Department of
History Planning Website
Programs: B.A. History (HIBA)
B.S. History (HIBS)
The broad liberal arts curriculum of the Department of History offers the student a traditional education, which seeks to develop an appreciation of the past and an understanding of the major developments in history, so that students might better understand the present and act intelligently to shape the future. The faculty seek to teach the student to think analytically, ascertain facts, make objective judgments, and write clearly, conveying the results of reasoned analysis. In imparting the skills mentioned above, the department seeks not only to provide future historians with the tools for successful graduate study in the discipline, but also to prepare students for a variety of careers, ranging across education, public service and business professions.
The Department shares with the University both its broader commitment to enhancing cross-cultural understanding, and its special obligation to serve the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee.
As part of its commitment to ensure a high-quality program and to improve overall student satisfaction, the Department establishes strategic goals and assesses them on a yearly basis. For 2004-2005, the department’s ten goals can be summarized as follows:
1. Teach
a new course in Latin American history
2.
Provide each faculty member a laptop or notebook computer
3.
Improve audio-visual equipment in our classrooms
4.
Provide learning opportunities beyond the classroom
5. Offer
night courses to attract returning students
6.
Provide in-service training for P-12 history teachers
7.
Increase student awareness of diverse cultural heritage
8. Impart
to the students the ability to conduct research and present it effectively
9. Run a
cost-effective department
10. Host the Ohio Valley History Conference
A brief assessment of these strategic goals is as follows:
1. This course was taught in the Fall semester
of 2004.
2. We have secured three laptops, which are
shared among the faculty.
3. Substantial improvements have been made to
rooms 114 and 205.
4. Guest speakers and field trips are regularly
offered and noted in our annual report.
5. We offered seven night classes in Fall 2004,
and six in the Spring of 2005.
6. The Teaching American History Grant has
allowed for P-12 outreach efforts.
7. A review of the curriculum demonstrates a
diversity of learning opportunities.
8. This can be demonstrated through career
success, test scores, or publications.
9. History ranked as the most cost effective
department in the College.
10. The OVHC
was held October 21-23, 2004. We
received many compliments.
The History Department’s current Strategic Goals are as follows:
(New goals are italicized)
1.
Provide each faculty member a laptop or notebook computer
2.
Improve audio-visual equipment in our classrooms
3.
Provide learning opportunities beyond the classroom
4. Offer
night courses to attract returning students
5.
Provide in-service training for P-12 history teachers
6.
Increase student awareness of diverse cultural heritage
7. Establish files for papers from History 2410
and 4990, to show “value-added” learning
8. Establish a student travel fund
9. Compile a list of alumni publications
10.Run a cost effective department
For a full description of History Strategic Goals and Assessments for the program, see the Tennessee Tech University Strategic Planning Website.
Students in history courses will acquire factual knowledge, to be sure, but within the discipline, arguments as to what should constitute THE facts are acrimonious (witness the debate over the National History Standards), and in the absence of any accrediting agency, arguably pointless as well. Given that, it remains desirable to allow for differences depending on instructor preferences, even at the survey level. Furthermore, stressing factual knowledge alone runs the risk of reducing history to trivia. Far more important is the relationship of facts – hence the near uniform faculty preference for hard to quantify essay exams, as opposed to standardized tests. Lastly, the department allows its majors considerable flexibility in course selection, to accommodate different interests and goals. Collectively, these issues reduce the importance of standardized testing in history as compared to other departments. Still, we expect that history majors will demonstrate a reasonable command of general factual knowledge by achieving at least a mean score relative to national averages on both the nationally standardized ETS history exam and the more broadly focused College Base exam.
The department desires to instill in history students an appreciation for the past, to include a desire to explore history beyond the classroom. We thus expect at least 25% of all history majors to participate in extracurricular activities related to the discipline. The activities may include membership in the History Club or Phi Alpha Theta honor society, field trips, presentations of research, and attendance at special lectures, cultural events, and historical conferences.
All students completing a degree in history at Tennessee Technological University will have acquired the ability to research and write a scholarly paper of professional quality. The department requires all new majors to enroll in an introductory course in research and professional development, History 2410, which is intended to begin honing skills and to provide career guidance. Throughout the curriculum, term paper and book-review assignments (required in all upper division courses) serve to continually augment the research abilities of future graduates. Lastly, the department requires a senior seminar, History 4990, in which the main focus is to produce a paper of publishable quality.
ETS and College Base scores are routinely administered and the results are maintained in the departmental office. Secondary Education/History majors (who take almost as many history courses as history majors do) also take the Praxis exam.
The Department of History is subject to a peer review every five years. The most recent one was completed in the spring of 2005.
The chair conducts exit interviews with graduating seniors. He asks students for input regarding all aspects of the program.
The department employs the IDEA teaching evaluation instrument in its courses. These take into account the learning outcomes of the course in question as specified by the instructor.
Students demonstrate satisfactory achievement in research skills through the completion of History 4990 (Senior Seminar), the department’s capstone course.
The department has employed alumni satisfaction surveys on a seven-year cycle. The last two were conducted in 1992 and 1999. A committee was formed in the spring of 2005, and has begun preparing a new survey, to be administered either in late 2005 or early 2006. This survey will also be used to compile a database of alumni, as well as a list of publications by alumni.
Club advisors and individual routinely provide information relative to extracurricular activities to the chair. This information is then included in annual reports, self-studies and the like.
Our Teaching American History Grant, funded by the United States Department of Education, requires a yearly summary report. Part of that report includes an assessment by a team of external evaluators.
. The departmental average score has ranked above the national average in eight of the last ten semesters for the ETS History Exam and seven of the last ten on the College Base. Results on the Praxis, however, had been lower than expected. Through consultation with the dean of the College of Education, requirements for the Secondary Education/History degree were increased to include an additional semester of world history. In his most recent (Spring, 2005) report, Dean Garber reported an increase in the Praxis pass rate from 71% to 100%.
Individual faculty and the department chair review the IDEA evaluations on a yearly basis, as part of the faculty evaluation process. Departmental scores have ranked consistently among the highest in the university over the past five years (only Philosophy, which has but one faculty member, ranker higher). Still, there have been instances in which IDEA information allowed the chair to suggest classroom improvements. Subsequent IDEA information is used to monitor progress. (The confidentiality of the evaluation process precludes detailing specific examples).
The department employed the 1999 alumni satisfaction surveys to implement change in the program. While the overall response was overwhelmingly positive, one question registered concern: Student reported little opportunity for improving their oral presentation skills. The department responded by introducing an oral component in History 2410. Not long thereafter, the department added Speech 2410 to its curriculum.
The department has also made use of peer reviews to effect curriculum change. The sole specific recommendation of the 2000 review was to add a course in Latin American history to our course offerings. Such a course was developed, approved by the various curriculum committees, and taught in 2004. The 2005 peer review recommended increasing the frequency of our alumni surveys. That also will occur.
To allow anyone to assess the research abilities of graduates, the department maintains a file of papers completed in History 4990 in the departmental office. Recently, the department began to accumulate papers from History 2410 as well. Our four-year goal is to be able to compare our student’s first research project with their final one, so as to better assess the “value-added” impact of our program.
Strategic goals have long been discussed at regular departmental meetings. Faculty are free to suggest new goals or revisions to existing ones at any time. Each year, the chair discusses assessment procedures and results with the dean at the chair’s evaluation meeting. Beginning this May, however, the department held a special meeting devoted exclusively to program and learning assessment. Some of our new strategic goals (to compile a list of alumni publications, and the History 2410 paper file noted above) were products of that meeting. We will hold such a meeting on an annual basis.