History Major

History Mission: 

The History program is an integral part of the College’s mission of providing a liberal arts education that focuses on scholarship, critical thinking, and academic excellence.  The History program prepares students to become responsible members of the citizenry and provides skills needed for jobs and professions of the twenty-first century. The History program also provides important historical perspectives and underpinnings for other fields of study.  By learning about historical circumstances, choices, actions, and events, students place their own experience in a historic context and learn to analyze the choices they face.  History is a demanding discipline that sharpens reading, writing, and critical thinking skills, and it also exposes students to a wide range of cultural, economic, political, and social issues, ideas, and actors.  Knowledge of History allows one to exercise intelligently the values of compassion, diversity, social responsibility, integrity, and accountability.

Learning Outcomes:

• Demonstrate understanding of history, geography, culture and society through major developments and significant features of major historical periods in U.S., World, and European history.
• Apply and understand the historical implications, primary features, basic operations and central concepts of American Government, the U.S. Constitution, American Citizenship, and differing world systems. 
• Identify and interpret relevant primary and secondary sources implementing the methodological practice of historiographical analysis, synthesis and interpretation of evidence in exploration of multiple historical and theoretical viewpoints that provide perspective on the past.

Major assessment:  Senior History majors must complete a senior thesis in conjunction with HS 460 (Senior Thesis) and take an in-house exam.