NIACC to hold program on Alexander Hamilton

North Iowa Area Community College will offer a program on Alexander Hamilton on Wednesday, October 12, in Beem Center 200 on the NIACC campus from 2:30 p.m.. to 4:30 p.m.. This free public forum will be facilitated by Bennett Smith, history and political science instructor at NIACC.
Alexander Hamilton was from the West Indies, and this was important in giving him a more detached perspective on local colonial affairs. It will eventually lead him to a more nationalist perspective in founding the Federalist Party and as an author of the Federalist Papers. He served in the American Revolution as an aide-de-camp to George Washington and saw action at the famous Battle of Yorktown. After the War, Hamilton became our first Secretary of the Treasury, in the Washington administration, and was very influential in putting the country on a firm financial foundation. A recommended reading list and handout will be provided, and there will be a question and answer session after the lecture.
The facilitator, Bennett Smith, is an asset manager in Clear Lake, Iowa, and an instructor in History and Political Science at NIACC. He is also an instructor in various lifelong learning programs including the NIACC Lifelong Learning Institute; the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Iowa State University and the LIFE program at Rochester Community and Technical College in Rochester, Minnesota.
He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Speech Communication from Iowa State University, and has also done graduate work at the University of Iowa in Social Foundations of Education. He is currently a graduate student in the Master of Arts program in History at Iowa State University.