Dr. Charles Poland has taught history for more than five decades, touching the lives of thousands of students and community members in Northern Virginia. A scholar of the American Civil War, he promotes direct engagement with history and its tools. For example, from 1977 to 2015 he conducted celebrated field-trip courses to the major and minor battlefields of the Civil War. He is the creator of a mobile Civil War Museum with hundreds of artifacts and documents that he toured to public schools across the region. The author of eight books, he has appeared on television and radio and made countless presentations to historic, civic, and educational groups on the Civil War and the impact of unfettered development in Northern Virginia.