In January, 2002, Kay Morgan designed the New Hampshire Heritage Project and submitted a proposal to the Christa McAuliffe Sabbatical Year program of the New Hampshire Charitable Trust. In May, she was selected as the recipient of the Christa McAuliffe fellowship, and she began to lay the groundwork for the project.

An English and American Studies teacher at Oyster River High School, Kay has a particular passion for interdisciplinary teaching and the integration of arts in the curriculum. She was awarded the Treat Award for Excellence in the Teaching of the Humanities by the NH Humanities Council in October, 2001. While at Oyster River, she has been a part of the planning and coordination of seven arts residencies funded by the NH State Council on the Arts, and, working with a group of parents, has coordinated an Arts Fair Day in the spring which brings 40 artists to the campus to provide workshops for students.

In addition to teaching, Kay presents at national and international conferences on education, most recently presenting at the Fall, 2003 National Council of Teachers of English annual conference in Atlanta, and the Arts in Education Conference sponsored by the NH State Council on the Arts and the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire in Jackson, NH. She also speaks locally about working with family papers and her book, My Ever Dear Daughter, My Own Dear Mother: The Correspondence of Julia Stone Towne & Mary Julia Towne, 1868-1882 (University of Iowa Press, 1996). In collaboration with two other teachers, Kay has been a contributing co-editor of the book Writing Process Revisited: Sharing Our Stories (NCTE, 1997).

In her New Hampshire Heritage Project work, Kay offers workshops to
teachers and direct instruction to students in the areas of project
design, place-based writing, using primary sources in the classroom,
gathering oral history and project assessment and evaluation. After the
summer institute "Memory, Identity, Community," teachers throughout the state have participated in NHHP workshops and have created heritage projects in their own schools. Working in partnership with the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, the NH Heritage Project presented a statewide Heritage Project Fair bringing students, teachers, traditional artists, and personnel from community historical and cultural sites together at Plymouth State University.

The summer of 2004 found the NH Heritage Project collaborating with the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture to offer another
teacher institute to teachers from the North Country, the Seacoast and
the Monadnock Region. "Heritage Studies and the Nature of Place"
brought 21 participants to Franklin Pierce College for two and a half
days of intensive work in the theory and practical application of
place-based education. Participants returned to their home regions to
apply concepts and develop curriculum.

Throughout 2003-2004, the NH Heritage Project continued to be supported by funding from the NH Charitable Foundation, the NH Humanities Council, the NH State Council on the Arts, Heritage New Hampshire and the Monadnock Institute of Nature, Place and Culture.