Jason Shows, history instructor at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College’s Perkinston Campus, has been named a 2023 MGCCC Humanities Teacher of the Year.  Shows will receive his award, along with 32 other instructors from across the state, at the Public Humanities Awards ceremony and reception on March 24 at the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson.

“I am very grateful to receive this award,” he said. “I’d like to thank the Mississippi Humanities Council and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College for the recognition. It comes down to a commitment to teaching students history. That will forever be my passion. I am lucky to work with some amazing people who give me that opportunity.”

Shows has worked at the college for 15 years.  This is the second time he has received the Humanities Teacher of the Year award, receiving it the first time in 2013. In addition, he received the Lamplighter Award in 2010 and was named the In the Blue employee for the first quarter in 2021.

On top of teaching history, Shows served as Phi Theta Kappa adviser from 2015-2018 and has served as president and vice president of the Perkinston Faculty Association during the past 10 years and is currently an active member.  He is also a member of the Mississippi Professional Educators organization, serving as a building representative, and the Mississippi Heritage Trust, a partner of the Mississippi Historical Society.

As part of the award, Shows presented a lecture, “The Basis and Foundation of the American Revolution,” on March 9 at the Perkinston Campus.  He said the lecture investigated reasons behind the revolution and major roles the American War of Independence played in forming the United States. “Taxes or representation or both?  There was much complexity to the reasons behind the revolution, some that might be surprising to people, and what those reasons meant to individual patriots,” he said.