Prof. Herbst regularly participates in professional development workshops for teachers, focusing on topics in environmental and world history.

His upcoming teacher trainings will take place in Spring 2026 as part of the Anza-Borrego Foundation’s Teacher Symposium series in Borrego Springs, CA:

• Middle School Teachers: March 27–29, 2026
• High School Teachers: April 10–12, 2026

He previously participated in Anza-Borrego Foundation’s Teacher Symposium series in Spring 2025, leading workshops for elementary and middle school teachers from April 11–13, and for high school teachers from May 2–4, 2025.

In previous programs, Prof. Herbst delivered talks titled “Forest, Flood, and the Future (and Past) of Civilization”, which explored how environmental themes can be integrated into world history and geography instruction. These sessions were held through the County Offices of Education in:

• Costa Mesa (Orange County) – Tuesday, January 28, 2020
• San Diego (San Diego County) – Tuesday, October 29, 2019
• El Centro (Imperial County) – Tuesday, October 22, 2019

In 2017, Dr. Herbst was appointed by the California State Board of Education as a Content Review Expert (History–Social Science) to evaluate new middle school World and U.S. History curricula. These materials were reviewed to align with the California History–Social Science Framework adopted by the Board in July 2016.

Prof. Herbst also created world history Summer Institutes for middle and high school teachers, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and serves as a proposal reviewer for NEH summer institutes and seminars for teachers.

In 2013 and 2015, he offered “Istanbul Between East and West: Crossroads of Culture,” a Summer Institute which brought 50 middle and high school teachers to Istanbul for three-week programs of study and inter-cultural encounter.   The National Endowment for the Humanities funded both Institutes, each of which received more than 350 nation-wide applications for its 25 spaces.

The Summer Institutes brought social studies teachers to Istanbul for an intensive three-week program where they learned from leading scholars on Roman, Byzantine, Medieval Mediterranean, Ottoman, and modern Turkish history. The 2015 faculty team was drawn from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, Ohio State University, University of Michigan, Arizona State University, and from Boğazici and Özyeğin Universities in Turkey.   This faculty team was comprised of distinguished scholars and recognized leaders in their respective periods of historical study.   Equally important, these scholars were outstanding and passionate teachers.

This Summer Institute provided teachers with a better understanding of a city and region that has been at the crossroads of regional and world history from antiquity to the present.   The Institute used Istanbul as an intellectual point of departure to explore the Roman/Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and modern Turkey. With its emphasis on cross-cultural encounters and global comparisons, the program situated this history in the larger context of the Mediterranean and Middle East and in the even broader framework of world history. The Institute integrated readings, lectures, and discussions with the most important text, Istanbul itself, making its monuments, museums, and urban geography part of the academic design.   Participants generated ways to incorporate the Institute content, which corresponded to the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies, into their classroom instruction.

This video was made by Mr. Greg Sill, a Summer Scholar on the 2013 Summer Institute.