Last winter I wrote about a Teagle Foundation-funded task force I am co-chairing for the National History Center (an offshoot of the American Historical Association). Ours is one of several grants to disciplinary organizations to explore the impact of disciplinary education on undergraduate liberal learning. We have had a broadly constituted group of historians working on this project for nearly two years, with our report due at the Foundation just after Labor Day. Somewhat to my surprise, I think we will have it done in time — and when it is received the foundation will post in on its Web site.
My co-chair, James Grossman, vice president of the Newberry Library for Education, and I have now revised our report two or three times. We began by sending a survey to history departments in a number of different sorts of colleges and universities; we supplemented the information we gained from the surveys with research on institutional Web sites. We have also consulted regularly with our task force, and presented our interim findings to several different professional groups, including the postdoctoral interdisciplinary humanities seminar at the Newberry Library in Chicago. In this investigation, we have tried to learn how the major is constructed across a range of history departments, and also what were the various student learning expectations in the major. We then compared these with institutional expectations of undergraduate liberal learning more generally. I will comment on our conclusions in a month or so, once we have completed the final report, but for the moment I want to mention a very interesting final presentation of the working draft in Washington last Saturday.
Jim and I used the good offices of the AHA to invite the chairs of history departments to join us for a day to discuss the draft report. We quite surprised to find that we had more positive responses than we could accommodate, so we accepted the first 18 who contacted us. By happenstance and good fortune, these represented a diverse group of institutions, ranging from Oklahoma City University and Augustana College to Brooklyn College and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, from Beloit College to the University of Mississippi. What struck me most forcefully was the intensity of commitment of these department chairs, many of whom traveled across the country to spend six hours in a windowless room on a beautiful summer day, debating how best to teach history to undergraduates. It was inspiring. I was also moved by the ability of teacher-scholars from vastly different levels and sizes of institutions to deal attentively and respectfully with one another. Some of the chairs were struggling with how to enable their students to meet the state mandates for teacher certification, while others were concerned about how to integrate study-abroad work into the major. What was most impressive was that everyone accepted the urgency and integrity of the task — how could responsible historians provide the most effective learning experiences for their undergraduate majors?
As my readers will know, I am frequently discouraged about the state of collegiate education and the commitment of senior faculty to undergraduate instruction. But August 2, 2008 will remain in my memory as a good day, a day on which my best hopes for the future of history teaching were reinforced. I am deeply grateful to colleagues such as these who are clearly doing such good work.
