He contributes frequently to the blog EMUTalk.org on matters of concern to the EMU community. He was Interim Director of the Honors Program in 2002-03, and served as moderator for the 2006 Ypsilanti Mayoral candidates’ debate.

Higbee regularly teaches both halves of the American history survey course (HIST 123 and 124), as well as courses in African American history: HIST 315 (History of Black Americans), HIST 319 (History of the Civil Rights Movement), and HIST 531 (Studies in Black History).

Since 2005, Higbee has been using a nationally recognized innovative teaching method, Reacting to the Past, in selected courses. The method involves elaborately designed role-playing games in which students assume historical roles from a famous moment in history, and then pursue the goals of their assigned character – in collaboration with some classmates and in opposition to others. The Reacting method teaches skills in research, writing, public speaking, and teamwork; it has a proven record of engaging undergraduate students in ways that are not common for American university students. Reacting is now used at approximately 100 American colleges and universities. The games last from two to five weeks and transform students’ classroom experience in ways most of them find exciting and worthwhile, albeit very demanding.

“A Nation at Canaan’s Edge,” review essay on Taylor Branch’s At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years,” in Against the Current #129 (July/August 2007), 30-34.

“Malcolm X Slain in PrayHarrold Tonight,” EMUTalk.org, April 17, 2007.

“The Hairdresser and the Scholar,” essay in Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories, edited by Juliette Harris and Pamela Johnson (Pocket Books, 2001).

“Frederick Douglass and the College Classroom,” Thought and Action: The NEA Higher Education Journal, vol. XVI #1, Summer 2000, 41-54.

Review essay on Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire, the first two volumes of his trilogy on Martin Luther King and America in the King Years, in Against the Current #114 (January-February, 2000).

“W.E.B. Du Bois” entry, A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), vol. 1.

“Du Bois: The First Half Century,” Review Essay on David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (1993), Science and Society 59(1), Spring 1995, 82-87.

“A Letter from W.E.B. Du Bois to His Daughter Yolande, dated ‘Moscow, December 10, 1958,'” introduction and annotations to, Journal of Negro History 78 (Summer 1993), 188-195.

“W.E.B. Du Bois, F.B. Ransom, the Madam Walker Company, and Black Business Leadership in the 1930s,” Indiana Magazine of History 89 (June 1993), 101-124.

Fellow, 2007-08 Faculty Development Seminar on The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, at EMU’s Bruce K. Nelson Faculty Development Center.

“Fabulous Fellow Rainbow Flag,” Spring 2001, given by the LGBT Resource Center, for service to EMU students.

Diversifying the Curriculum Fellow, EMU, 1999, for work on integrating the new scholarship on African American women’s history into the history curriculum.

“Excellence in the Academy Award,” from the National Education Association, April 2000, for “Frederick Douglass and the College Classroom.”