicans and the other half will be Democrats, by the end of a student’s stay at Eau Claire, that fact will probably not change.

“What I give them in the classroom is probably not going to change that,” Ducksworth-Lawton said.  “But it will make them more informed when somebody lies to them.”

Duckworth-Lawton is the co-author of the book Minority and Gender Differences in Officer Career Progression, as well as many other papers and was named the Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity fellow from 2010-12.

Ducksworth-Lawton and the two other honorees from the Eau Claire area will receive their awards at an awards banquet Apr. 1 at the Florian Gardens in Eau Claire.