ASU Professor Wins Fifth Research Grant

Dr. William A. Taylor of Angelo State University’s security studies faculty has been awarded a 2014 Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation research travel grant to conduct research at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library on the University of Michigan campus.

The grant will help defray Taylor’s travel and living expenses while researching the Ford Library collections on federal policies, U.S. foreign relations, and national politics in the 1960s and 1970s for his upcoming book titled In the Service of Democracy: American Military Service from World War II to the Present. Selection criteria for the grant include project significance, appropriateness of project design, applicant qualifications and pertinence of the library holdings.

This is the fifth national research grant that Taylor has won in the past four years. He previously won grants from the Society for Military History in 2010 and the Harry S. Truman Library Institute in 2013, as well as a fellowship from the George C. Marshall Foundation in 2012, to research his first book, Every Citizen a Soldier: The Campaign for Universal Military Training after World War II. It was published in July through Texas A&M University Press and is available on Amazon.com. It is also displayed in the Marshall and Truman libraries.

Taylor also received a grant in May from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Foundation to conduct research for In the Service of Democracy, which will be published through the University Press of Kansas and will be displayed in the Eisenhower and Ford libraries upon completion.

An assistant professor of security studies, Taylor has also authored chapters in three other books and has published more than 30 reference articles and book reviews. His work has appeared in Joint Force Quarterly, US Naval Institute Proceedings, Maryland Historical Magazine, Michigan War Studies Review, Journal of America’s Military Past and H-Net Reviews, among others. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, master’s degrees from the University of Maryland, Georgetown University and George Washington University, and a doctorate from George Washington University.

In addition to his academic credentials, Taylor served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than six years, holding posts in III Marine Expeditionary Force, Expeditionary Force Development Center, and Marine Corps Combat Development Command.