History

Program Learning Objectives, Outcomes, and Assessment Measures

Objectives

  1. Students will learn the general course of human history in multiple areas of the world.
  2. Students will learn to understand the world contextually, that is, to interpret human experiences and the meanings people have given them in relationship to the place and time in which they occurred.
  3. Students will learn to understand, analyze, and evaluate both evidence and arguments.
  4. Students will learn to explain how and why important events happen and change over time occurs.
  5. Students will learn to create knowledge and communicate it to others both orally and in writing.

Outcomes

  1. Students will demonstrate knowledge of the chronology, narrative, major events, personalities, and turning points of the history of the United States, Europe, and at least one non-Western area.
  2. Students will offer multi-causal explanations of major historical developments based on a contextualized analysis of interrelated political, social, economic, cultural, and intellectual processes.
  3. Students will correctly extract evidence from primary sources by analyzing and evaluating them in relation to their cultural and historical context (avoiding anachronism, ethnocentrism, and ethnomorphism) and use that evidence to build and support an argument.
  4. Students will evaluate secondary historical sources by analyzing them in relation to the evidence that supports them, their theoretical frameworks, and other secondary historical literature.
  5. Students will write an original research paper that locates and synthesizes relevant primary and secondary sources and has a clear, coherent and plausible argument, logical structure, correct grammar and proper references (footnotes and bibliography).
  6. Students will present orally their research or a summary of another’s research in an organized, coherent, and compelling fashion.

Assessment Measures

Faculty members routinely assess research papers, graded examinations, and other projects to determine the progress History majors and minors are making toward achieving the objectives and outcomes listed above. Of particular importance is the yearly assessment of all research papers completed in HIST 301W: The Scopes and Methods of History, which all majors must take. In addition, faculty members assess the program by tracking graduate and law school admissions as well as initial job placement and career paths of alumni.