Vernon Burton is Burroughs Distinguished Chair of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. His most recent book, The Age of Lincoln, was the recipient of the Chicago Tribune’s 2007 Heartland Literary Award for nonfiction and a selection for Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, and Military Book Club and is a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 2009 (See www.theageoflincoln.com). He is an officer of the Congressional National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Foundation. Burton is also the author of more than a hundred articles and the author or editor of fourteen additional books (one of which is on cd-rom), including In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina. Recognized for his teaching, Burton was selected nationwide as the 1999 U.S. Research and Doctoral University Professor of the Year (presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education). In 2004 he received the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Prize. He moves to Coastal from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar and Professor of History, African American Studies, and Sociology. Within the University of Illinois he won teaching awards at the department, school, college, and campus levels and received the 2006 Campus Award for Excellence in Public Engagement. He was also founding Director of the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS) and Associate Director for Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where he was a Senior Research Scientist. He was active in shared governance and served as presiding officer (Chair ) of the Senate Executive Committee as well as (Chair) of the University Senate Conferences for the three campus system.