“I love my job when students connect with history,” says Charles Irwin.  “By engaging students with the stories of the past, they leave my class with an appreciation and respect for the importance of how we are today connected to the past.”

Irwin has a passion for keeping history alive. He was featured in an episode of the television series Mysteries at the Museum in 2012 which discussed Boone County’s heroine, Kate Shelley.  The episode appears regularly on Netflix.      

The community of Boone took note of his dedication to history, awarding him the City of Boone’s first Community Dedication Award in 2012. He served as the Executive Director of the Boone County Historical Society from 1990 to 2012.  He volunteers for Boone County Historical Society as an advisor and a trainer for tour guides and serves as Trustee for the Ericson Public Library Board, Boone.  In 2016, Irwin was elected to the Boone County Extension Council.

In 1999, Irwin co-authored with Jean Cartee Boone County... The 20th Century: A Pictorial History of Boone County, Iowa. He frequently gets requests to shed light on people and incidents in Boone’s past, including former first lady Mamie Doud Eisenhower; Carl Fritz Henning, who was instrumental in establishing the Ledges as a state park; Elsie Lawrence, who started her own business as a mortician, perhaps the first woman in Iowa to do so; Boone Junior College (later part of DMACC); and coal mining in Boone.

Irwin has a BA degree in Sociology/Anthropology from Central College in Pella and an MA in History/Museum Studies from Case Western Reserve University. Cleveland, Ohio. He completed additional graduate course work in Political Science at Iowa State University and has been with DMACC since 1997.

Contact Charles Irwin at cwirwin@dmacc.edu or (515) 433-5067

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