DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

PROGRAM REVIEW SELF-STUDY

JUNE 13, 2006

Table of Contents

I. Program Introduction/HistoryA. Mission and Goals……………………………………………………. 3B. Response to Previous Program Review…………………………….. 6C. Trends in the Discipline of History………………………………….. 11

II. Academic ProgramsA. Learning Expectations………………………………………………... 14B. Structure of the Curriculum…………………………………………. 18C. Teaching Strategies…………………………………………………… 28D. Distance Education……………………………………………………. 28E. Assessment Plan………………………………………………………. 29 F. Effectiveness of Academic Program…………………………………. 33G. Multiple Section Courses……………………………………………... 49H. Recommendations for Improving Academic Program Outcomes…. 50 I. General Education Courses………………………………………….. 51J. Cultural Diversity and Academic Preparation……………………… 54K. Minor in History and Specialized Programs………………………... 55

III. StudentsA. Student Profile………………………………………………………… 62B. Student Academic Performance……………………………………… 64C. Student Academic Support……….…………………………….…….. 66D. Student Professional Development…………………………………… 68

IV. FacultyA. Faculty Profile………………………………………………………… 70B. Faculty and the Curriculum………………………………………….. 73 C. Faculty as Teachers…………………………………………………….73D. Faculty as Scholars……………………………………………………. 74E. Faculty and Service…………………………………………………… 77

V. GovernanceA. Faculty Involvement……………….…………………………………. 79B. Student Involvement………………………………………………….. 82 C. Relationship of the Department to the College and University……. 82

VI. Institutional Support and ResourcesA. Library…………………………………………………………………. 83B. Computer/Technology………………………………………………… 85C. Student Support Services…………………………………………….. 86 D. Faculty Support Services……………………………………………... 87E. Physical Facilities and Equipment………………………………….... 87F. Financial Resources………………………………………………….... 87

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VII. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………. 92

VIII. AppendicesA. Strategic Planning Committee Memo (May 30, 2006)……………. 94B. Five-Year Tentative Hiring Priorities (March 2006)……………… 107C. History Department: Roadmap to the Major……………………… 111D. History Department Undergraduate Survey: Questionnaire…….. 112E. Graduate Student Survey: Questionnaire (Fall 2005)…………….. 113F. Graduate Student Survey: Results (Fall 2005)…………………….. 116G. Alumni Survey (2005): Program……………………………………. 117H. Alumni Survey (2005): Employment……………………………….. 118I. Sacramento State Library: Historical Materials Allocations…….. 119J. History Department Recommendation: Year 2000 Self-Study…… 120K. Electives for History Majors (upper division by course number)…122L. History Course Syllabi………………………………………………. 125M. History Faculty Curriculum Vitae…………………………………. 126

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“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”Edmund Burke

I. Program Introduction/History

A. Mission and Goals

History, in the broad sense, is the study of all human experience. It examines the people, institutions, ideas, and events of the past and present. The study of history contributes to cultural literacy and develops critical thinking, research, and writing skills while helping students understand the present and plan for the future. Historical study provides a solid, fundamental preparation for careers in business, industry, government, and education. It also serves as excellent preparation for law school, foreign-service, international work, urban affairs, and library science.

The mission of the History Department at California State University, Sacramento is to promote an understanding, appreciation, and enthusiasm for history. In the undergraduate major and graduate programs, the Department seeks to provide students with an advanced critical understanding of the process of history, diversity and depth of historical knowledge, and sufficient bibliographic and research skills to conduct independent research.

This goal is consistent with California’s educational policy. The study of history has been used extensively in secondary and higher education to enhance literacy, national identity and citizenship. This important function is recognized in the California State Education Code 40404 and the current General Education pattern of Sacramento State that mandates a course in United States history and makes it probable that most students will take at least one other history course in world civilizations. Consequently, since the origins of Sacramento State in 1947 history has been an important part of the undergraduate and graduate curriculum of this university. The History program’s key role in the academic life of the University was recognized by the University Academic Plan (October 1993) that placed all of the department’s programs in Category I.B., which was defined as “programs central to the mission” of the University, where student enrollment should be maintained.

At Sacramento State, the History Department has a well-articulated undergraduate major requiring 42 units. The History major requires four lower division survey courses and three upper division seminars. In addition, students choose seven upper division electives from a wide variety available. The flexibility of the major allows students to focus on topical areas such as women's history, the history of particular geographic areas, cultural history, ethnic group history, military history, and history topics from the ancient world to history of the U.S. in the 20th Century. History majors who plan to enter a teacher credential program complete the Social Science Subject Matter Program (these students can major in either History or Social Science). Approximately one-third (or about 130 students) of all History Majors follow the Pre-Credential program. Students who

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successfully complete this program are not required to take the three California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET) which are otherwise a requirement for entrance into a Teacher Credential program.

About two-thirds of the history course sections offered every semester are part of the General Education program; perhaps as many as 50% of the students in History classes are taking these courses for General Education credit. Some of these students are enrolled in the Liberal Studies major (seeking the multiple subject credential) and the Pre-credential Program. History classes also have the good fortune of attracting from outside the major students who take these courses due to their interest in the subject matter. All History courses, especially upper division lecture ones, have a significant number of non-History major students whose participation enriches these courses with their enthusiasm for the subject matter.

History also has a popular Masters program with three emphases (the Standard Program; the History/Humanities program; and the Public History Program) that includes about 100 active students as of Fall 2005. The Department has also added a Ph.D. Program in Public History in cooperation with the University of California at Santa Barbara. This Ph.D. was the first such program at Sacramento State, and it is still the only Ph.D. in History in the California State University system.

The History Department responds to community and regional needs in a variety of ways. Beyond teaching in the classroom, faculty publish their scholarship in books, academic journals, newspapers and other printed media; present papers at academic conferences; give workshops for high school teachers; and present their work in a wide variety of formal and informal settings to a wide variety of audiences. Historical knowledge is central to establishing a society that learns from the past and seeks to improve the human condition. Our faculty understand that, and they are actively involved in helping to educate our students and our society.

The History Department also responds specifically to local and regional needs in the areas of secondary school and community college teacher training, particularly through Teaching American History Grants and public history work. In particular, the Public History program provides approximately 15 graduate student interns each semester to local and regional historic and cultural resource agencies. The Public History program’s outreach function is described more fully later in this report, but this program provides a very strong link between the Department and University with local and regional private and public agencies and organizations such as the California State Archives, Office of Historic Preservation, California Department of Parks, Sacramento Archives and Museum Collection Center, and several private consulting firms among many other organizations.

In our last self-study we recognized advising in the major as a major weakness. As addressed elsewhere in this report, over the last five years we have sought to address this issue. All incoming majors must meet with the Undergraduate Studies Coordinator or Chair, and each student is then assigned to a permanent faculty advisor. We have worked

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hard to insure that all students do see their assigned advisor. Early indications are that students appreciate the added attention and mentoring that they are receiving, but we recognize that the advising system needs to be improved further.

As a Department, we support and encourage faculty to be teacher-scholars. We believe that faculty who are active in scholarship and within the academic community generally will bring enthusiasm and current knowledge to the classroom. These classroom environments will inspire students to think historically and realize the benefits of historical thinking in their personal and professional lives.

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B. Response to Previous Program Review

The following recommendations were made in the year 2000 Self-Study:

Recommendation 1: The Department found a History Club to allow students who do not meet Phi Alpha Theta membership standards to participate in the honor society’s activities.

The History Department has considered the possibility of starting a History Club to allow students who do not meet Phi Alpha Theta membership standards to participate in PAT activities. After further discussion, there was consensus that PAT eligibility requirements were not unreasonably high and that the eligibility requirements were attainable by any student sufficiently motivated to join PAT. The membership requirements are:

Undergraduate Students: 12 semester units completed in history courses minimum 3.1 GPA in history courses overall 3.0 GPA or better membership is not limited to History majors

Graduate Students: 12 semester units completed towards Master's Degree in History GPA better than 3.5 completed approximately 30% of residency requirements

While PAT membership is restricted to students meeting these eligibility requirements, most PAT activities (other than the annual Induction Ceremony) are open to all History Majors. These activities include guest speakers, student colloquia, and films.

Beginning Fall of 2006, PAT will institute a “History Club” that is open to all History Majors regardless of their GPA, and these students may participate in PAT activities. After achieving the requisite eligibility requirements, these students will become eligible to joint PAT. The Department is very pleased that PAT will take on this task for the benefit of the Department and its students.

Recommendation 2: The Department faculty undertake in 2000-2001 a fund-raising campaign to create undergraduate scholarships for History students.

Since the year 2000, additional scholarships for both undergraduate and graduate students have been funded and made available to History majors and graduate students. Thus far, these new scholarships benefit graduate students more than undergraduate students, so we will continue to seek funding for additional undergraduate scholarships. Our newer scholarships are as follows:

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1) Lawrence A. Brooks Graduate Conference Grant Scholarship- This scholarship is for graduate students who attend a professional

academic conference. Awards up to $600 total per academic year.

2) Senator Nicholas C. Petris Scholarship- This scholarship is for students interested in Hellenic Studies. The

Hellenic Studies minor is currently administered through the History Department. Several awards per year will be offered up to a total amount of about $7,000.

3) Kenneth N. Owens Award for Excellence in Public History- This award is for Public History graduate students who achieve

excellence in a public history project. One award per year up to $500.

4) Bramson Prize in Historic Preservation- This award is for the best historic preservation project. It is awarded

annually in the amount of approximately $500.

Recommendation 3: The Department implement the 1995 Advising Policy to improve academic and career advising for History and History/Social Science students.

The Department has implemented a new Advising Program. The Department created a new position, the Undergraduate Studies Coordinator (USC), who serves as the First Contact Advisor (FCA). The USC has an initial advising meeting with new students and assigns these students to faculty advisors based on each student’s academic interests. The faculty advisor serves as the primary advisor for the remainder of the student’s career. The faculty advisor is also responsible for reviewing and signing the student’s graduation petition.

Recommendation 4: The Department investigate ways to improve career counseling for our graduate students with particular attention to community college placement.

The History Department is continuing to develop its career advising/counseling procedures. Currently, the Graduate Coordinator and the Public History Coordinator counsel students in their respective programs on possible career options. In regard to community college placement in particular, students enrolled in Hist 400 (The Teaching of History in College) are taught how to compose and deliver classroom lectures as well as the professional duties and responsibilities of community college teachers. In this course, community college teachers serve as guest lecturers and answer students’ questions about community college teaching. This course serves as a very important gateway for students interested in following this career path.

Recommendation 5: The World History Division rethink the articulation and sequencing of its course offerings with initial emphasis on European history.

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The History Department approved a change in its major so that the World History sequence (Hist 50/51) is now equivalent to the Western Civilization sequence (Hist 4/5) for students seeking a minor in History.

Recommendation 6: In its full-time hires over the next several years the Department make reasonable efforts to expand the number of faculty members from “diverse” backgrounds.

Since 2001 (with no hires in 2001), the History Department hired twelve new faculty members, seven of whom are female. In addition, one of the new hires is of Middle Eastern descent. The History Department is conscious of the need to hire faculty from diverse backgrounds, and we take this goal seriously. Our first goal in hiring faculty is to hire the best in terms of teaching and research ability and potential, and within this framework we seek to hire candidates with diverse background whenever possible.

We hope to realize the goal of this recommendation in future hires that are focused more on subject matter areas likely to attract candidates of diverse backgrounds (see Appendix for the section on hiring priorities).

Recommendation 7: The Department list part-time instructors with one-year or two-year contracts by name in the Class Schedule, and consider other ways to improve the status of part-time instructors in the Department.

The Department has made efforts to list part-time faculty in the on-line schedule, but the technicalities associated with hiring and assigning part-time faculty to courses has hampered our ability to list part-time faculty members by name in the class schedule. We are able to list part-time faculty in the online schedule only after part-time contracts have been formalized between the instructor and university and this occurs only a few weeks before the semester begins and after course registration.

Recommendation 8: The University authorize the Department of History to hire two new faculty per year for at least the next five years so that the Department will have approximately 18 full-time faculty on its books in 2007. This is the key recommendation without which all the others will be in vain.

The Department has hired twelve new faculty between 2001 and 2005 (with no hires during 2001). During 2003, the Department hired six new faculty, and this effort was both rewarding and very taxing on the Department. Of the twelve new faculty hired, Jacqueline Carr left in 2004 for a full-time position at the University of Virginia, Barbara Keys took a leave of absence (Spring 2006-Fall 2006) to commence a new position at the University of Melbourne, and Brian Schoen commenced a leave of absence (Fall 2006) to begin a new position at Ohio University. As of Fall 2006, the Department will have eighteen full-time faculty, but Keys and Schoen will be on leave and Castaneda will continue as a full-time chair.

The following is a list of new hires since 2001:

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2001: (No Hires)

2002: Jacqueline Carr (Colonial American History)Joe Palermo (U.S. Political History)

2003: Candace Gregory (Medieval History)+Barbara Keys (20th Century U.S. Foreign Relations)Katerina Lagos (Greece, Hellenic Studies)Afshin Marashi (Islam, Middle East)Charles Postel (19th Century U.S.)Mona Siegel (France, Europe)

2004: Chloe Burke (U.S. Cultural History)*Brian Schoen (19th Century U.S.)

2005: Rebecca Kluchin (U.S. Women’s History)Michael Vann (World History)

+ on professional leave (Spr. 06-Fall 06)* on professional leave (Fall 06-Spr. 07)

Recommendation 9: The University at least triple its support for faculty research efforts over the next two years.

This recommendation requires University resources and support. During AY 2005-06, the Research and Sponsored Projects Division did increase travel fund stipends from $350 per faculty member/year to $500 per faculty member/year.

Unfortunately, indications are that the University is otherwise reducing and not increasing total funds available for faculty research. The Department has no control over this issue, but it will continue to advocate for increased University resources for faculty research.

Recommendation 10: The Department appoint an Ad Hoc Committee to study possible changes in the administrative and governance structure of the Department of History.

The History Department revised its governance structure in the Fall of 2004. This new governance structure was carefully considered, discussed, and approved by the faculty. Additional modifications were made in subsequent years (see section V on Governance).

Recommendation 11: The Department investigate ways to improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of information available to community college students about the Social Science Precredential Program.

In 2003, the Department hired Charles Postel to teach late nineteenth century history and to lead our effort in Precredential advising. The Precredential advisor now works closely

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with the Chair of the Social Science program and the Education Department. The Precredential advisor will also continue to explore ways to advertise and promote the Precredential program to community college instructors and students.

Recommendation 12: The Department study the graduate historiography sequence (History 201 and 202) with an eye to including more recent history theory.

On several occasions, the Department (as a whole and in the graduate committee) has considered modifications to the graduate curriculum. Since the Hist 201 and Hist 202 sequence have been the core of the graduate program for many years, a consensus has not yet emerged on how to modify the graduate programs core courses. One suggestion has been to create a single theory-based seminar and then increase the number of reading seminar electives. The Department will continue to examine the overall structure of its graduate program structure. During the Spring of 2006, the Graduate Coordinator conducted a survey of faculty to determine whether specific changes in the Graduate program were needed. The results of the survey and possible suggestions for changes to the program will be presented at the Department retreat on September 1, 2006. Recommendation 13: The Departments of History and of Humanities/Religious Studies look into the structure of the History/Humanities Concentration with an eye to strengthening the History component and ensuring that all required courses are offered with sufficient frequency.

This is an ongoing conversation. However, the Humanities Department is currently considering creating its own MA. It is not clear how this might affect the current History/Humanities MA concentration. There are few students in this program, so even if the History/Humanities concentration was disbanded it would not have an adverse affect on the History program.

Recommendation 14: The University improve janitorial and maintenance services to create a better learning environment for students and faculty.

Since moving into Tahoe Hall, it does appear that janitorial and maintenance services are better, at least in our office environment. This is clearly a University function, but we continue to urge the University to realize the importance of good janitorial and maintenance services.

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C. Trends in the Discipline of History

The History Department is actively involved in identifying, incorporating in its curriculum, and producing modern historical scholarship. There are several threads of new historical scholarship, but the overarching one involves global studies. The department has responded to this trend by creating new World History courses that teach the historical processes of globalization and global integration. Two examples of this new approach are: 1) comparing the Asian immigrant experience on the West coast with that of the Eastern European immigrant experience and 2) comparing the African-American experiences in the North and South during the Jim Crow era with racial and ethnic conflict in South Africa. In this regard, some faculty have found, for example, that Jared Diamond's historical account of world power dynamics in Guns, Germs, and Steel is particularly effective.

Another major trend is examining the intersection between race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Recent scholarship in women's history, for example, has emphasized how women embody a variety of identities that need to be examined as a whole rather than separated into discrete characteristics. As Deborah Gray White pointed out in her last book, a black woman cannot separate her race from her gender, and it is the intersection of these identities that creates a distinct historical experience. Understanding that identity is complex and cannot be reduced to a single trait and that historical figures should be understood as complex beings is a vital modern trend in historical scholarship. Thus, much of the teaching in our department currently includes discussion of gender and race. Some books that address these topics used by our faculty include: Alexendra Stern’s Eugenic Nation, Eric Foner’s Give Me Liberty, Susan Douglas’s Where the Girls Are, Goerge Lipsitz’s Time Passages, and Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

A related trend involves using health and medicine as a lens through which to examine American cultural values. Professors Kluchin, Burke, and Pitti, among others, regularly incorporate new scholarship on medicine and culture in their courses. In addition, Professor Kluchin recently created a new course for the department titled: “Sex, Population, and Birth Control in America” that broadens the Department’s offerings.

Our faculty have also noticed what might be called a return to some of the "old" questions that once absorbed the time of many historians: politics and economics. For example, although there are new studies of the experience of slavery, there is an increasing emphasis on looking at slavery from the perspective of its centrality to early American political and economic institutions. There also appears to be renewed interest in crafting the compelling narrative. While the old "Whiggish" and "Progressive" narratives have been replaced by a much more complex and interesting picture, that very complexity also needs focus and synthesis, and it seems that the narrative structure is an important part of that effort.

The History Department has a very active and successful graduate Public History program, and while its curriculum is generally distinct from that of the standard MA program, there is an increasing amount of overlap. Some of this overlap reflects new and

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developing trends in research methods and historical interpretation. For example, our graduate oral history seminar trains students to use oral history technology, and it also addresses new and exciting scholarship that examines the seminal importance of memory and the oral tradition in transmitting information. To further explore these issues, Professor Siegel has begun teaching a new graduate seminar (currently under the “special topics” designation) specifically on the topic of “memory and historical consciousness.” This course, therefore, is a response to what many of us consider to be one of the most influential developments in cultural and social history over the past twenty years.

The Public History program is also quite responsive to new trends in the field of Public History, particularly because the program recognizes that students trained in current public historical methods and techniques will be more competitive in the job market. This program regularly employs practicing public historians in the areas of archival management, historic preservation, museum studies, and cultural resource management to teach its specialty professional seminars. Our new joint Ph.D. program in Public Historical Studies with UC Santa Barbara also enhances by association our MA program. Students in the joint Ph.D. program learn both practical and theoretical aspects of Public History and will be competitive for university teaching positions.

The History Department has recently become very active in the business of teacher training. Since hiring Professor Postel in 2003, the Department has taken an increasingly active role as a history content provider in two Teaching American History Grant (TAHG) programs, and it continues to work cooperatively with the UC Davis History Project that administers several TAHGs. In addition, under the guidance of Professor Postel, the Department is exploring the possibility of creating a new MA program in teaching, the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT), that would target current and prospective high school history and social studies teachers. By moving forward with plans to initiate this important teaching focused program, the department is responding to the new emphasis on bolstering the pedagogical capability of secondary school teachers.

A related pedagogical trend involves utilizing audio-visual technology in the classroom. During the last several years, faculty have begun using with increasing frequency new technologies such as PowerPoint Presentations, WebCT, and digital historical content in their classrooms. These new technologies allow for greater use of visual evidence and resources that aid instruction. The following list of new and modified courses adopted by the department during the last five years indicates most tangibly how the department is addressing changes in the profession, adapting to new trends in the discipline, and responding to student demand:

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History Department: New Courses Developed, 2001-2006

Hist 8 History of Islamic CivilizationsHist 101 History of Modern GreeceHist 103 Mediterranean EuropeHist 123 The CrusadesHist 125 Twentieth Century GermanyHist 130 The Fall of ComunismHist 131 Contemporary World History ProjectHist 132 Topics in World HistoryHist 133 Twentieth-Century World HistoryHist 142 History of Women in AfricaHist 156 The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of RageHist 157 History of International Relations in the 20th CenturyHist 175 Sex, Population, and Birth Control in AmericaHist 179 American Immigration HistoryHist 180 American Legal HistoryHist 181 The South, Slavery and the American Nation, 1600-1890Hist 184 California Architecture and Urban HistoryHist 187 Topics in United States History, 1600-1900Hist 191 Seminar in Historical Interpretations of the United StatesHist 282E Seminar in Historic Preservation

In addition, we have added topical subcategories to our undergraduate and graduate seminar offerings (Hist 192 series; Hist 200 series; Hist 281 series)

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II. Academic Programs

A. Learning Expectations

1. a. The Discipline

The History Department has a well articulated and straightforward undergraduate major. The goals of the History major focus on the ability to critically assess and analyze primary documents and secondary literature, develop clear and concise writing, enhance critical thinking, expand awareness of different schools of historical writing, research historical sources through printed and electronic media, and develop the ability to draft a research paper using primary sources.

To attain these goals, the History major is led through a four stage program. (see Appendix C) First, in lower division surveys (12 units) the student is introduced to the basic subject matter of U.S. and World history. Next, the student takes History 100 (3 units) and is confronted with basic history skills detailed in the program goals. In the upper division electives (21 units) the History major pursues an in-depth knowledge of broad areas of history with exposure to at least three civilizations: American history, European History, and at least one non-European, non-U.S. history. As a capstone experience, History students then take two senior research seminars (6 units). One is a readings seminar that focuses on the historiography of a specific area or topic, and the other is a research seminar in which students must produce an original research paper roughly 25 pages in length.

The History Department course offerings are designed to provide an excellent education for History majors as well as non-majors. At the lower-division level, we regularly offer eleven courses including three U.S. History surveys, seven World History surveys, and one Freshman Seminar. Since our last self-study we have added History 8: History of Islamic Civilizations and History 21: Freshman Seminar. The lower division U.S. History surveys consistently draw between 600-1000 students per semester, many of whom are not history majors. Following along with national trends we have seen a decline in students taking Western Civilizations and more students taking World Civilizations. We now only offer 1-2 sections of Western Civilizations, while we now offer 5-6 sections of the World Civilizations courses.

We also offer a wide variety of upper-division courses. As of the 2005-06 Academic Year there are 87 that include: 36 American History courses, 27 European focused courses, 14 courses in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and World history, as well as several seminars (see Appendix). This regional breakdown is fairly consistent with the breakdown at universities throughout the country, which tend to be heavily American and Eurocentric. Gradually, as the world becomes more global so do curricula offerings. We hope to stay ahead of the curve in offering more global courses. For example, we restructured our capstone reading seminars, History 192 (Readings in American History) and Hist 193 (Readings in European History), in order to expand topical offerings to

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include Readings in Asian History, African History, Latin American History, and Middle Eastern History. We are increasingly becoming very strong in World History and hope to improve upon this in years to come.

In an assessment project we conducted in 2000, we compared our senior seminar papers with those of another comparable university, and we discovered that virtually no other university has such a rigorous and demanding capstone senior research course. We believe that our senior seminars continue to hold students to these same very high standards.

Students are allowed to graduate (certified as competent in the discipline) if they complete all courses in the program with a grade of at least a C- and an overall GPA of at least 2.0; if students do not perform adequately in a capstone course, they are required to take the course again.

The History Department undergraduate curriculum tries to balance breadth of coverage with in-depth topical focus. Over the last five years we have expanded our course offerings as more junior faculty have been hired and are eager to offer courses more tailored to their areas of interest. Though we have expanded our offerings, we are still heavily American and Eurocentric. We hope to further expand our non-U.S. and non-European offerings although enrollment pressures diminish our ability to do so.

The History faculty are convinced that they have a first-rate, highly effective undergraduate major. The program is thorough, consistent and well articulated: its stated objectives are addressed in increasing complexity and sophistication as the student advances towards graduation. From a comparison with the catalog descriptions of other History programs at California State University Chico, Sonoma State University, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University, and San Diego State University it appears that the Sacramento State program falls within the norms of comparable universities. Our 42 unit major falls within the range of 39-45 units required in these other programs. Our requirement that students take three low enrollment seminars (compared to 1 or 2 in most other programs) suggests that we have a comparatively rigorous program and that History students at Sacramento State are receiving more personal attention from faculty.

Since our last self-study we have had a significant increase in the number of students majoring in history. In 1999 we had 290 majors, in 2003 we had 383 majors, and by the Fall of 2005 we had approximately 414 majors. In terms of graduation rates, we are consistently above the college’s and university’s averages. In 2004, for example, the History Department had a 60% 6-year graduation rate which is far about the College (37%) and the University (42%) rates. In 2005, the History Department’s 6-year graduation rate fell somewhat to 52% but remained substantially higher than that for the College (41%) and University (39%).

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1. b. Writing and Reading in the Major

The major emphasizes writing skills at every level: lower division courses have a minimum writing requirement; in most upper division courses and particularly in seminars, students have multiple writing assignments with extensive feedback from instructors. Research skills—use of printed sources in the library and of computer-based databases and bibliographies—are stressed in all the upper division courses, and particularly in the senior seminars. Reading skills are also essential to success in the field of history, and we do our best to instill in History students a taste for reading and an ability to do it well.

While good writing is important in every history class, it is particularly important in Hist 100: Introduction to Historical Skills, Hist 192: Senior Reading Seminar (series), and Hist 197: Senior Research Seminar (series). As previously described, in Hist 197 students write a major research paper of approximately 25 pages.

In all history courses, clear and well organized prose is always promoted, supported, and expected. This is made clear to students in course syllabi, course introductory lectures, and throughout the semester. All faculty insist on high quality writing, and we continually remind students that performing well in a history class means not only developing subject matter knowledge but mastering the writing skills necessary to communicate arguments and ideas effectively.

In addition to the courses mentioned above, the History Department offers seven GE category “writing intensive courses” that require a minimum of 5,000 words of writing. These courses are:

HIST 105: Great Ages and Issues in Modern European HistoryHIST 110: Ancient East Cultural HistoryHIST 122A: History of Women in Western Civilization, Prehistory-Middle AgesHIST 122B: History of Women in Western Civilization, Renaissance-PresentHIST 138A: Modern and Contemporary Latin AmericaHIST 138B: Modern and Contemporary Latin AmericaHIST 168: Images of America

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1. c. Information Competency Statement

The underlying skills taught to History majors are research, writing, and analysis. In order to be a competent historian, a student must understand how to locate the appropriate information, organize it, analyze it, and then describe it orally or in writing. Information useful to history majors is typically in the form of correspondence, newspaper and/or journal articles, and books. This information can be located in archives, libraries, and on-line sites. It is the goal of the History Department to teach students how to locate, organize, interpret, analyze, and describe this information.

The courses in which information competency is principally introduced to students are Hist 100: Introduction to Historical Skills, Hist 192: Seminar in Recent Interpretations (series) and Hist 197: Senior Research Seminar (series).

Hist 100: The process of teaching information competency begins formally with Hist 100. In this course, second semester sophomores and first semester juniors are introduced to basic research skills including: basic library research skills, on-line archival sources, note taking, formal citations, bibliography, and critical reading. Since students in general are having an increasingly difficult time understanding the importance and ethical implications of correct citation of sources, this course spends significant time on how to accurately cite sources used in research. A sample exercise would be the compilation of an annotated bibliography (bibliographic listing with critical comments on the source of information) on a topic such as the Cold War or World War I.

Hist 192: In this course, seniors are introduced to the methods that professional historians use to gather, organize, and interpret historical data while examining the most significant scholarship on particular topics. An example of one assignment used in this course is reading and analyzing an essay on the Sacco and Vanzetti case (After the Fact, Ch. 11: Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case of History vs. Law) and answering questions such as: 1) What was the evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti?; 2) Why does the case raise doubts about the American justice system?; and 3) What were the causes of nativism in the 1920s?

Hist 197: Seniors employ the research, interpretative, and writing skills they have learned in Hist 100 and Hist 192 to prepare a major research paper based on primary sources. In this course, students write a research paper (25-30 pages) developed from primary source research done at the Sacramento State library and Special Collections, UC Davis Shields Library, the Bancroft Library, or the California State Archives (among other regional repositories). These research papers also introduce undergraduates to the level of research, writing, and analysis required in graduate programs.

Competency in these courses is measured through instructor evaluation of the assignments. Assignments must show clear evidence of thorough research in primary and secondary sources as appropriate, methodical citation based on the Chicago Manual of Style (or abridged versions), and thoughtful argumentation, analysis, and interpretation of historical materials. Grades of C- or better are required for credit toward a History B.A.

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B. Structure of the Curriculum

Undergraduate Program:

The undergraduate History major leads students through a four stage process. First, in lower division survey courses (12 units) the student is introduced to the basic subject matter of U.S. and World history. Next, the student takes History 100 (3 units) and is taught basic history skills. In the third stage, the History major pursues an in-depth knowledge of broad areas of history through seven upper-division electives (21 units) and exposure to at least three civilizations: U.S., European, and at least one non-European and non-U.S. History civilization. As their capstone experience, History students then take two senior research seminars (6 units). One is a readings seminar that focuses on the historiography of a specific area or topic, and the other is a research seminar in which students must produce an original research paper roughly 25 pages in length.

Lower Division sequence (12 units):

Hist 17A U.S. History, 1607-1877Hist 17B U.S. History, 1877-Present

ANDHist 4 Survey of Early Western CivilizationHist 5 Survey of Modern Western Civilization

ORHist 50 World Civilizations, Beginnings-1600Hist 51 World Civilizations, 1600-Present

Introductory Seminar (3 units):

Hist 100 Introduction to Historical Skills

Upper Division Electives - Hist 100 level courses - (21 units):

One course in U.S. HistoryOne course in European HistoryOne course in Africa, Latin America, Asia, of the Middle East HistoryFour additional upper-division electives

Senior Seminars (6 units):

Hist 192 Senior Readings SeminarHist 197 Senior Research Seminar

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Graduate Programs:

The History Department’s graduate program consists of four concentrations: 1) History MA - Standard Program; 2) History/Humanities MA (shared with the Humanities and Religious Studies Department); 3) Public History MA; 4) Joint Ph.D. in Public History (with UC Santa Barbara)

Currently, we have approximately 100 active graduate students in these four graduate programs: 62 in the Standard Program, 22 in the Public History MA Program, 10 in the History/Humanities Program, and 6 in the joint Ph.D. program. Our combined graduate programs experienced steady growth over the past five years: the number of graduate students increased from 75 students (full and part time) in Fall 2000 to 100 students (full and part time) in Fall 2005. The total enrolled students during the previous five years were: 100 (2005); 105 (2004); 95 (2003); 98 (2002); 82 (2001); 75 (2000). As a proportion of all graduate students in the College of Arts and Letters, however, the History Department held steady at about 17 percent of all graduate students in the college.

The ratio of full to part-time graduate students has steadily decreased over the last several years; many more of our students are now part time compared to previous years. In Fall 2000, for example, the number of full to part time students was almost equal (35 to 40), by Fall 2005 there were 34 full time students to 66 part time students. The ratio of full-time to part-time students during the last five years is: .52 (2005) .59 (2004); .75 (2003); .69 (2002); .82 (2001); .88 (2000)

The number of master's degrees awarded has increased from 7 in 1999-2000 to 21 in 2004-05, reaching a high of 29 in 2002-03. Our seven year completion rate has remained between 50 and 60 percent with a sharp rise to 78 percent by Fall 2003 with a subsequent drop to 17 percent by Fall 2004.

The Department has continued to discuss changes to the structure of the graduate program. In the last self-study, a goal was set to reform the core sequence of historiography courses (History 201 and History 202). After much discussion over the last several years, the faculty requested that the department graduate committee draw up a plan to eliminate the two historiography seminars and replace them with one core seminar on theory and methodology. The graduate committee is now in the process of submitting a plan for implementation of this decision; difficulty in staffing the new course has delayed the process. The department also discussed the feasibility and desirability of instituting specific tracks of study to better tailor the graduate program to specific audiences, including prospective community college teachers, Ph.D. candidates, and secondary school professional development. No decision was made in this area.

Several improvements in communication and advising have been made. A department e-mail listserv and graduate web page were created to facilitate communication between the department and graduate students. The application forms were streamlined and digitized as part of this process. The department decided to assign incoming graduate students to

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faculty in their area of academic interest to encourage earlier contact with potential academic advisors and to diversify interaction between students and faculty.

The department has also developed new procedures for hiring Graduate Teaching Associates and Instructional Student Assistants (ISAs) in response to requests from the university and the students; this process now includes a formal application, evaluation, and review process as well as a training workshop. These students typically assist professors who teach large class sections with grading and class administration. This mentorship system has benefited our students as many of our former MA students who completed their master’s degree now have full-time or part-time jobs at local community colleges.

General Goals and Recommendations for the History Graduate Program:

The Department greatly values its graduate program, and in order to continue offering a high-quality graduate education that provides training in academic research, college-level teaching, and professional development in history and history/humanities, the graduate committee is exploring these areas for development:

Strengthen the curriculum of the graduate program by:

1. Clarifying the role and extent of historiography seminars History 201 (European history) and History 202 (US historiography);

2. Clarifying the role of History 400 (Teaching of History in College) in the graduate program, specifically whether to require History 400 for all graduate students;

3. Clarifying whether the introduction of specific options (subfields or tracks) will enhance the professional development of history graduate students;

4. Developing a more reliable staffing of History 201 seminars;

5. Strengthening faculty commitment to the graduate program by clarifying distribution of Graduate Assigned Time (GAT) to both acknowledge and to reward faculty with course release time for faculty who mentor and advise graduate students completing their thesis or exam.

Improve graduate student advising by:

1. Soliciting comments on a more regular basis from current students and alumni about positive and negative aspects of the graduate program;

2. Continuing to improve assignments of subject matter advisors at an earlier point in the graduate student’s program;

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3. Soliciting more accurate information about the current job market from local community colleges and recent alumni;

4. Monitoring graduate students more accurately to determine if they are making reasonable progress toward the degree;

5. Developing a more effective way for delivering career guidance.

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Standard Program MA in History:

The Standard MA program is a 30-unit program that introduces students to the use of the historical method, the critical investigation of problems in historical study, and the analysis and interpretation of primary source material. These skills are valuable in many professions, especially to experienced teachers of history in public schools, to students who wish to teach in California community colleges or to pursue graduate study culminating in the doctorate in History, and to students seeking employment in archival management, oral history, consulting, and public sector historical research.

Research and Writing Seminar (3 units):HIST 200A Research and Writing in U.S. History; orHIST 200B Research and Writing in the History of the American West; orHIST 200C Research and Writing in World History

Historiography Seminars (6 units):HIST 201 Seminar in European Historiography; andHIST 202 Seminar in American Historiography

Reading Seminar - Non-U.S.(3 units):HIST 280A Reading Seminar in African or Asian History; orHIST 280B Reading Seminar in Ancient or Medieval European History; orHIST 280C Reading Seminar in Modern European History; orHIST 280Z Reading Seminar: Topics in World History

Reading Seminar - U.S.(3 units):HIST 281A Reading Seminar in Colonial or Early U.S. History; orHIST 281B Reading Seminar in Nineteenth Century U.S. History; orHIST 281C Reading Seminar in Modern U.S. History; orHIST 281Z Reading Seminar: Topics in United States History; or

Additional Reading Seminar (3 units):HIST 280; orHIST 281

Electives (9 units):Upper-Division courses; orHist 280; orHist 281; orHist 299 Directed Reading; orHist 295/7 Internship

Culminating Requirement (3 units):Hist 500 Culminating Experience

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History/Humanities Concentration

The History/Humanities concentration is a 30-unit program that allows students to blend Humanities and History courses focusing on areas such as cultural history, the history of ideas, and religious studies. This program is similar in many respects to the Standard History MA, but students have the option of choosing 9-12 units of courses from the Humanities and Religious Studies curriculum (HRS). Currently HRS is investigating the feasibility of creating an independent MA program. If this program is created, the History/Humanities option would probably be terminated.

Public History MA Program:

The Public History Masters Program operates within the History Department, but its curriculum and structure is distinct from that Standard Program so that it operates as an independent graduate program. In existence for about 20 years, it is a 36-unit program that requires eight graduate seminars, nine units of internship in public history-related offices; and either a Master’s project or a thesis. Specialized courses offered in Museum Studies, Historic Preservation, Archives, Business Archives, Oral History, and Public Memory Studies provide valuable theoretical and technical training to our students.

Public History Core Seminars (12 units):

HIST 201 Seminar in European Historiography; andHIST 202 Seminar in American Historiography; andHIST 203 Public History Principles and Techniques; andHIST 282A Research Seminar in Public History

Professional Seminars (12 units):

HIST 282B Archives and ManuscriptsHIST 282C Oral HistoryHIST 282D Museum StudiesHIST 282E Historic PreservationHIST 282Z Special Topics in Public HistoryHIST 281A-Z Reading Seminar

Internship Requirement (9 units):

HIST 295 History Internship (6); andHIST 297 Advanced Internship (3)

Culminating Experience (3 units):

HIST 500 Thesis Project

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Public History Program requirements meet the educational guidelines of the Society of American Archivists, the Oral History Association, and the National Council on Public History. Graduates are qualified for listing on the Professional Register of Public Historians maintained by the California Council for the Promotion of History. This is an active program with high morale that does not appear to need reform at this moment.

Faculty for this program are drawn from full-time faculty (Simpson, Ettinger, and Castaneda) along with a well qualified pool of professional public historians who bring real world public history experience to the classroom including staff from the California State Archives, Office of Historic Preservation, California State Railroad Museum, and JRP Historical Consulting Services.

One of the major assets of our program is the 9-unit internship requirement. The internship provides students with hands on experience in a professional setting. The majority of our internships are paid and many students turn internships into permanent jobs. In recent years the number and scope of internship opportunities have increased. We have expanded our contacts to include consulting firms and public agencies beyond the Sacramento metropolitan region to include the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. Participating internship agencies include:

California State Office of Historic PreservationCalifornia Department of TransportationCalifornia State ParksCalifornia State Museum Resources CenterCalifornia State Railroad MuseumSutter’s Fort State Historic ParkCalifornia State Governor’s MansionCalifornia Museum of History, Women and the ArtsCalifornia State LibraryCalifornia League of State Parks AssociationsUniversity of California Davis Shields Library Special CollectionsSacramento Archives and Museum Collection CenterSacramento County Department of Environmental ReviewSacramento Preservation OfficeSacramento County Historical SocietyCity of Davis Hattie Weber MuseumSanta Barbara Trust for Historic PreservationThe Public HistorianMcClellan Aviation MuseumPlacer County Museum and ArchivesNorth Central Information CenterFair Oaks Historical SocietyJRP Historical Consulting ServicesGalvin and AssociatesGarcia and AssociatesJones and Stokes

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Graduate Placement:

The Public History Program’s graduates continue to be successful in securing employment in public history fields after receiving their degrees. Our graduates now fill important and high level positions in the California Department of State Parks, the Office of Historic Preservation, and CalTrans. Graduates also work for a variety of private consulting firms throughout the state. Graduates report that a Masters degree from the Sacramento State Public History program is a “union card” for employment in State Parks.

Joint Ph.D. with the University of California, Santa Barbara

The joint Ph.D. Program in Public History was approved in 2001 after a nearly six year long approval process. The joint Program is still in its infancy, but it is proving to be successful. It was designed to be a low-cost and small doctoral program, and it is operating remarkably well as such.

A Joint Public History Committee (at least two faculty from Sacramento State and two from UCSB) reviews applications for admission to the program, and it selects the individuals to be admitted. With rare exceptions, students admitted to the program have a Masters in History, Public History or closely related field. Students admitted to the program must spend at least one academic year in residence on each of the two campuses, and students only pay the fees of that campus while in residence. Three students applied for Fall 2006 admission, and one of these was accepted. Currently, we have five active students in the program, and we average 1-2 admissions per year.

Coursework for students varies somewhat depending upon their background in Public History. All students must take basic public history seminars offered on each campus as well as reading and research seminars depending upon their fields of study. In addition to the required research seminars and professional course work, students will complete an internship assignment and report.

To complete the doctoral program, students must pass a combination of written and oral examinations in four fields. These fields are typically: a general field (usually U.S. History); a specialized field within the general field; a third field encompassing the dissertation topic; and a cognate field outside the department (e.g., art history, anthropology, political science). In addition, each student must pass one foreign language examination; serve as a research or teaching assistant; and complete a dissertation.

Since the program is run jointly with the History Department at UC Santa Barbara, there have been some minor glitches for students as they navigate the bureaucracies of both schools. Some of the first students were concerned that the program did not have a clearly defined core seminar pattern, but this issue has been resolved recently through consultation between both campuses and the creation of a new course check-off form. One problem for Sacramento State was simply bureaucratic in that all applications for the program are processed by UCSB, and the application information is transmitted to the

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Sacramento State History Department which in turn transmits it to the Graduate Studies Office. We have initiated a new registration information system that appears to be working well now.

Faculty members Chris Castaneda and Lee Simpson have been approved as adjunct faculty at UCSB and are now serving as dissertation advisers for three students. At UCSB, Professors Randy Bergstrom and Ann Plane direct the program and regularly consult with Simpson and Castaneda.

The following statement from Professor Ann Plane at UCSB is an evaluation of the joint Program to date from the UCSB perspective:

June 5, 2006

Ann Marie PlaneAssociate Professor and Chair, Public History CommitteeUC Santa Barbara

Statement on Joint PhD Program, UCSB-CSUS

During 2001, UCSB and CSUS launched a pioneering joint PhD program in Public Historical Studies. Each institution had a long-standing public history program and in many ways they had complementary strengths. The joint program allowed for several innovative things: First, strengths in business and corporate history, oral history, history of the American west, and historic preservation at CSUS could now be linked with UCSB’s strengths in legal and policy history, museum studies, historical memory, and community studies and historical ethnography. CSUS’s strong MA program now had an outlet for the very top students who wanted to go on to the PhD but did not necessarily want to relocate. And UCSB now had access both to the vibrant internships of the Sacramento campus, as well as to a strong MA program, helping to replace the loss of its own terminal MA in Public History.

The positive future that was projected in the planning documents has in large measure been born out over the past few years. To date, 9 students have enrolled in the joint PhD [Byrd, Wollan, Parsons, Smoley, Lemon, Johnston-Dodds, Wilson, Sandul, and Swim]. Of those, 2 have advanced to candidacy, and 5 are still in coursework, and 2 have dropped out or become inactive.

From the perspective of a UCSB faculty member, the program is a great success. While admissions have proceeded somewhat more slowly than we initially envisioned, we have admitted 2-3 students per year into the joint program. At the same time, UCSB admits 1-2 students a year into its own Public Historical Studies PhD program. The students who have been able to pursue the joint program do just as well—if not better—than those in the UCSB only program. They are working in a wide variety of fields, including public history, land use, corporate and business history and historical memory and museums. In

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particular, the CSUS students have demonstrated a strong entrepreneurial bent, even founding one business—an on-line contract history referral service—in their short time in the profession.

Intellectually, the program seems successful as well. The two campuses have a somewhat different feel. However, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The chance to collaborate with colleagues in Sacramento, the advantages to having close connections to faculty with expertise well beyond that of one’s own department is wonderful. Faculty at UCSB have frequently mentioned the expertise of CSUS colleagues to their students—and not just to joint program students. With better funding, perhaps the programs could follow through more regularly on initiatives that have been undertaken on an occasional basis: short faculty exchanges, joint conferences and workshops, even a televised seminar that would proceed simultaneously at the two campuses. There may also be other ways of bridging the distance between the two campuses that will further strengthen the program’s effectiveness, with mutual benefits flowing both to CSUS MA students and UCSB only Ph.D. students.

The joint program has not been without challenges. Most of them are immediately apparent: the difficulties inherent in developing a unified program when the campuses are located some 6 hours apart. However, we have worked—with the crucial assistance of program administrator, Carolyn Isono-Grapard—to mitigate the effects of distance as students move back and forth between the campuses. So far, most students have begun at CSUS and then moved to UCSB, rather than vice versa. Program faculty have advocated strongly that these second year students be treated as first-year students in the awarding of funding packages (namely TAships). While there is never enough money to go around, joint program students have had a very fair chance at the same monies as other graduate students, both in UCSB’s public history PhD program and in the history PhD program. Efforts to smooth the transition in housing have been less successful, but so far everyone has managed to find appropriate quarters, despite the high demands on UCSB graduate housing. We hope that these will ease somewhat with the development of the new 900 unit graduate housing complex on El Colegio Road, now under construction and slated to open in the next year or so. In addition, initial complaints that program requirements were confusing—with no clear path for students as to which courses on which campus would count towards their degree requirements--have now been addressed through greater coordination in the main office. Carolyn Isono-Grapard has once again been instrumental in ensuring that students are receiving the correct advice from their mentors.

The joint program is virtually without precedent, either in the UC-CSU system or nationally. The fact that it has caught on, that students are seeing its advantages, and that we have drawn applicants not only from CSUS’s MA program but from a more national pool indicates its potential to succeed in just a short time. As the program matures, there are opportunities to grow along with it, to ensure its continued success.

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C. Teaching Strategies

History Department Faculty use many different teaching strategies to instill a useful appreciation and understanding of historical research, analysis, and writing skills. While assessment of historical knowledge is typically based on written exams or papers and discussion and presentations with objective tests more common in lower-division courses, there are many ways in which history can be taught.

The traditional method of teaching history is the lecture presentation. While the lecture continues to be an important if not the most important pedagogical style for imparting knowledge, new information technologies have provided new opportunities for enhancing the teaching process. In particular, most faculty now use PowerPoint presentations in at least some lectures in order to provide high quality illustrations or to emphasize particular terms or instructive text. Many faculty use WebCT in order to present their syllabi, course materials, and electronic discussion opportunities to their students. Faculty also have the ability to give objective exams on WebCT.

Faculty also use internet sources both in class and in assignments. Numerous high quality history research/resource sites now exist that can aid in teaching. Archival collections of specialized subject matter, digital copies of primary documents, oral history interviews, journal articles, artifacts, etc. can provide students with a wealth of information without having to travel to distant libraries or archives.

This is particularly important when teaching students the importance of using primary sources in original research. The internet brings facsimiles of primary sources to their computer screen, and this can greatly aid instruction.

In addition, field trips to local archives and museums such as the California State Archives, California State Library, and the California State Railroad Museum provide valuable opportunities for students to learn about history through direct interaction with documents and artifacts.

Some faculty have also used distance education technology and online course technology. While there are certain advantages to these pedagogical forms, particularly in terms of increasing enrollment per instructor, they lack the direct interactive quality that is oftentimes so important in teaching and learning.

D. Distance Education

The History Department does offer a very limited number of courses through distance education. Currently, Professor Chambers offers Hist 111 (Ancient Greece) and Hist 112 (Ancient Rome) on alternating Fall semesters as a distance education courses. During Spring 2007, Professor Marashi will offer Hist 143B (The Modern Middle East) as a distance education course. In past years, Professor Moore has offered sections of Hist 17B (U.S. History Survey) through distance education. Some professors have also taught

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“online” courses, although these have not proven to be particularly satisfactory. Professor Cohen has been most progressive in adopting the on-line course format.

With new “podcasting” technology, there is some interest in offering as an experiment a course using this technology. While there are no immediate plans to offer courses with this technology, we expect that we may begin considering this technology in the near future.

E. Assessment Plan

The History major at Sacramento State is a plan of learning, and not just a collection of courses. It is a carefully articulated program whose constituent elements build incrementally upon one another to produce students who are well educated and who have a fundamental understanding of the insights and skills of the history profession.

The History Department Assessment Plan is not intended to be an additional assessment procedure for individual students, but it is designed to ensure that the undergraduate History program at Sacramento State meets the stated objectives. The Plan has long-term and short-term goals. Each spring, the Department drafts an interim assessment report to discuss and act on at the end of each academic year. The long-term purpose of the Plan is to generate materials for inclusion in the Department’s five-year Program Review process. Basing their judgment on the information collected in the assessment process and on the reports of the Assessment Committee, the Department faculty will be able to ensure that the Sacramento State History major remains an academic program of the highest quality.

OBJECTIVES: The central objectives of the History major are to instill in students an appreciation of the color and complexity of history and to create in them a life-long love for the discipline. Aside from this, History students shall achieve adequate mastery of the following insights and skills:

1) They shall be able to write a clear expository essay in which they develop a consistent argument and marshal evidence to support an interpretation.

2) They shall develop adequate reading skills, oral communication skills and collaborative skills.

3) They will develop basic mastery of a significant body of historical knowledge in one or more fields of their choosing. Students will be aware of the achievements of more than one civilization.

4) They shall be able to access historical information through traditional (printed) and new technology sources including electronic databases, bibliographies and text storage sites; students shall be able to make qualitative distinctions among history sites posted on the web.

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5) They shall develop basic critical skills in history; be able to identify and analyze fundamental problems of historical interpretation; and be familiar with at least some of the “schools” of historical analysis.

6) They shall achieve a basic mastery of research techniques in history, including the use of primary historical sources both printed and electronic to compose a history research paper; they shall use citation standards acceptable in the discipline of history.

7) They shall show their ability to place research findings in a context of broader categories of analysis, historical schools of thought, and other contexts established by the secondary literature of the discipline of history.

PROGRAM DESIGN: The History undergraduate major shall meet the above objectives with the following program. All the department’s course offerings shall contribute at the appropriate level to the attainment of these objectives. (For a more detailed description of program requirements and course content, consult the Sacramento State Catalog.)

Students will be expected to follow the logical order of courses (lower division courses before upper division; History 100 before upper division courses and seminars, etc.) as determined by the department and guided by the “Roadmap to the Major.” Instructors will certify that students have met minimal competency standards in a given course by assigning a passing grade (students must have a minimum grade of C- in all History courses). Students who fail a course (D+ or lower) will have to repeat the course. History majors must achieve a cumulative GPA of 2.0 in all upper division courses applied to the major.

All History courses have writing requirements. Lower division courses include “graded writing assignments that demonstrate the students’ ability to analyze and synthesize material.” Upper division courses “require graded writing assignments of at least 1500 words that demonstrate the students’ ability to analyze and synthesize materials.” (History Department Policies)

It is the responsibility of the History Department Executive Committee and the Department Chair to ensure that department curricular policies are observed.

1) Lower Division Prerequisites (12 units) -- History 17A, 17B, 4 (or 50), 5 (or 51). Students shall acquire adequate survey knowledge of the content of U.S. and western (or world) history (Objective 3); receive preliminary training in writing (Objective 1); and receive an introduction to historical analysis (Objective 5).

2) Keystone Course: History 100 -- Historical Skills (3 units) -- This sophomore/junior course will prepare students for a more thoughtful study of the upper division curriculum. It shall be taken in the second semester of the sophomore year (for

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native students) or first semester of the junior year (for transfer students) after at least six units have been completed in history. Students shall receive introductory training in the following: writing and oral communication skills (Objectives 1 and 2); the rudiments of historical thinking and familiarity with different schools of historical interpretation (Objective 5); information access (use of printed and electronic media to access appropriate secondary literature) (Objective 4); and an introduction to the use and citation of primary sources in research (Objective 6).

3) Upper Division Electives (21 units) -- Students shall select 21 units in upper division elective courses (numbers 101-188), following the department’s requirements for geographical distribution. The electives will allow students to acquire basic historical knowledge in at least three geographical fields (Objective 3); further develop writing and critical skills in history (Objectives 1 and 5); become more familiar with ways of accessing historical information (Objective 4). Through the upper division breadth requirement students will have acquired basic familiarity with U.S., European and non-Western history.

4) Capstone Courses (6 units): History students shall take the following two seminars to complete their training in historical skills. Successful completion of the Sacramento State Writing Proficiency Examination (WPE) is required for enrollment in these courses:

History 192 (series) -- Seminar in Recent Interpretations (3 units) -- The seminar will focus primarily on the acquisition and honing of skills of historical interpretation (“History is not just one damned thing after another”); students will expand their knowledge of different schools of historical interpretation (Objective 5). The course will also stress writing and oral communication skills (Objectives 1 and 2) and information access (Objective 4).

History 197A/B/C -- Senior Research Seminar in U.S./World History/Public (3 units) -- This capstone course should be taken after the student has completed History 100, the Writing Proficiency Examination, and at least 15 upper division units in History with acceptable grades. Basing itself on the historical skills and knowledge acquired in previous course work, this seminar will stress the use and citation of primary sources to compose a research paper in history (Objective 6). The course shall also assess and further develop students’ skills in writing (Objective 1); oral communication through presentation of research results to other students (Objective 2); critical thinking in history (Objective 5); and accessing historical information including primary sources (Objective 4). Students will place their research into broader categories of historical analysis (Objective 7).

ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE -- Assessment in the Department of History is the responsibility of the entire full-time faculty. The History Department Executive Committee will appoint a History Assessment Committee composed of two faculty members from the department’s tenured, probationary and full-time temporary faculty. Each faculty member will serve a two-year term. It will be the responsibility of the

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Assessment Committee to gather assessment data and to draft the assessment reports as specified below.

ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENTS: The following methods shall be used to gather information about the state of the History program:

1) Questionnaires: The department shall administer every semester an Exit Questionnaire to all graduating students in History and Social Science. The questionnaire assesses: 1) the students’ academic growth over the course of their college career, particularly in the History/Social Science major; and 2) the students’ experience in the History Department and their recommendations for changes in the department’s policies and programs. The questionnaire has both an objectively graded portion and a written part for extended student comments. The survey shall be conducted in History 192 or History 197.

In collaboration with Sacramento State Office of Institutional Research, the History Department will also conduct an Alumni Questionnaire. This questionnaire will focus on ways in which former students have applied the History major to their subsequent careers, their critique of the History program at Sacramento State and suggestions for changes. The Department shall seek to create a closer relationship with their alumni for the benefit of both parties. This questionnaire will be conducted every five years in conjunction with the Department’s Academic Program Review.

2) Moderated Group Discussions: The Assessment Committee and/or the Department Chair shall conduct moderated group discussions with approximately 12 graduating History majors every academic year. The discussions shall cover in more detail the subjects discussed in the Exit Questionnaire.

3) Performance Measures: The Assessment Committee shall collect from a) History 100 and b) History 192 and/or 197 a selection of student papers that would indicate the progress toward achieving the History program objectives made by students in their course of study and their level of achievement at the end of their program. The selection should include copies of papers from all satisfactory grade categories, and should be stored in a readily accessible format such as ring binders. The Department shall determine whether it will collect paired papers from the work of individual students so that their progress from the beginning to the end of their programs might be tracked.

ASSESSMENT SCHEDULE: The History Department’s assessment program shall run on a five-year cycle so that the results of the ongoing assessment may be included in the Program Review. The Assessment Committee, however, shall perform an interim assessment every academic year. At the end of the Spring semester it shall draft a short interim report based upon the assessment materials described above. The report shall be discussed and, if necessary, acted upon by the whole department faculty in its annual retreat meeting prior to the start of the Fall semester or in another department meeting early in the Fall semester.

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F. Effectiveness of Academic Program

The Department’s annual assessment results for 2001-02; 2003-04; 2004-05; and a special more in-depth survey of Undergraduates during the Spring of 2006 are instructive as they suggest trends in both strengths and weaknesses of the department during the period under review. These reports are reprinted (with minor editing for clarity) below.

Department Assessment 2001-02:

Based on a reading of the department’s assessment tools, the department is doing a great job in achieving its seven overarching educational objectives (as stated in the Department Assessment Plan).

We are providing our majors with a good educational experience that is opening their eyes to the world around them and making them more open minded. We are broadening their historical understanding while at the same time teaching them to think more critically about the world. Students are gaining a better appreciation for the history of other cultures. They are also learning that history is multi-faceted and that there are many different viewpoints and perspectives from which one can exam it.

Student’s critical thinking, analytical skills, and ability to express themselves both verbally and in writing all improved under our tutelage.

In terms of our senior capstone experience (Hist 197), it is clear that we are doing an excellent job. The assessment committee contacted over fifteen other universities throughout the country about doing a comparative study of senior capstone seminar papers. The committee was unable to find another school to do the project with primarily because most other universities did not have as demanding a course. As soon as they found out we had students write twenty-five page research papers, they backed out.

Most of our majors plan either to attend graduate school or to enter the teaching profession. Those who want to become teachers felt that our program trained them well for a future career in education.

As for our new seminar offering, Hist 100, many students indicated that this was a terrific addition to our program.

Areas that need improving are in advising and course offerings. Students complained about courses not being offered frequently enough and about the difficulty of getting into certain courses.

Students were also very vocal about advising. While some said they had a good experience, many more complained about intimidating and unfriendly advisors. Many students indicated that because of poor advising it took them longer to get through the program.

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Overall, students had a good experience in the major and gave the professors high marks in terms of the quality of their classes. Students particularly liked their seminar experiences. Over 60% of our majors said that they were pleased with their overall experience in the major. Only 7% were displeased. Asked if they would recommend the history major to their friends, 68% said yes, while only 6% said no.

Department Assessment 2003-04:

The History Department annually undertakes several assessment activities as part of its ongoing assessment program. These include a survey of graduate history and social science majors as well as a series of exit interviews with graduating seniors. This report is based on the results of our 2003-2004 assessment survey and exit interviews.

Based on our reading of the Department’s assessment tools, the department continues to do a good job achieving its seven overarching educational objectives. We provide our majors with an educational experience that substantially broadens their historical understanding and yields a richer appreciation for the complexities of their own and other cultures. Students overwhelmingly report that the major has helped them improve their critical and analytical skills as well as their research and writing skills. In fact, we have seen steady increases the past three years in the percentage of students who “strongly agree” that the program is challenging them to improve those skills. Likewise, increasing percentages of majors report that their experience in the major improved their writing abilities. Most emerged more aware of the problems of bias and subjectivity and more apt to be skeptical of sources. As a result of their studies, most report that they think more critically about historical events.

Overall, students continue to report having a good experience in the major. Students continue to express especially high levels of satisfaction with their seminar experiences, including the methods (Hist 100), historiography (Hist 192/3), and writing (Hist 197) seminars. Most gave professors high marks in terms of the quality of their classes, and 77% of our majors said that they were pleased with their overall experience in the major. Eighty-one percent said they would recommend the History/Social Science major to their friends.

As in the past, most of our majors plan either to attend graduate school or to enter the teaching profession. Those who want to become teachers felt that our program trained them well for their future careers in education. Whether or not their career plans will allow it, over 85% of surveyed majors reported an interest in continuing their studies in history.

The assessment tools also revealed several areas in which students felt less satisfied, and students made a number of recommendations for improving the program. As in the past, students were critical of the departmental advising system. Only 29% of the survey respondents reported satisfaction with the quality of student advising, a drop from the previous year’s 45%. Because the department was in the midst of putting in place a new advising system last year, however, it will probably take a few more years before we can

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expect survey results of graduating seniors to provide meaningful feedback on the advising system. The exit interview data suggests, however, that students value having accessible advisers.

Students also expressed frustration with limits on course offerings. Most reported that they had experienced problems getting enrolled in courses they needed or desired. Several noted the negative effect of budget constraints on their educational experiences in the major. The requirement that all non-seminar classes have substantial class enrollments in order to be offered has meant that our majors increasingly find themselves in larger class sections, where they get less individualized attention from the professor. Another result of the increasing enrollment requirements is that key courses listed in the catalog (e.g., Revolutionary America) were too infrequently offered.

Students remain interested in improving departmental communication and creating a better sense of community among majors. We saw a mild increase, from 21% to 34%, in the percentage of students who felt that they “knew what was going on in the Department,” but most expressed an interest in improved communication. In the exit interviews, students praised the department newsletter but suggested that an email “announcements list” for majors would be even more effective method of communication. Exit interview participants also praised the creation of the department picnic as a means to provide greater opportunities for faculty and majors to socialize informally.

Exit Interview Summary, Spring 2004

Jessie Gaston and Patrick Ettinger conducted exit interviews with seven graduating History majors during the first weeks of May 2004. In addition to these seven students who participated in the scheduled exit interview sessions, two other graduating seniors responded by sending comments to Prof. Ettinger individually. Of the nine students, six were female and three male. The group included four mature, returning students.

In conducting the exit interviews, we employed the same questions (questions 1-7 below) that had been used in the previous year. We also added two more open-ended questions (questions 8 and 9), intended to solicit more general feedback on the department.

1. Why did you choose to come to Sacramento State?

Most of the students cited the low cost of tuition and proximity to home and/or work. One student came north from southern California because he wanted to remove himself from the distraction of friends. Another student was a scholarship athlete recruited to Sacramento State from Utah.

2. Why did you choose History as a major?

Students responded in a various ways to this question. One reported he always had “got good grades in it” and had an interest. Another reported that an excellent American River

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College instructor piqued her interest. In one way or another, most of the students reported their decision stemmed from an interest in gaining a very broad, well-rounded or traditional B.A. One of the older students is an active Mormon genealogist, and this fed into her interest in history.

3. What do you plan to do after graduation?

One student aspires to join the foreign service after graduation, and another has plans for law school. Two students are entering the public history program at Sacramento State. One is pursuing history-related work through his civilian employment with the U.S. military, and one is pursuing a teaching credential.

4. Were you able to complete your degree in four years?

Only one of them completed the degree in the traditional four years, but all for various reasons. One is completing a 25 year journey toward her B.A. All seemed to think it was possible to finish the degree in four years, but for various reasons (personal, financial, double majors) they had taken a bit longer to finish the program.

5. Did you participate in history-related activities while at Sacramento State?

Few of the students answered yes to this. One had recently joined Phi Alpha Theta. Another served on the picnic planning committee. Several students complained about confusion over the process for induction into Phi Alpha Theta. Most students seemed puzzled about what sorts of history-related activities had been offered, and this led into discussion of the relative inactivity of Phi Alpha Theta and/or the department in establishing any regular lectures or history-related events. Several had attended public talks on campus related to history, a few of which had been advertised in the department newsletter. All saw the newsletter as a step toward generating interest in history-related activities.

6. Would you have preferred more night classes offered by the department?

None of the students expressed an interest in or need for more night classes.

7. Would you prefer a more structured sequencing of courses, involving prerequisites?

In general, students did not see this as desirable. On the broader subject of major requirements, there was some discussion. One student, preparing for the credential program, regrets that he did not, on his own initiative, prepare himself more broadly in non-U.S. history. His coursework very heavily centered on California and the U.S. West, and he now wishes he had deeper background in other fields. He and several others were receptive to the idea of the department or advisors suggesting possible course sequences to students.

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Several students commented on the great value they found in History 100 and how they relied on skills learned there as they went through the program.

8. Were there other problems or concerns related to your experiences in the department?

As in years past, this question brought out a range of positive comments, no doubt in part attributable to the fact that they are talking directly to faculty. Still, all of the participating students did express high degrees of satisfaction with the department, mirroring the high levels of satisfaction reported on the quantitative survey. One student reported that her history classes “always made her think.” Several expressed satisfaction with the improvement in their writing skills.

The “problems or concerns” raised by student dealt primarily with curriculum and advising, which are discussed below.

Curriculum:Several students expressed concern that smaller enrollment classes were being cancelled, limiting their options as a major. One student particularly lamented the dearth of courses on British history; another was discouraged by the lack of courses on African history.

Another student complained about the scheduling of courses, noting that courses 150,152,154 and 155 were all offered in the Fall but not in the Spring. “I understand that many factors determine the outcome of each class schedule,” she wrote, but “I would merely like to suggest that in the future the time required for building a foundation of knowledge is considered.”

Student Advising:Students were pleased with the redistribution of advising responsibilities among members of the department, but several reported problems gaining access to their advisors. One pointedly noted that “Professors who are advisors should be available to students and should be someone the student can access and who will work with the student. Professors who are inflexible should be released from advisor duty . . . .   I understand that this may place an undue strain on those good advisors and I agree that that may be a problem. But an advisor who will not meet with a student is no advisor at all.”

9. What changes could the department make to improve the quality of the student experience in the History major?

Even as students expressed satisfaction with recent changes in the department—the new advising system, newsletter, and picnic—they saw opportunities for greater improvement. Among the practical suggestions:

--Regularly schedule brown bag lunches/lectures/film discussions during the school year in order to continue to foster a sense of community.

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--Distribute major-related announcements (prizes, deadlines, lectures) and the newsletter using an email distribution list of undergraduate majors.

--Maintain the picnic, perhaps shifting it to the Fall or having it be held twice each year.

--Fine-tuning the advising system to make sure that all faculty fulfill their advising responsibilities.

Department Assessment 2004-05:

The History Department annually undertakes several assessment activities as part of its ongoing assessment program. These include a survey of graduating history and social science majors as well as a series of exit interviews with graduating seniors. This report is based on the results of our 2004-2005 assessment survey and exit interviews. For the 2005 exit interview, the number of students who identified themselves as history majors were in the majority at 82%, down from a high of 97% in 2004. The number of students identifying themselves as social science majors rose from a low of 3% in 2004 to 18% in 2005. Documents that more fully report the survey and exit interview findings are attached. Attachment A provides the results from the quantitative portion of the exit survey. Attachment B summarizes responses to the qualitative portion of the survey. Document C summarizes student comments from the exit interview sessions.

Based on our reading of the Department’s assessment tools, the Department continues to do a good job achieving its seven education objectives (see list of objectives at the end of this document. Students report that the Department provides its majors with an educational experience that broadens their historical knowledge, increases their appreciation of the history of minorities and other cultures, and sharpens their critical and analytic skills. These last two categories remain the areas in which the Department’s strength is most pronounced. While students gave the Department high marks for teaching research skills, sharpening writing skills is an area in which the “strongly agree” and “agree” categories have slipped from a high of 92% in 2004 to a lower (but still respectable) 85% in 2005. Most students reported that their experiences made them more aware of the impact of history in current events and made them question some of their fundamental assumptions and to be aware of the bias and subjectivity in historical sources.

Overall, students continue to express satisfaction with the major. Most (79%) gave professors quality of instruction. Students expressed high satisfaction with those instructors who incorporate visual technology in their lectures. Seventy percent said they would recommend the history/social science major to their friends. As in past years, the survey indicates that most of our majors plan to obtain a teaching credential or attend graduate school in history or some related field. More than half of the majors (57%) expressed an interest in continuing their studies in history. This figure is down from 87% in 2004.

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The assessment tools also revealed a number of areas in which student expressed less satisfaction and made a number of recommendations for improving the program. The department’s advising system was the most mentioned. However, it should be noted that those who expressed satisfaction with the quality of student advising in the department rose from 29% in 2004 to 39% in 2005. This increase suggests that the department’s newly implemented policy of mandatory advising for majors is beginning to have a beneficial effect. Students continued to express frustration with the difficulty of obtaining classes they needed or desired.

Students continued to be interested in improving departmental communication and creating a better sense of community among majors. They appreciated the departmental newsletter and suggested ways of using technology (e-mail, e-lists) for increasing community. The Department staff also received high marks for their helpfulness and accessibility. The exit interview participant praised the sense of community fostered by Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, and suggested that the department acknowledge and incorporate other student academic groups to increase collegiality.

History Department Assessment, Spring 2005: Attachment B

1. What are the most important things you think you have learned about history in your studies at Sacramento State?

I think about and question who writes history and the complexity of it. (6) History is not just a simple point of view. (6) I learned that history is people’s interpretation of past events. (5) We can learn lessons from history for the future (5) History is about thinking critically (4) I learned how to ask a question, research the answer, and turn it into a

comprehensive paper (3). I learned that you must discard things you think you learned about history

when you enter a college history class. (3) I learned research skills (2). History is the process of dissecting heroes and events (2). I learned to think outside the box (1) I learned more and more about less and less (1).

2. How do you feel that your study of history at Sacramento State has affected your ideas and beliefs?

I have become more accepting/aware of other cultures (6). It has made me more attuned to current events (5). It has broadened my scope and focus (5) It has taught me to look into things more deeply before making a final

decision (4). It has changed me for the better (1). It made me see that high school history is not enough It made me aware of subjects I normally would not study (1). It made me a more objective observer of the world around me (1).

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It has taught me how to argue my viewpoints better (1). It solidified and validated my beliefs (1) It made me question more of my assumptions (1) I am more cynical about people and their beliefs (1). It made me feel more hopeless about my ability to change the world

around me (1). My ideas and beliefs were not at all affected. (1)

3. What do you plan to do after graduation? Get a teaching credential (9). Attend graduate school (8). Get a job (7). Not sure (2) Join the military (1) Start a family (1). Work with disabled children (1) Anything other than something related to the major (1). 4. Do you think that the history/social science major has prepared you for this

career? If so, why? If not, why not? Yes. It taught me how to learn (7). Yes. It improved my skills in writing, reading and research (6) Yes (3). No (3). Somewhat (2). Yes for a future career but not for my present career – welding (1) Yes. I want my children to have educated parents (1). Yes. It prepared me to discuss historic events seriously (1) Yes. It increased my knowledge (1). Yes in some ways but not as much as I expected (1). No. I do not think I’ve learned enough world history to teach middle

school and high school (1) No. It was irrelevant. (1)

DEPARTMENT EVALUATION:

1. What do you wish you had known either before you became a History/Social Science major or as you went through the program?

Nothing (4) The amount or reading and writing required (4) How demanding the seminars are (2) What classes are required for graduation (2) To avail myself of advising and not to keep to myself so much (2) Better idea of career options for the major (2) That I would need more writing experience (1) How to graduate in four years (1)

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I wish I had known such a negative outlook on history would be presented (1)

2. Did you have a specific problem with advising, course scheduling or career planning with which the Department might have helped you?

No (13) No, did not use advising because the history program is well-structured

and easy to follow (2) Yes, obtaining, keeping, and seeing an advisor (5) Yes, with hard to find classes that I needed (4) Yes, help with knowing which classes are required (1) Yes, with career planning (1) Yes, with notification when the student is close to graduation (1)

3. Were there any courses or teaching methods that you found particularly useful or helpful?

All were helpful (3) Seminars that promoted discussion (4) Liked History 192 because it taught analysis and interpretation (3) History 100 was the best in preparing me (3) Use of visuals (2) Group activities in lectures or seminars (2) Required rough drafts for papers (1) Providing notes, study guides (1) Straight lectures, no discussions (1) Small classes (1)

4. Were there any courses or teaching methods that you found to be of less value or use to you?

All were useful (3) Too many straight lecture courses, not enough visuals (4) History 100 (3) Being required to take a mix of both American and other history courses

rather than just being able to concentrate on American history (2) Grading based on whether the teacher likes a student (2) Computer-based classes with no lectures or discussions (1) Distance Education (1) Too much reading (1) Courses that require discussions (1) Courses that do not include a break (1)

5. What would you consider to be your worst or most negative experience with the Department’s program, courses, instruction, or staff?

None (2) Particular class or professor mentioned by name (11) Too hard to get into classes (3)

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Scheduling classes (1) Taking two seminars at the same time (1) Unavailability of faculty (1) Limited use of technology (1)

6. What would you consider to be your best or most positive experience with the Department’s program, courses, instruction, or staff?

All were good experiences (1) Particular class or professor mentioned by name (21) Wide variety of world cultures offered (2) Most instructors were very helpful (1) Seminars and upper division classes that were challenging (1) Part-time faculty were excellent (1) Received a great education and met amazing students and professors (2) Learning how to research and write better (1) Professors giving detailed notes on graded papers (1) Receiving announcements of scholarship and T.A. opportunities (1) Graduating (1)

History Department Exit Interview Summary, Spring 2005: Attachment C

Candace Gregory and Shirley Ann Moore conducted an exit interview with one graduating History major during the week of April 25, 2005. The interview period was advertised on campus by flyers, in-class announcements, and in the department newsletter. While it is regrettable that only one female student participated in the face-to-face interview, her remarks were productive, insightful, and we believe valuable to the Department’s assessment mission. The interview was conducted on April 26, 2005.

In conducting the exit interview, we employed the some of the same questions that had been used in the previous year but also added some open-ended questions and some questions regarding the seminar experience. Some of the responses to the scripted questions elicited follow-up questions that were also included in this summary.

1. What are your general impressions of Sacramento State?The student stated that she likes the direction Sacramento State is headed. Citing theUniversity’s emphasis on “Destination 2010” she noted that the campus buildingproject was impressive, particularly the upgrading of the library’s infrastructure.

2. What are your general impressions of the History Department?The student noted that in general the History Department’s staff and the Department’shours were good for students and that the professors in the Department wereaccessible. However, she noted that her membership in Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, served to keep her “plugged into” the activities in the Department. Students without this kind of structure would not be as informed about Departmental Activities. She noted that things like the time and place of activities such as “job talks” should be publicized more widely through the use of e-mails. She also noted that the

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Department newsletter was particularly useful for publicizing these events and activities. Perhaps the Department can provide an on-line or printed explanation of “here’s how the Department works.”

3. In what curriculum areas does the Department need more coverage?This student cited the need for more classes in colonial history and more classes dealing with historiography. She felt that this background knowledge would be particularly useful in seminars such as History 100 and History 192.

4. What do you think of an interdisciplinary minor?The student was enthusiastically in favor of this. She noted that some Humanities majors believe that Sacramento State does not have a strong Humanities program but that if the History Department puts together courses with interdisciplinary minors this would be a great benefit to both departments.

5. What do you think of course evaluations?She believes that they are beneficial but suggested that professors ask students to submit their own individualized evaluations.

6. Would you prefer a more structured sequencing of courses, involving prerequisites?The student noted that sequencing works well but noted that History 100 should prepare the students for writing in the History 197. She noted that she did well in writing for History 192/193 and History 100 but other students did not understand how to write a thesis statement. She commended professors in these courses for their emphasis on spelling, grammar, and sentence structure but would like to see History 100 incorporate an emphasis on thesis writing.

7. Were the lecture courses too broad? Not broad enough?The student believed that the lecture courses were “just right.” They contain the right amount of factual content and interpretation. She noted that syllabi posted on-line were very helpful. The student also found that SacRate.com was also helpful for getting information about course content. She would also encourage students to talk to the professors about what he or she is doing in classes in the upcoming semester.

8. Would you have preferred day or evening lecture classes?The student liked the once-a-week aspect of the evening lecture classes but likes to have the option as long as they incorporate a “break” in the one-a-week evening classes.

9. How would you assess your seminar experience?The student “loved” her History 192 seminar. But noted that it was “a lot” of reading but she learned how to read a book quickly. She enjoyed the seminar discussions but would like the seminar professors to provide students with more directed questions so that students can learn how to identify a thesis in a book, how to recognized an author’s bias. After the students become familiar with this process they can be “weaned” away from

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this and they can “be on their own.” She liked the “varied” aspects of the seminar and does not think they should be “uniform.”

10. Did you prefer day or evening seminars?The student preferred the seminars that were offered in the afternoon (1 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.) but appreciated having the choice of afternoon and evening seminars.

11. Were there other problems or concerns related to your experiences in the department?As in past years, this question elicited mostly positive comments about the department, the faculty, and the staff. However, the student cited concerns about the difficulty of obtaining and seeing a regularly scheduled advisor. She welcomed and encouraged students meeting with an advisor at least once a year. She expressed approval of the department making this mandatory.

Results of the Special Undergraduate Survey, Spring 2006:

During the Spring of 2006, the History Department conducted a special survey of undergraduates enrolled in History courses. The survey data was divided between: 1) History Majors, 2) History Major Precredential, and 3) Non-History Majors. Twenty questions were asked, and response numbers were tallied on a scale of 0-5 with 5 indicating a “strongly agree” and 0 equal to a “strongly disagree.”

Generally, undergraduate History Majors seem pleased with the Department. On eleven out of the twenty questions in the survey to which students responded, the Department received a score of approximately 4.00 or above among History Majors (see Appendix). The highest scores were in response to the questions regarding “increased understanding” of the history of other cultures, “improved my critical and analytical skills,” “improved my research skills,” and “made me more aware of the complexity of historical events.” History Majors responded to those two questions with 4.42, 4.30, 4.37, and 4.43, respectively. Majors also expressed high satisfaction with the quality of instruction from our faculty, giving it a score of 4.21. One student indicated that he/she was “for the most part very satisfied with the history department. . . The teachers are extremely knowledgeable and present the material in a clear and understandable manner. . .. I have been informed very thoroughly on historical subjects and I must say that I am learning about concepts and events that have made an impact on me. I feel the teachers and staff are doing a great job and I have not had a bad history professor yet.” Another commented that “the History Department and its staff are truly one in a million. We have a great department compared to other universities.” Such comments and these numbers indicate that our faculty and departmental program are doing a very good job of developing educated, historically-minded, and analytical history majors.

There are, however, some areas that—though still above average—suggest that there is room for improvement. Students gave lower scores regarding the “availability” of courses (3.10), help in “determining career goals” (3.15), and the “quality of student advising” (3.34). A comment illustrative of some student’s frustration was that “. . . Due to lack of

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classes available at night I have been here much longer than originally planned and have had to spend more of my money. There needs to be more classes offered at night!! Particularly Hist 197 . . .” Another that “. . . I don’t feel that all my options were explained to me. I would have been here at least another year with the proposed course load. That’s my only gripe! Everything else has been wonderful.” Another studentsuggested that “The Dept. should hold a career fair of sorts where businesses, companies, or other institutions advertise and history majors choose a career. The career fair in the Union caters little to history majors.” The lower averages on these topics, in part, may reveal the challenges of teaching and advising students with busy schedules at a commuter campus. Recognizing these challenges and in order to help distribute workload, in Fall 2004 the department implemented a decentralized advising plan. The results of this survey suggest that individual faculty advisors need to do more to assist the undergraduate coordinator and ensure high quality academic and career counseling for undergraduate majors, many of whom enter the field without a clear career path.

These suggestions aside, the overall average for majors was a very satisfactory 3.93. History Majors who would recommend the major to other students was an impressive 4.08. One student summarized his or her experience in this way: “as I have gotten more involved in the major and the department in general I enjoy it more. . . I know that I made the right decision. I am proud to be a history major and actually do recommend it to friends & people that I meet.”

The Precredential students also gave the History Department high marks in their answers with nine of the twenty questions nearly a 4.00 or higher. The average response was 4.33 on the question about making students more “aware of the complexity of historical events.” Precredential students also indicated that their appreciation for American history (4.13) and other cultures (4.28) increased and that their research skills improved (4.30). They too expressed agreement with the quality of instruction they were given (4.17). While expressing slightly more satisfaction with course offerings (3.22) and advising than majors (3.50), they also voiced the same need for more advising and counseling about what courses to take and in what logical sequence to take them. One student captured her overall satisfaction with the program and “really good, excellent teachers” while also recommending more coordinated advising with the other social science instructors. Another noted that “I think there should be more open communication with the history (pre-credential social science) advisors and the credential office. I was completely lost on how to apply for a credential program and it seemed all the social science majors were well informed. It has caused much stress for a lot of history majors. We feel left out of that important link!” Still, Precredential students were generally happy with the Department, scoring it an overall average of 3.89.

Non-Majors who took History course offerings gave the Department the lowest overall marks. Only three out of the twenty questions scored a 4.00 or higher: “appreciation of the history of other cultures” (4.06), “awareness of the complexity of historical events” (4.18), and “quality of instruction” (4.05). One student’s comments reflect these numbers “I see history now as a valid, and useful, even necessary, and applicable to life and everyday events. I’m not a history major, but I respect it wholeheartedly now after my

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experiences at Sacramento State . . .” Another wished “classes were more casual and interactive and not so “by the numbers.” But then I’m an older student.” Not surprisingly, non-majors gave low scores on academic and career advising, presumably because they did not seek out such counseling. Several written comments suggested that they did not believe many of the survey questions applicable to them.

Though lower than majors, non-major students indicated in their comments a general contentedness with the skills they believed their history courses were offering them, including critical analysis (3.63), research (3.48) and writing skills (3.48). One student commented that her history course was “a reminder that we must find more than one source as well as to be open-minded when looking back at certain historical events. It has influenced me to research more about any issues that I hear or write about.” Compared with majors, these lower scores are likely because non-majors do not generally sign up for the more writing or research intensive courses that majors are required to take. Several students did complain about the difficulty of writing in history classes. Overall, non-majors gave the department an average score of 3.60.

In sum, based on the student comments (and a follow-up exit interview) the most common student concerns were:

1) a lack of consistent availability of some course offerings;

2) not enough convenient times for courses, (with most students who raised this issue requesting more night classes, and/or early morning class times);

3) too few readily available faculty and office staff when students needed advising or had questions about requirements or course load; and

4) many respondents stated they did not have enough knowledge of the program to form an opinion at this time, and they preferred that next time the Assessment Survey be conducted later in the semester which it normally is except during a Self-Study year.

In conclusion, the History Department believes that this supplemental survey as well as our regular annual program assessment work indicates that our undergraduate students are generally pleased with the quality of instruction and the skills that our courses provide them. At the same time, this extensive survey and assessment data indicate that the Chair, incoming undergraduate advisor, and entire department carefully consider new means to improve advising and career development amongst our majors.

Student Assessment of Graduate Program, February 2006

The history department at Sacramento State has a long and rather distinguished tradition of training graduate students for careers in teaching, advancement to Ph.D. programs, and work in public history. In December 2005, we conducted the department’s first graduate assessment, which included a quantitative portion and written comments. Questionnaires

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were provided for all graduate seminars, and faculty were asked to allow class time for students to complete these surveys. Faculty were also informed to make sure that students who had already completed one did not complete any additional surveys. The response from our faculty and students was rather impressive. Forty-three out of eighty-one enrolled students submitted responses, a 53% response rate. As a result, we feel that this survey will provide a good baseline for assessing our program and for conducting further assessments. A chart summarizing the quantitative portions of the survey is included in the Appendix.

General InformationOf the 43 students who responded to our survey 26 were in the standard M.A. program, 13 in the Public History M.A. program, 1 in the Joint Ph.D. program, and 3 in the joint History/Humanities M.A. program. Before entering the program, over two-thirds of respondents (30) had an undergraduate GPA of over 3.5; the rest had a GPA between 3 and 3.49. Almost all of these students entered our program feeling that their prior background in history had prepared them them “well” (62%) or “adequately” (32%) for studying history. Ninety percent of respondents plan on completing a Masters Thesis or Public History Project, rather than taking exams, in order to fulfill their culminating experience requirement. Three-fourths of our students have a history graduate GPA between 3.5 and 4.0, 7 percent between 3.0 – 3.49, and 16% had no GPA at the time of this survey. In addition to their graduate studies, our students also carry very heavy workloads. Thirty-four percent work full-time (30 or more hours a week); 39% work part-time (10-30 hours per week); only 24% do not work or work less than half time (0-10 hours).

When asked what our graduate students plan on doing after they have received their degree, they offered a diverse array of possibilities: 23% (teach at Junior or Community College), 23% (enter a Ph.D. program in history), 4% (teach secondary or elementary education), 19% (work in a museum or archival repository), 14% (other), and 14% (do not know). Nearly two-thirds of respondents (28) are interested in serving as a grader or graduate assistant within the department.

Overall, these numbers suggest that most of our students believe that they entered into the program with at least an adequate level of training. The vast majority of them have a clear history-related career objective for which they hope our department will help train.

Narrative Summary of Department EvaluationStudents were asked 22 substantive questions and given a scale to rate their level of satisfaction on these areas. There were asked to assess their opinion or judgment based on the scale from Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree, or Not Applicable (see Appendix F. for data).

The aggregate numbers suggest that our graduate students are generally satisfied and believe that the education we are offering is very good. The faculty received especially high marks for the quality of instruction they offered in the classroom (4.55) and there was a high level of satisfaction in Reading Seminars HIST 280, 281(4.47); Research

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Seminars HIST 200 (4.25); and, slightly less so in historiography courses HIST 201, 202 (4.00). As did one student, many found the faculty “great,” “personable,” and “passionate.” Respondents believe that their course work and contact with faculty have enhanced their critical and analytical skills (4.44); their skills in researching and writing (4.49), and overall knowledge of history (4.65). Eighty-seven percent of respondents agreed that the Sacramento State graduate program would provide them with the skills needed to be successful in their career, 37% strongly feeling this to be the case. Eighty-five percent would recommend the graduate program to a friend, 39% strongly so.

Our survey did, however, suggest some areas for improvement. Thirty-four percent of the respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the availability of courses they wanted or needed to take and 33% expressed some frustration with the times that courses were offered. These were, by far, the lowest marks on the survey and receive support from the written comments, where some students requested more daytime courses. Several students commented on the difficulty in “getting into courses I needed/wanted” One student stated that “although most of the graduate students work days & courses in the evenings are an ideal option for them, I would prefer more daytime course options.” We suspect that students’ non-academic work makes finding perfect times difficult, but perhaps some daytime offerings could be considered.

A fair number (20%) of students also expressed concern about the inadequacy of library resources and another (20%) were “neutral.” According to one student’s comment regarding the “expertise and resources” necessary to study their field: “faculty yes. Resources no. Not a lot of info is available at Sacramento State [library].” Another noted “dealing with the library” to be one of their worst or most negative experiences.

Comments and some numbers suggest that our students would benefit from a closer working relationship with advisors, especially to help them narrow down a MA thesis topic. One student noted that his or her most negative experiences included “lack of advisor to help narrow research topic.” One respondent suggested the need for “more guidance about courses I would need to take” and another for a “thesis guideline & timeline.” Overall statistics from the quantitative portion of the survey lend some support to these concerns. Forty percent of our students expressed uncertainty about their career options (by selecting Neutral or Disagreeing with the statement that they even knew what they were). Though they did find professors available for consultation regarding these options (4.3), they were somewhat less satisfied with the “availability and helpfulness” of the Graduate Coordinator (3.68) and the “overall quality of student advising,” (3.97). While students who had thesis, exam, or project readers gave them high marks (4.3), 41% of respondents indicated that they did not have contact with readers or potential readers (i.e. they marked Not Applicable). Some of these were likely first year graduate students, but only 21% indicated that they had been at Sacramento State for only a year. As a result it seems that our students often struggle to find what they would like to work on, likely contributing to the extended number of years they are in the program. It should be noted that these numbers were still relatively high, but they may lend support to existing efforts to restructure advising and match students with specific advisors upon their entrance into the program.

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In conclusion, this survey suggests that the history graduate program is continuing to offer our students a very high level of education and providing the expertise they need to further their understanding of history and pursue careers in academic and non-academic fields. Our students might also appreciate and benefit from more accessibility to courses, library resources, and greater assistance from advisors to help speed them along the process.

G. Multiple Course Sections

There are several lower-division and upper-division courses in which it is important that consistency in course structure and learning objectives is maintained. In particular, this is true with the U.S. History survey (Hist 17A/B), the Western Civilization survey (Hist 4/5), and the World History survey (Hist 50/51). Since these courses are also General Education courses, we are required in any case to use a template syllabus for each class. The template does require that multiple sections do cover the same basic subject matter, achieve the same learning objectives, and require similar assignments. The History Department currently charges the Department Chair and Executive Committee with overseeing that consistency is maintained in these courses.

Multiple section upper-division courses that require consistency include the required seminars (Hist 100, Hist 192, and Hist 197). In these courses, instructors tailor the course material to their own expertise, but instructors are still required to meet the Department’s goals in each of these courses as more thoroughly described in Section II, E.

Upper-division courses are also taught in multiple sections include: Hist 105, Hist 111, Hist 112, Hist 162, Hist 167, and Hist 168. The department expects consistency in multiple sections of these courses, but the department could be more careful in ensuring consistency.

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H. Recommendations for Improving Academic Program Outcomes

There are a number of changes that could be made to the program generally that would enhance the effectiveness of the History major.

1) The Department should continue to carefully monitor and review its advising program to ensure that students are receiving the appropriate and necessary amount of advising. This is true at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

2) The Department should reconsider how it oversees it curriculum. This might be done by establishing an Undergraduate Committee that mirrors the Graduate Committee. Each Committee would oversee relevant curricular matters generally including new course proposals, course section consistency, and general program guidelines

3) The Department should try to offer more courses at night to meet the needs of students who work during the day.

4) The Department should continue seeking additional support for its graduate programs and students in those programs.

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I. General Education Courses

The History Department offers many GE courses in a variety of categories. The Department maintains the integrity of GE courses by complying with the GE Committee’s criteria for GE courses (syllabi format, learning objectives, writing requirements, etc.) as outlined in the GE policies. This includes complying with the GE Committee’s regular GE course review process.

The History courses by GE category are listed below.

Area A: Basic SubjectsNo History courses in this area

Area B: The Physical Universe and Its Life Forms

Area B1 - B4 - No History courses in these areasArea B5: Further Studies in Physical Science, Life Forms, and Quantitative Reasoning

HIST/PHSC 107 - History of the Physical Sciences

Area C: The Arts & Humanities

Area C1: World Civilizations

HIST 4 - Survey of Early Western CivilizationHIST 5 - Survey of Modern Western CivilizationHIST 6 - Asian CivilizationHIST 7 - History of African CivilizationHIST 8 - History of Islamic CivilizationHIST 50 - World Civilization: Beginnings to 1600HIST 50H - Honors World Civilization: Beginnings to 1600HIST 51 - World Civilization: 1600 to PresentHIST 51H - Honors World Civilization: 1600 to PresentHIST 105 - Great Ages and Issues in Modern European HistoryHIST 110 - Ancient Near East: Cultural HistoryHIST 111 - Ancient GreeceHIST 112 - Ancient RomeHIST 122A - Women in Western Civilization: Middle AgesHIST 122B - History of Women in Western Civ, Renaissance-Present HIST 129A - History of Russia 800-1917HIST 135A - History of Mexico to 1910HIST 142 - The History of Women in AfricaHIST 143A - History of the Middle East to 1800HIST 146A - Cultural History of Japan to 1800HIST 148A - China: Antiquity to 1600 A.D

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Area C2: No History courses in this area

Area C3: Introduction to the Humanities

HIST/HRS 168 - Images of America

Area C4: Further Studies in the Arts and Humanities

HIST/HRS 126 - The History of Christianity to the ReformationHIST/HRS 127 - The History of Christianity Since the ReformationHIST/HRS 169 - Hollywood and AmericaHIST 170 - History of Religion in the U.S.

Area D: The Individual and Society

Area D1A: Foundations in Social and Behavioral Sciences

HIST 175 - Sex, Population and Birth Control in America

Area D1B: World Cultures

HIST 119 - Europe Since 1945HIST 130 - Fall of CommunismHIST 135B - Revolutionary and Modern MexicoHIST 138A - Modern and Contemporary Latin America IHIST 138B - Modern and Contemporary Latin America IIHIST 141 - History of Africa Since 1800HIST 143B - The Modern Middle EastHIST 146B - Modern Japan: 1800 to PresentHIST 148B - China, 1600 to PresentHIST 157 - International Relations in the 20th Century

Area D2: Major Social Issues of the Contemporary Era

HIST 163 - The City in U.S. HistoryHIST/ENVS 165 - American Environmental HistoryHIST 173 - Civil Rights 1865-1997HIST 186 - Ethnic Minorities in California

Area D3: American Institutions

HIST 3 - U.S. History for International StudentsHIST 17A - U.S. History: 1607-1877HIST 17B - U.S. History: 1877 to the PresentHIST 159 - History of U.S. Foreign RelationsHIST 161 - American Vision

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HIST 162 - Social History of the U.S.HIST 167 - History of American WomenHIST 177 - African-American Experience 1603 to the PresentHIST 182 - History of the American West

Area E: Understanding Personal Development

HIST 21 - Freshman SeminarHIST 166 - Popular Culture

Race & Ethnicity in American Society

HIST 3 - U.S. History for International StudentsHIST 17A - U.S. History: 1607 to 1877HIST 17B - U.S. History: 1877 to PresentHIST/HRS 168 - Images of AmericaHIST 173 - Civil Rights, 1865-1997HIST 177 - African-American Experience, 1603 to PresentHIST 186 - Ethnic Minorities of California

Writing Intensive

HIST 105 - Great Ages and Issues in Modern European HistoryHIST 110 - Ancient East Cultural HistoryHIST 122A - History of Women in Western Civ, Prehistory-Middle AgesHIST 122B - History of Women in Western Civ, Renaissance-PresentHIST 138A - Modern and Contemporary Latin AmericaHIST 138B - Modern and Contemporary Latin AmericaHIST/HRS 168 - Images of America (HRS 168)

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J. Cultural Diversity and Academic Preparation:

History is a field that is well suited to dealing with issues related to cultural diversity. Although the History profession has suffered somewhat from a traditional “top down” approach and a focus on political, military and economic history, the profession has changed dramatically in the last several decades. Today, History as a discipline is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and also branching out into a wide variety of subtopics and subfields.

Our History Department has also sought to widen its areas of coverage, and this can be seen in the specializations of the faculty we’ve hired as well as the current and new courses that we are offering. Although our ability to deal with diverse societies, peoples, and cultures is evident in our course material, History majors still tend to be Caucasian. Approximately 59% of History majors as of the Fall of 2005 were Caucasian and 11% were Hispanic compared to 42% Caucasian and 26% Hispanic for the University.

The Department is cognizant that our courses should be relevant to all sectors of the University, and we will continue to seek diversity representation both in our faculty and in our program.

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K. Minor in History and Specialized Programs:

History Minor

The History minor is designed to allow students engaged in another major to obtain a Minor in history with appropriate coursework that ensures a basic understanding of history subject matter and historical. The minor is structured as follows:

Lower Division:

Hist 17A U.S. History, 1607-1877Hist 17B U.S. History, 1877-Present

AND

Hist 4 Survey of Early Western CivilizationHist 5 Survey of Modern Western Civilization

OR

Hist 50 World Civilizations, Beginnings-1600Hist 51 World Civilizations, 1600-Present

Upper Division:

4 Upper-division History courses (3 units each)

In 2005, the department changed the structure of the History Minor to allow students to take either the Western Civilization series or the World History series. This change was made to 1) coordinate the lower-division requirement of the Major with that of the Minor and 2) respond to the growing interest and importance of World History

Precredential Program

The training of future history/social-science teachers is a fundamental part of the mission of the History Department. Approximately thirty-five percent of all history majors follow the History/Social Science Subject Matter Program with the intention of enrolling in a single-subject teacher credentialing program after receiving their history bachelor’s degree from our Department. (Note that the University also offers a single-subject Precredential program through the Department of Social Science.)

To comply with new requirements of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), the History Department has been working on an extensive revision of the Program. Among other things, the revisions make the Program better aligned with the United States and World history requirements of the California State standards. The revisions will also better prepare teachers for the diverse student population in

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California’s middle and high-school classrooms. This has involved detailed negotiations with other University units (Social Science, Government, Economics, Geography, Bilingual/Multicultural Education, Teacher Preparation), realigning existing history courses, and developing several new courses for students in the Program. The submission of the documentation of the revised program was an extensive undertaking. At this time, the University’s two Precredential Programs (History and Social Science) have been approved by the CTC reviewers and in the next months will receive the final official approval from the CTC.

The Department is now in the process of transition to the new Program. Students with catalog rights prior to Fall 2005 are following the old Program. At the same time, we are putting in place the new Program for students with catalog rights starting in Fall 2005. This includes three new courses for the new Program: History 133 - 20th Century World History; History 191 - Seminar in Historical Interpretation and Analysis; and History 198 - Summative Assessment.

The Department is also systematizing advising for the Precredential Program. Because the Program interfaces with multiple departments as well as post-graduate credentialing programs, students need clear guidance to navigate the Program. To assist in this process, the Department is improving its outreach. It is also training a new group of faculty advisers, as the key faculty members responsible for the program are now in the process of retiring.

Hellenic Studies Program

The Hellenic Studies Program was developed in 2003-4, and was approved as an academic minor in Spring semester of 2005. In addition, a Hellenic Studies Center was established in Spring semester of 2004.

The goals for the Program are to: 1) increase student participation, 2) increase student enrollment in the study abroad Ioannina program, 3) solidify the status of the Greek language courses, 4) develop new courses to supplement the current course offerings in the minor, and 5) develop a multi-faceted publicity campaign to increase student awareness of the Program and its benefits (namely scholarships).

Program Description: The Hellenic Studies minor emphasizes coursework and independent study in the areas of Greek language, Greek History, Greek politics, and Greek arts and literature. The Hellenic Studies curriculum includes lower and upper division classes offered by the departments of Foreign Languages, History, Humanities and Religious Studies, Philosophy, Government, and Art. The minor is associated with the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection in the Sacramento State Library.

The Hellenic Studies minor program hopes to attract students from all disciplines. The program attempts to meet the specific interests and needs of participating students. Twenty-three course units are needed to complete the program, of which seventeen are requirements. The principle required courses are: Greek language, ancient Greek history,

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ancient Greek culture, and contemporary Greek history. The remaining electives can be fulfilled through courses in any discipline that emphasize Hellenism.

Program Targets and Student Participation: Over the course of the past two years, the Hellenic Studies Program has attracted ten students. Currently, one student has already graduated with a Hellenic Studies minor, while four others are pending for Spring 2006. Five other students have committed to the minor program. The goal of the program is to attract sixty students by 2010 (as stated in the Gift Agreement for the donation of the Tsakopoulos Collection to Sac State), and maintain an average of ten to fifteen enrolled students per academic year.

Although one would expect that students of Greek descent would comprise the overwhelming majority in the program, in fact, the reverse is the case. Only two students of the ten are of Greek descent. This is an encouraging statistic because it highlights the universal appeal of Hellenism. Supervision of students enrolled in the minor program is undertaken by the director of the program, Katerina Lagos, and/or the chair of the History Department, Chris Castaneda.

Hellenic Studies Center

The Hellenic Studies Program is administered through the Hellenic Studies Center in the Department of History. The Center was established in the Fall of 2004 and a small committee was formed to oversee the Hellenic Studies Program and Hellenic outreach activities. The current members of the committee include: Katerina Lagos (Director), Chris Castaneda (Chair, HST), Henry Chambers (HST), Brad Nystrom (HRS), Jeffrey Brodd (HRS), George Paganelis (Curator, TSAK), Andonia Cakouros (THEA), Candace Gregory (HST), and Paul Peters (community representative).

Program Activities to date: The Program has sponsored a significant number of activities and negotiated two institutional affiliations. The Program’s institutional affiliations are with the University of Washington, Seattle, and St. Antony’s College, Oxford. The study abroad program to Ioannina, Greece, is in cooperation with the University of Washington and has proven to be quite successful. With greater advertisement, the number of student participants should increase significantly. To date, five students enrolled in the program, while last year only three enrolled. The goal for Sacramento State is to enroll a minimum of ten students within the next five years, and eventually, expand the program to incorporate students from the entire CSU system. The Tsakopoulos Lecture on Hellenism at St. Antony’s College has garnered needed publicity for the program. In addition, this programmatic relationship provides an opportunity for Sacramento State Hellenic Studies students to study at Oxford for a period of one to three terms as visiting students.

The Center for Hellenic Studies supports, promotes, and facilitates university activities and outreach to further the understanding of Greek history, society, economy, culture and language. This includes faculty research, summer training institutes, study abroad programs, seminars, visiting lecturers, and fundraising for Hellenic Studies scholarships. So far, the Center has hosted a number of visiting scholars to present their research on

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various topics relating to Hellenism. These lectures have attracted members of both the local Greek and Sacramento State communities. The topics of the lectures have been designed to complement the current Hellenic Studies course offerings and attract students from these courses. Exhibitions and large-scale events have been organized on themes such as the Olympic Games, and music and poetry, in addition to honoring prominent Greek/Greek-American individuals such as former Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis and former Senator Nicholas Petris.

Obstacles and Goals of the Program: The academic program has received generous funding from Angelo Tsakopoulos and his family, and the University provides the Hellenic Studies Program Director with one course release per semester. However, additional University support would greatly benefit the program. The lack of institutional support is a major obstacle and needs to be addressed. A second obstacle to the program is the tenuous nature of the language courses. Both ancient and modern Greek are currently being taught. However, the University’s ancient Greek scholar will be retiring after Spring, 2006, and there are no plans to date as to whether he will be replaced. The modern Greek instructor is a part-time faculty member who is only able to teach the course provided that outside funding is secured. The final obstacle to the program is the lack of a strategy for promoting the Program. Few students are aware that the program exists, and steps need to be taken to rectify this situation.

Middle East and Islamic Studies Minor

At the conclusion of the current semester, the minor in Middle East and Islamic Studies will complete its first academic year as an officially established program at Sacramento State. Approval for the minor went through the established administrative processes during the 2004-2005 academic year. The academic senate, provost, and president officially approved the minor in June of 2005. The history department is the administrative home for the minor. The departments of History, Humanities and Religious Studies, Government, and Sociology all cooperated in establishing the minor.

The minor was initiated with the hope of providing an organizational structure and set of academic guidelines for students wishing to pursue specialized coursework in the area or Middle East and Islamic Studies. The guidelines and structure of the minor provide students with a wide range of courses to choose from at Sacramento State, representing the breadth of course offerings available on this campus. There are currently approximately 50 students completing coursework towards the minor. These students come from a variety of departmental and disciplinary backgrounds including: History, Government, Religious Studies, Sociology, Criminal Justice, Psychology, Education and others. The program provides students from these varied backgrounds with a common curriculum from which they can pursue their academic and professional goals. Students currently in the program, or who have already graduated, are successfully pursuing careers in doctoral research, K-12 teaching, the foreign service, the military, and community involvement.

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Oral History Program

The Oral History Program is becoming increasingly active in the Department. This program works in conjunction with the Public History program and it offers oral history training at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

The Program also operates in conjunction with the Center for California Studies particularly in regard to the State Government Oral History Program administered and funded by the California State Archives. Faculty and students in this Program interview former California legislators and executives so that their experiences in state government can be documented and made available to researchers. During the past five years, the Program has interviewed a number of current and former State political figures including: Bill Jones, Dede Alpert, Robert Presely, Steve Larson, B.B. Blevins, Ken Maddy, Gary K. Hart, and others.

In addition to its work with the State Government Oral History Program, the Program conducts contract projects. Recent contract projects have included an oral history of the community of Locke for the California Department of Parks and an oral history of the local Greek-American community for the Tsakopolous Hellenic Foundation.

Center for Science, History, Policy, and Ethics (CSHPE)

CSHPE is the History Department’s newest center, created in the Spring 2005 semester. The purpose of CSHPE is to promote the multi-disciplinary study of science (broadly defined to include science, technology, medicine, and public health), through encouraging academic research, developing curricular resources, and facilitating dialogue between the general public and the university community. Faculty involved with CSHPE come from a number of Departments on campus including, History, Philosophy, Government, Biology, Physics, Social Work and Environmental Studies. CSHPE is still very much in the “start-up” phase and the future of the Center is dependent upon securing outside funds, as there are few resources available on campus.

Toward its goal of promoting multi-disciplinary study of science and facilitating dialogue between academics and the general public, CSHPE will coordinate a major symposium annually on a rotating topic. Each of these events will result in a digital project (www.csus.edu/cshpe) and the proceedings of each event will be published through the Sacramento State Digital Press. CSHPE is organized as a series of coordinated Working Groups. A different Working Group will propose and coordinate, with the CSHPE Director, the annual symposium and also suggest potential speakers and other projects for the Center. Proposed Working Groups currently include: Energy & the Environment; Genomics; Women & Science; Public Health - with others to be determined based on interest. In addition to an annual event, other proposed CSHPE projects include a colloquium involving on and off-campus speakers, the creation of an interdisciplinary major or minor, and a film series.

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The first annual CSHPE symposium, “From Eugenics to Designer Babies: Engineering the California Dream,” was held on October 21, 2005 (see program: www.csus.edu/cshpe/symposium05). Designed to bring attention to the importance of California in the history of hereditarian thought and policies, the symposium was held at multiple venues on the Sacramento State campus and concluded at the Julia Morgan House. The symposium was a very successful event. Funded entirely by Sacramento State Departments, Colleges, University Enterprises, Inc., and private donors, the event attracted media attention from across the state. On this day, roughly 200 people from the university and general public attended a series of panel discussions and toured three original exhibits that were created on campus to investigate the history of eugenics at Sacramento State and in California.

As part of the symposium, Sacramento State Special Collections & University Archives and the CSHPE Director collaborated on a special exhibit on the life and eugenic vision of Charles M. Goethe. A digital version of this exhibit is currently being developed by Special Collections. In addition, CSHPE created a digital project on eugenics in California designed to provide an introduction to the subject for the general public and also to promote research on the history of eugenics (www.csus.edu/cshpe/eugenics). Related to the symposium, the Director of CSHPE is co-editing a special issue of The Public Historian on the history of eugenics with the chair of the History Department.

North Central Information Center

The Public History program and the Department of History sponsor and oversee the operation of the North Central Information Center (NCIC) that is located on the Sacramento State campus. The NCIC serves an important local, regional, and state function. Pursuant to state and federal law, the California State Historical Resources Commission (SHRC) mandates the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) to maintain an inventory of historical resources located in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento and Yuba counties. Administered by the Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) under SHPO direction, the inventory is organized by county within the California Historical Resources Information System (CHRIS) and managed by regional CHRIS Information Centers. The twelve Information Centers that currently comprise the CHRIS hold the records, reports, maps, and other documents relating to historical resources, and provide information and recommendations regarding these resources on a fee-for-service basis and are partially supported by small matching funds grants from the OHP. Principal activities for each Information Center include:

a) review, mapping, and incorporation of historical resources records and reports into CHRIS;

b) searches of CHRIS records, reports, maps, and other documents upon specific request and to assist individuals and agencies charged with responsibilities of meeting requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, National Historic Preservation Act, and California Environmental Quality Act; and

c) maintenance and distribution of a Historical Resources Consultant Referral List for the county or counties the center services.

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The NCIC provides research and internship opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students. Over the past five years ten students have completed paid internships at the NCIC. Most of those interns have held their positions for a full year. One intern eventually was promoted to Assistant Coordinator and today serves as the Coordinator.

Dr. Lee Simpson provides faculty sponsorship for the NCIC at Sacramento State. Sally Torpy, M.A. is the onsite Coordinator. Jennifer Bowden, B.A. is the Assistant Coordinator. Ellen Bowden, M.A. is a part time employee who assists in records searches. A number of undergraduate and graduate students in the Public History program complete paid internships at the NCIC.

California Council for the Promotion of History

The Public History program has sponsored the offices of the California Council for the Promotion of History (CCPH) at Sacramento State since 2001. CCPH is a broadly based, statewide professional service organization founded in 1977. Membership is open to individuals and organizations with a variety of historical interests and affiliations. Its purpose is “to foster, facilitate and coordinate efforts that enhance appreciation of our heritage, the application of history skills, and the effective preservation, documentation, interpretation, and management of California’s historical resources.” CCPH produces a quarterly newsletter and holds an annual conference where professional historians and graduate students present papers and network. The history department provides CCPH with office space and a public history graduate student serves as Secretary in a paid internship position. Sponsoring CCPH enhances the outreach goals of the public history program and provides our students with important professional networking opportunities.

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III. Students

A. Student Profile

1. Enrollment patterns

a. Undergraduate Majors

The History Department has recorded a rise in the number of students signing up as majors over the past five years. We reached a high point of 383 majors in the Fall 2003. In the Fall 2004, the History Department had 364 undergraduate majors, a 16% increase over Fall 2000. By the Fall of 2005, the Department had 414 undergraduate majors.

Of the 414 majors in Fall 2005, 311 (75%) were full-time students and 103 (25%) were part-time students.

In the Fall 2005, within the College of Arts and Letters, the Department of History came third, after Communication and English, in its number of departmental majors (Communication Studies had 1101 majors and English had 437 in the same time period). For comparative purposes, Art had 154, Foreign Language had 130, Theater had 110, and Humanities and Religious Studies had 94 majors.

First-Time Freshman

Over the past five years we have seen between 19 and 31 first-time freshmen declare as history majors, with 31 choosing history in Fall 2005.

We attract a relatively high caliber of students. In the Fall 2004, first-time freshman entering the history program had an average ACT score of 22, which was 16% higher than the University and 10% higher than the College average. In the same term, history freshman averaged 1043 on the SAT, which was 7% higher than the University and 3% higher than the College averages.

Our incoming freshman tend to be slightly better prepared in terms of basic English and math skills than both the College and the University. Over the past five years, an average of 42% of incoming history majors have needed remedial math as compared to 50% for the college and 47% for the University. Over the same five years, an average of 39% of incoming history majors have needed remedial English as compared to 42% for the College and 53% for the University.

We do an acceptable job of retaining our majors in the discipline. Over the last five years, the average 1 year continuation rate in the major for first-time freshman was about 75%, which tracks the College (75%) and University (76%) averages almost exactly.

Graduate Students

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The growth in our graduate program has been even more steady and dramatic. In Fall 2004 we counted 105 graduate students in history although this number fell slightly to 100 in the Fall of 2005. From the Fall 2000 to Fall 2005, we have seen a 33% increase in the number of graduate students entering our graduate program. Of the 100 graduate students in history in Fall 2005, 34 (34%) were full-time students and 66 (66%) were part-time students.

Along with English, we have, by far, the largest graduate program in the College of Arts and Letters. The English Department has the largest program with 228 students followed after History by Foreign Languages with 52 and Communication Studies with 38 graduate students.

2. Gender and ethnic composition

The discipline of history remains, as it has been historically, a discipline that attracts men more than women. According to the December 2005 edition of Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association, “whether one looks at the gender, race, ethnicity, or citizenship of recent degree recipients, at every degree level, the new history degree holders are significantly more homogeneous than in other fields.” Nationally, of undergraduates earning history degrees in 2002-03, 41.5% were women and only 15.8% were members of an ethnic minority group. Among History MA recipients, 43.2% were women and 11.4% were of an ethnic minority (“Rising Tide of History Undergraduates Contrasts with Declining PhDs,” Perspectives, December 2005, pp. 8-11).

Comparing the History Department at Sacramento State to these national figures, we can see that our department is exactly in line with the rest of the country in attracting female undergraduate majors; it is considerably more successful in attracting female graduate students; and among both undergraduates and graduates, it is far more successful at attracting ethnic minorities.

Over the past five years, an average of 41% of History majors were women, as compared to 61% in the College and 57% in the University (and as compared to 41.5% nationally).

In a more hopeful sign for gender equity in our discipline, the numbers of women seeking graduate degrees in history has been rising steadily, and at 55% in the Fall 2005, female graduate students outnumbered their male counterparts in the History department (as compared to 43.2% nationally).

The ethnic breakdown of students in the History department remains broadly commensurate with that of the University as a whole, with the notable exception of students who self-identify as being of Asian/Pacific origin. Only 4% of History majors were of Asian/Pacific ethnicity in the Fall 2005 as compared to 19% at the University as a whole. That said, students of Asian/Pacific background seem less drawn to the Liberal Arts generally, with only 9% choosing to enroll in the College of Arts and Letters.

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Overall, in the Fall 2005, 39% of undergraduate History majors identified themselves as some ethnicity other than white, a slight decline from the 40% who self-identified as non-White in the Fall of 2004. In the Fall 2000, 32% of History majors self-identified as non-White, and this is still far above the national figure of 15.8%.

Overall, in the Fall 2005, 34% of history graduate students identify themselves as belonging to a particular ethnic group or a category other than white. This figure is broadly commensurate with the College (47%) and the University (50%) and far above the national figure of 11.4%.

3. Retention and graduation rates

Relative to both the College and the University, the History department does a very effective job of retaining and guiding our undergraduate majors to graduation. Over the past five years, an average of 52% of native History students graduated within six years. This figure corresponds to 41% for the College and 39% for the University.

4. Part and full-time enrollments

See enrollment numbers above and in Table VI.F.1 (p. 88)

5. “Native” and transfer students

See enrollment numbers above and in Table VI.F.1 (p. 88)

In general, the majority of history majors are transferring here from other institutions. Over the past five years, an average of 23.2 freshman history majors have entered our department annually in comparison with an average of 70.8 new transfers into the history department.

B. Student Academic Performance

1. Grading distribution

As a department, we have historically demanded and we continue to demand a high level of performance from students in our classes, particularly our undergraduate classes, as can be measured by grade distributions. In the department, College, and University grade distribution numbers have remained fairly consistent over the past five years.

History courses do not result in an “easy A”! Taking Fall 2004 as a representative semester, in lower division courses history faculty awarded A grades to 19% of students as compared to 25% in the College and 24% in the University. We also failed 5% of students in these courses compared to 2% in the College and 4% in the University.

In the upper-division courses populated heavily by our majors, we awarded A grades to 28% of our students, as compared to 39% in the College and 33% in the University.

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In our graduate courses, we tend to be at or slightly above the average percentage of A grades given in the College. In the Fall 2004, 58% of students in our graduate courses earned A grades as opposed to 56% in the College and 53% in the University.

Regarding B, C, D and F grades, the History Department grade distribution is similar although generally higher than that for the College and University with some variation by semester.

2. GPAs

The percentage of undergraduate history majors in good standing in the Fall 2005 was 83%, a figure that is commensurate with the College (86%) and the University (83%) and that has been fairly steady for the past five years.

The percentage of graduate students in good standing in the Fall 2004 was 96%, which was low for our department. In the preceding four years the number hovered between 98% and 99%, which was again commensurate with the College and University.

In terms of GPA, in the Fall 2005, our undergraduate majors averaged a 2.90 overall GPA. This figure has been nearly constant for the past five years, and it is very close to the overall GPA for undergraduates in Arts and Letters (2.96) while rising slightly above the University average (2.89).

Given that history professors, on average, assign fewer A grades than their peers in the College and University (see grading distribution, above) the GPA figures suggest that our majors are achieving above average grades in our courses.

Similarly, our graduate students’ average overall GPA tends to match the figures for our college. In the Fall 2005, these numbers were 3.40 and 3.33, respectively. Both figures lie slightly higher than the University average of 3.25.

3. Students on probation

The History Department places registration holds on students whose GPA qualifies them for probation. Before the student can register for courses in the following semester, they must see their advisor in the department. During this meeting, the student discusses the problems he/she had that led to the poor academic performance, and the student and advisor agree upon a plan for the student to follow to both successfully complete the major and generally increase the GPA. Then, the advisor signs the Probation form and removes the registration hold.

4. WPE pass rate

The WPE pass rate for History Majors has been significantly higher than that for both the College of Arts & Letters and the University with the only exception being the pass rate

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for Native History majors in 2005. These statistics show that history students tend to be far above average in writing preparation and skills.

WPE Pass Rate - % 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

History Native n/a 86 90 75 100 75History Transfer 83 76 81 80 79 85

College Native 72 75 78 71 82 76College Transfer 75 72 72 71 78 81

University Native 70 72 69 68 74 78University Transfer 69 67 64 64 73 75

5. Preparation for upper division/graduate course work

The History Department’s major is structured so that required lower-division coursework is typically completed prior to upper-division coursework. In addition, students are expected to take Hist 100 – Introduction to Historical Skills during the second semester of their sophomore year or first semester of their junior year in order to prepare them for upper-division electives and the senior writing seminar (Hist 192 series) and senior research seminar (Hist 197 series).

The History major is also designed to prepare students to engage in graduate work. The major is fully described in section II.B.

C. Student Academic Support

1. Academic and Career Advising

Based on the Department’s last self-study and on the information garnered as part of our annual assessment routine, we learned that advising was one area in which we were not effectively serving our students. Due to the rapid and radical generational transformation of the Department over the last five years, we were a little slow in implementing change. Nevertheless, in 2004 the Department instituted a new advising program. Under this new program, all new history majors must meet with the Director of Undergraduate Studies or the Pre-Credential Coordinator, depending on the track they have chosen, for an “first contact advising appointment.” We have taken this initial advising appointment out of the hands of the Chair, who is burdened many other administrative duties and placed it in the hands of the Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Pre-Credential Coordinator. This was part of a larger reorganization of Department governance discussed elsewhere in this report.

Students must meet with the advisor within the first year of entering Sacramento State and declaring their major or a hold is placed on their registration. During this first contact

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advising session, the Director of Undergraduate Studies or the Pre-Credential Coordinator discusses with the student what classes they have taken and what classes they still need to take in order to graduate with a BA in History. In short, the entire history program is outlined and explained during this first contact advising session. Any questions students may have about the major, the department, graduate school, pre-credentialing, or Sacramento State in general are addressed. During this initial session, students are assigned a permanent advisor whom they can contact with future questions and who will sign their graduation petition. A list of all of our majors and their advisors is located prominently on the walls outside the History Department Office.

Since the introduction of this system, the Department has been able to reach virtually all of its majors and guide them down a prudent but expedient course plan towards graduation. Though some students have complained about having to come in and meet with an advisor, most have found it very beneficial and the majority of feedback we have received on it has been positive. Other students have complained that their advisor is not available at convenient times. We are continuing to develop our advising system so that it meets our students’ needs.

2. Supplemental Student Academic Support

We consider our faculty advisors to be a support resource for our students. Students in need of additional support are welcome to contact their faculty advisor, the primary advisors (Undergraduate Studies Coordinator, Pre-Credential Studies Coordinator, or Graduate Coordinator and Public History Coordinator), or the Chair.

In addition, the Department offers a number of scholarships to provide financial support to meritorious students. These scholarships are listed below:

Undergraduate Scholarships and Prizes:

The McGowan Award awards approximately $300 for the best paper written by an undergraduate history major in the Sacramento State History Department. Papers are normally submitted by faculty members, but direct submissions from students are also accepted. Papers written for a history class in either Fall or Spring semesters are eligible.

The Peter H. Shattuck Scholarship and the Undergraduate Scholarship each provide scholarship money, ranging from $1500 to $1000, for undergraduate history majors. The scholarship competition is open to History majors who have a minimum 3.3 GPA and who will have completed a minimum of twelve upper-division units by the end of the Spring 2006 semester.

Senator Nicholas C. Petris Scholarship is for students interested in Hellenic Studies. The Hellenic Studies minor is currently administered through the History Department. Several awards per year will be offered up to a total amount of about $7,000.

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Graduate Scholarships and Prizes:

The George and Eleanor Craft Graduate Scholarship in History provides scholarships of approximately $1500 each to two graduate students enrolled in the Sacramento State Graduate Program. The scholarship competition is open to classified Master's Candidates in History who have a minimum 3.3 GPA and who will have completed a minimum of nine units by the end of the Spring semester. Only students who will be actively working in the History Masters program in both the Fall and Spring semesters are considered.

The Faculty Graduate Writing Prize in History awards approximately $750 for the best paper written by a graduate student in the Sacramento State History Department. The competition is open to graduate students in the Standard Program, Humanities Concentration, and Public History. Papers written for a history class in either the Fall or Spring semester will be eligible, and students submit papers prior to the end of the Spring semester.

Lawrence A. Brooks Graduate Conference Grant Scholarship is for graduate students who attend a professional academic conference. Students are encouraged, but not required, to present a paper to be eligible for this Award. Awards up to $600 total per academic year.

Kenneth N. Owens Award for Excellence in Public History is for Public History graduate students who achieve excellence in a public history project. One award per year up to $500.

Bramson Prize in Historic Preservation is for the best historic preservation project. It is awarded annually in the amount of approximately $500.

C.  Student Professional Development

The History Department is particularly cognizant of the need to prepare students for life after the undergraduate degree, whether this means graduate school or employment. Thus, the History major provides students with the opportunity to become better educated citizens generally while improving their critical thinking, research, and writing skills.

There are some particular opportunities for students that prepare them for challenging responsibilities outside of the University setting. This includes serving as an officer of the History Department’s chapter of the national Honor Society, Phi Alpha Theta (PAT). PAT is an active student group whose membership consists of high achieving students. Important, PAT recently announced plans to establish a History Club as a feeder for PAT. The History Club will have more relaxed eligibility standards to encourage more students to become involved in the organization.

PAT also designs, edits, and publishes the journal Clio. This is a student run publication that offers excellent opportunities for students interested in gaining experience in editing and publishing.

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For graduate students in particular, the Public History program coordinates up to 15 highly specialized, paid internships per semester with a wide variety of public and private agencies that deal with cultural and historic resources. These agencies include the California State Archives, Office of Historic Preservation, CalTrans, the California Railroad Museum, and a large number of private consulting firms.

Graduate students have the opportunity to serve as Teaching Assistants and grade papers for faculty who teach large sections of lower-division surveys as well as some specialized upper-division survey courses.

The History Department also provides graduate students in particular who are interested in a teaching career with valuable advice and guidance. This advice and guidance is provided through our Precredential advising program as well as in Hist 400: The Teaching of History in College.

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IV. Faculty

A. Faculty Profile

1. Full and Part-Time Faculty

History Department Profile(Oct. 2005)

Male Female White Black Hisp Asian Other

Lecturer 11 9 20Assis Prof 6 6 11 1Asoc Prof 2 1 3Full Prof 2 2 1 2 1FERP 6 4 1 1

As of the Fall of 2005, the History Department had 19 full-time faculty including one full-time chair, six FERP faculty, and twenty lecturers on staff. These numbers indicate that the History department faculty size has remained relatively stable during the last five years, with some fluctuation from year to year. Five years ago (2000), it had 16 full-time and 21 part-time faculty members. In 2003 it had a full 21 full-time faculty members and 21 part-time faculty members. As discussed elsewhere in this report, while faculty numbers have remained stable our undergraduate majors and graduate students have increased markedly from 314 and 75, respectively, in 2000 to 414 and 100, respectively, in 2005. In addition, the Department’s FTES load has increased from 682 in 1990-00 to 876 in 2004-05.

Of the full-time faculty (not including FERP faculty), 63% are assistant professors, 16% are associate professors, 21% are full professors. Including the FERP faculty, 53% of us are tenured. All full-time and FERP faculty hold a Ph.D. The age range as of Fall 2005 was: 6% were under age 30, 41% were 31-40, 12% were 41-50, 12% were 51-60; and 29% were 61-70.

Based on data in the History Department’s Faculty survey (Program Self-Assessment Service, Summary Data Report, processed by the Educational Testing Service, or ETS) our faculty rate the Department highly as a place in which to work. On a 0-4 scale (4 = agree strongly and 1 = disagree strongly), faculty indicate that the Department has a humane environment (3.41) and that faculty work together to achieve program goals (3.47). Faculty rated the Department somewhat lower in the areas of being receptive to new ideas (3.12) and overall intellectual environment (3.12).

History Department faculty believe strongly that we are genuinely interested in the welfare and development of History majors (3.59). We also believe that we provide an

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academically demanding environment for students (3.47) and an academically stimulating environment for undergraduates in particular (3.29). Faculty also believe that as a whole we prepare carefully for our courses (3.41) and that we offer a variety of effective teaching methods (lectures, seminars, audiovisual aids) in class (3.41).

Faculty expressed some concern about the preparation of students and indicated that students are generally less prepared for coursework than we would prefer. Faculty also indicated that there were relatively few opportunities for interaction between professors and majors outside of the classroom. At the same time, faculty acknowledge that students have little ability or opportunity to influence decisions that affect the History program.

We see our curriculum as good, and we believe that we show considerable concern for our students, but both of these areas leave some room for improvement. Faculty believe that they are able to influence policies and decisions (3.41), and they continue to seek ways to improve our departmental procedures. Faculty are not generally satisfied with our advising system overall.

We register our most serious dissatisfaction with the resources available to support our teaching and scholarship. Faculty are not satisfied with the University’s level of support for the program, and 76% of faculty indicate that the University’s allotment of financial resources to the Department is “poor.” The faculty are equally concerned about the University’s lack of support for the Department’s clerical staff even though the 71% of faculty rate the staff’s quality as excellent.

The following is a summation of History faculty responses to particular Departmental functions and issues:

Work Environment: As a group, we were nearly unanimous (94%) in finding our department to be a good or excellent place to work.

Academic Freedom: We are generally satisfied with the academic freedom in our department, and we are nearly all (94%) satisfied with

our ability to influence department policies.

Department Admin: We are very satisfied with the administration of our department, with 71% of us rating it as excellent and 18% rating it as

good.

Curric. Development: 82% of us participate frequently in policy and curriculum decisions.

Department Goals: We see room for improvement in terms of elaborating department goals and objectives over the next few years.

Career Development: Many of us would like to see the department put forward a much stronger effort in supporting our career development.

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2. Gender and ethnic composition (Full-Time, Non-FERP)

The History Department has a very balanced number of male (53%) to female (47%) faculty members among its probationary and full-time members. Seventy-six of full-time and FERP faculty are white while 8% are black and 8% are Hispanic.

3. Student-faculty ratio, class size

The History Department has had, and continues to have, a very high student-faculty ratio compared to both the College and the University, as the following chart indicates:

1999-00 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05Student-Faculty Ratio 30 34 34 31 33 30College SFR 22 22 22 22 22 22University SFR 21 21 21 21 22 23

In 2004, the History Department’s average SFR equaled 33 students per faculty member as compared to 21.9 for the College and 22 for the University. It dropped only slightly to 30 in 2005. In the College, Philosophy is next closest averaging 28.4 students/faculty member. At the other end of the spectrum, Art averaged 16.5 students/faculty member while English averaged 20.1. Communication Studies lies in the middle with 24.3 students/faculty member.

The Student/Faculty ratio in the history department has risen steadily from 27.5 students 10 years ago and 30.4 students 5 years ago to 33 students in the Fall 2004. In other words, our faculty have been carrying an increasingly heavy teaching burden with each passing year.

In looking at related and relevant statistics, during the Fall 2004, the History department generated 868.4 FTES. In the College, only English (1229.3) and Communication Studies (1050) generated more FTES. The number of FTES generated by the History department has risen by 27.4% in the past five years, and it has risen by 42.6% in the past 10 years.

The History Department faculty teach far more students than other departments in the College or the University, and they do so with relatively few faculty. In other words, History truly is a “cash cow,” and as proven by other material in this self-study, it produces these results without compromising quality of education.

No other department in the College is producing anything comparable when it comes to average section size. In Fall 2005, the average section size for History faculty was 43.3 students, and this was compared to 26.5 students for the College and 29.6 students for the

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University. Humanities and Religious Studies comes next with an average of 36.1 students in the classroom followed by Philosophy with 32.7. Many departments in the College average 21 to 24 students per section, but we note that average class size is increasing University wide.

B. Faculty and the Curriculum

The current faculty comprises a wide range of expertise, and this allows the department to offer a broad range of courses. We do note important curricular areas in which we do not have faculty to teach, and our five year hiring plan (see Appendix) is intended to fill those areas. In the next 2 years, we hope to be able to hire a specialist in Chicano/a history in order that the department can offer specialized courses in this important area. We also desire to offer more courses that reflect the new movement in World History, and our proposed position in Britain/South Asia will allow us to move in this direction.

C. Faculty as Teachers

Using our Faculty survey (Fall 2005 – ETS Data) as a guide, we believe that our greatest strengths are in creating an academically challenging program (3.47), and in fostering respect between students and faculty (3.41).

We also see ourselves as conscientious teachers who put great effort into preparing for our classes (3.41) and utilizing effective and up-to-date teaching methods (3.41).

As a department, we are genuinely interested in the welfare and professional development of our majors (3.59). We see ourselves as being less effective, however, at translating that interest into action. We would particularly welcome more opportunities for interaction with our majors outside the classroom (2.53 satisfaction with status quo). We would also like to find more ways to help our majors support and help each other (2.88 satisfaction with status quo).

In the Fall 2005 survey of 130 History major Alumni, they were asked if the History faculty inspired them to continue studying history. Eighty-two percent of the students agreed while fourteen percent disagreed. Ninety-four percent of this same group of Alumni stated that the Department did offer classes in a pattern than allowed them to graduate in a reasonable amount of time.

Nearly all faculty (94%) teach required courses frequently, and 47% of our faculty direct theses or independent study. Another 30% of faculty regularly supervise internships or field work, and 36% of faculty in the History Department arrange for student contact with professionals with some regularity.

Part-Time Faculty

A total of 37 different lecturers have taught in the Department over the past five years. The average number employed has varied little each year. There were 21 and 19 in the

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two semesters of 2001-2002 and there are 20 and 24 for the two semesters of 2005-2006. Our reliance on lecturers is illustrated by undergraduate enrollment figures for the current academic year:

Total enrollment = 8288; in lecturers’ courses = 3582 (43.2%)

Upper Division = 4093; in lecturers’ courses = 1678 (41%)

Lower Division = 4195; in lecturers’ courses = 1903 (45.4%)

Although the numbers employed change little, their responsibilities have changed significantly. From the Fall of 2002 through the Fall of 2005, the Department added twelve new faculty to replace those who retired or who began teaching half-time in the Faculty Early Retirement Program. New assistant professors have been enthusiastic about teaching double-sections of courses, especially in the Lower Division surveys. Consequently, lecturers have assumed more of the responsibility of instructing history majors and others in Upper Division courses.

A striking comparison that illustrates this evolution is that of Lower Division instruction in the Fall of 2001 and the Spring of 2006:

F 2001 All students in Lower Division = 2017; in lecturers’ classes = 1217 (60.3%)

S 2006 All students in Lower Division = 1967; in lecturers’ classes = 924 (47%)

It is more remarkable when comparing enrollments in Lower Division surveys by area:

F 2001 U.S. total = 1172; in lecturers’ classes = 869 (74.1%)

S 2006 U.S. total = 1167; in lecturers’ classes = 569 (48.8%)

F 2001 World total = 845; in lecturers’ classes = 348 (41.2%)

S 2006 World total = 800; in lecturers’ classes = 355 (44.4%)

Although we greatly value and respect our part-time faculty colleagues, we strongly believe that the University must support our program with faculty resources. As the number of our undergraduate and graduate students increase, the full-time faculty must increase in order to serve these students and their curricular and career goals.

D. Faculty as Scholars

As a department, we recognize and rate highly the scholarly and professional competence of our colleagues (3.65). This assessment is fully supported by the quantitative measure

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of our department’s scholarly production. (The following data is from the faculty Program Assessment Questionnaire tabulated by the Educational Testing Service.)

In the past 5 years, 35% have authored or edited books in comparison to approximately 28% of faculty at comparable institutions. In the past 2 years, nearly one-half of the faculty has submitted articles to refereed journals compared with 34% of faculty at comparable institutions.

Over the past 5 years, about 75% of our faculty has published at least one article or book chapter. In those same 5 years, over 30% have published 3 or more articles or book chapters, and 88% of us have presented scholarly papers at conferences; 41% have presented papers six or more times. In addition, 35% have prepared some sort of public exhibition.

In the past 3 years, nearly 50% of us have received institutional grants to support our research, and 57% of us have received outside grants or contracts. This compares very well to ETS data that shows among faculty at comparable institutions only 33% received institutional grants while 28% received outside grants or contracts.

About 25% of our faculty serve or have served as editors or on editorial boards for professional journals in their field of specialty.

The History faculty’s commitment to scholarship is also evident in that nearly 2/3 of us (59%) have been awarded or recognized for outstanding scholarship in their field compared to 30% faculty at similar institutions (ETS Data).

These numbers are all the more remarkable given that 88% of us spend 25% of our time or less on research or scholarly work.

The following is a sampling of our faculty’s recent scholarship including books, refereed articles, and encyclopedia articles. It is not a complete listing of faculty scholarship as this information is available in individual faculty member’s CV:

Christopher J. Castaneda, "History Beneath the Surface: Natural Gas Pipelines and the National Historic Preservation Act," The Public Historian 26, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 105-21.

Christopher J. Castaneda, “Capitalism,” History of World Trade Since 1450 (New York: MacMillan Reference USA, 2005)

Jeffrey A. Dym, “Benshi and the Introduction of Motion Pictures to Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter 2000).

Patrick Ettinger, "Tenacious Immigrants: Turn-of-the-Century Immigration across the U.S.-Mexico Border," Border Heritage Booklet Series, Oscar J. Martínez, editor. (El Paso, 2002).

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Patrick Ettinger, “`We sometimes wonder what they will spring on us next’: Undocumented Migrants and Border Enforcement in the American West, 1882-1910,” Western Historical Quarterly (Summer 2006)

Candace Gregory, Documents of Western Civilization, Vol. I and Vol. II. Thomson Wadsworth, 2006.

Barbara Keys, “Spreading Peace, Democracy, and Coca-Cola: Sport and American Cultural Expansion in the 1930s,” Diplomatic History 28, no. 2 (April 2004): 165-96.

Rebecca Kluchin, "Social Engineering in the United States,” American Studies 47 (Spring 2006).

Katerina Lagos, ‘Paradigms of Inclusion and Exclusion: the Metaxas Dictatorship and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941,’ Journal of Modern Hellenism (November 2006).

Brian Schoen, “Calculating the Price of Union: Republican Economic Nationalism and the Origins of Southern Sectionalism, 1790-1828,” Journal of the Early Republic Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 2003): 173-206.

Mona Siegel, The Moral Disarmament of France: Education, Pacifism, and Patriotism, 1914-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Mona Siegel, “’History is the Opposite of Forgetting’: The Limits of Memory and the Lessons of History in Interwar France,” Journal of Modern History vol. 74 (December 2002): 770-800.

Lee M.A. Simpson, Selling the City: Gender, Class and the California Growth Machine, 1880-1940. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004.

Michael Vann, “Of le Cafard and Other Tropical Diseases: Perceived Threats to White Colonial Culture in Indochina” in Jennifer Yee (ed.), France and ‘Indochina:’ Cultural Representations. Lexington, 2005.

Michael Vann, “‘All the World’s a Stage’, Especially in the Colonies: The Hanoi Exposition of 1902” in Martin Evans & Amanda Sackur (ed.), Empire and Culture: The French Experience, 1830-1940. Macmillan/Palgrave Press, 2004.

Arthur Williamson and Allan Macinnes, eds., Shaping the Stuart World: The Atlantic Connection. Brill, 2006.

In addition, Professors Postel, Cohen, Keys, and Marashi all have forthcoming books:

Postel: Power & Progress: Populist Visions of America (Oxford University Press)

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Cohen: Imagining the Unimaginable: War, Art, and the Politics of Culture in Late Imperial Russia 1863-1917 (University of Nebraska Press)

Keys: Globalizing Sport: National Rivalry and International Community in the 1930s, (Harvard University Press).

Marashi: Nationalizing Iran: Culture, Power and the State, 1870-1941 (University of Washington Press)

E. Faculty and Service

The department provides service to the community in a variety of ways. Faculty give guest lectures to community groups, speak to high school history classes, serve as advisers for high school history student projects, and answer questions posed to them from members of the public. This information in complete form is available in faculty CVs.

Professor George Craft has provided exemplary service to the University in two areas. He almost single-handedly restarted an initiative to create a University Honors Program. His initiative was successful, and the University GE Honors Program will begin accepting its first students in the Fall of 2006. In addition, Professor Craft is the author of the official University history, and he is currently in the process of revising it for its second edition.

Professor Richard Kornweibel has served as Chair of the University Senate GE Committee and prior to that service he directed the University Social Science program. His expertise in matters related to both General Education as well as overall University policies and procedures is exemplary, and now that Professor Kornweibel has fully retired from the University we hope that another junior faculty member from our Department will pick-up from where he left off.

Professor Chambers (a former History Department Chair) has served on numerous University committees: Ad Hoc Committee for Forums on Middle East, 2001-2003; Faculty Coordinator for Dean's Circle Golf Tournament, 1998-2000; CFA Representative for History Dept. 1998-2003; Committee for Administrative Review (Review of Deans and Senior Administrators) 2000-2003.

Other faculty participating in University Service include: Jeff Dym (College of Arts & Letters Budget and Curriculum Committee); Chloe Burke (Academic Advising Center); Candace Gregory (Faculty Senator); Afshin Marashi (Faculty Senator); Barbara Keys (Faculty Senator); Jessie Gaston (College ARTP Committee); Shirley Moore (College ARTP Committee); Chris Castaneda (Senate Ad Hoc Committee for the Independent Doctorate); and Katerina Lagos (University Research and Creative Activity Awards Committee).

For Service to the Community, faculty give presentations on their work or expertise to community groups. Professors Williamson, Palermo, and Moore have been particularly

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active in this regard. Professor Chambers, for example, has spoken at the Yuba Community College Noon Lecture Series on Iraq, March 2003 and November 2003; St. Mark's Methodist Church Men's Club Lectures on Iraq, Spring 2003 and Spring 2004; Sacramento Peace Action Committee Lectures on Saudi Arabia, January 2003 and January 2004 on Iraq, and he gave a Renaissance Society Lecture on Iraq, May 2004.

Faculty have also participated in media interviews and discussions. Professor Candace Gregory was interviewed by the History Channel for programs on Alexander the Great and the Crusades. Professor Castaneda was interviewed by the History Channel for a program on Alexander Graham Bell. Professor Chambers has also done many media interviews for local television and radio programs.

Other examples of faculty community service include Professor Katerina Lagos’ work at organizing the Olympic Games lecture series and exhibitions held on the Sacramento State Campus in conjunction with the 2004 Olympic Trials held at Hornet Stadium. In addition, she has also given numerous tour of the Tsakopoulos Collection at the University library to visiting scholars and dignitarites. Professors Ettinger and Castaneda are very active in oral history work, and they have both conducted numerous oral history interviews in the community. In 2005, Castaneda conducted a two-day oral history workshop for the American River Conservancy in Placerville, California. Ettinger served as project consultant for an oral history project sponsored by the Yuba Historical Society titled: “`Sam Fow Stories’: Memories from Marysville’s Chinese Community,” 2003-2004

Another service we provide the community is teacher education and teacher training. As the department has become increasingly involved in teacher training initiatives, the faculty has provided an invaluable service to the educational community by serving as workshop leaders and guest speakers. During 2005-06, many History faculty presented guest lectures to high school history teacher workshops organized by the UC Davis History Project. These workshops, funded by Teaching American History Grants, bring together high school teachers and university professors in order to enhance the knowledge base and subject matter expertise of high school teachers. These workshops are also extremely valuable in reminding university professors that good history instruction must begin long before students enter college.

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V. Governance

A. Faculty Involvement

The department is governed by a collegial, collaborative system in which all tenured and probationary faculty members are expected to participate. Every faculty member is expected to be a member of at least one committee and not normally more than two. At the beginning of each academic year, the department chair conducts a survey, asking all faculty members to express their preference for committee assignments.

All officers of the department and committee members are appointed by the Executive Committee unless otherwise stated in this document. All elected or appointed offices are for 3-year terms unless otherwise specified

Assisted by the Vice Chair, the Department Chair represents the interests of the History faculty to the university, provides leadership to the faculty in academic and personnel areas, ensures that the department is in conformity with university policy set by the President and the Dean of Arts and Letters, and the Chair is responsible for communication and coordination with university authorities outside the department.

The Undergraduate Studies Coordinator is elected by the department faculty and receives six units of assigned time per year, preferably in the Fall. Duties Include:

-- Assist the Department Chair in department business; attend meetings, etc.-- Lead person on the Scheduling Committee to build the annual class schedule.-- Supervise the department’s undergraduate curriculum. Bring curriculum change

proposals to the Curriculum Committee. In collaboration with the Department chair, supervise multi-section courses (17s, 50, 51, 100, 192, etc.). Coordinate General Education reviews.-- Serve as Vice Chair of the Department (main function would be to stand in for

the department chair when he/she is absent, not able to attend meetings, etc.).-- Supervise the department’s undergraduate advising program, including mandatory

advising for transfer students, conduct group advising sessions each semester, and assignment of majors to faculty advisers.

The World and U.S. Divisions are retained as electoral bodies: e.g., for election of faculty members to Search Committees; for election of faculty members to the Curriculum Committee.

The Executive Committee consists of: the Department Chair, the Undergraduate Studies Coordinator, the Graduate Coordinator, the Public History Coordinator, and the Chair of the Lecturer Coordinating Committee. The Executive Committee facilitates and supports the work of the Department Chair and Vice Chair; oversees all the administrative operations of the department in partnership with the Department Chair; decides with the Department Chair about the expenditure of department funds; appoints members to department committees; recommends policy changes to the department faculty.

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The department course schedule is prepared by a Scheduling Committee consisting of the Undergraduate Studies Coordinator, the Department Chair, the Graduate Coordinator, and the Public History Coordinator.

The Graduate Coordinator is elected by the department faculty, and will receive three units of assigned time per year. The Graduate Coordinator conducts the graduate admissions process with the help of the Graduate Committee, provides first contact and program advising to incoming graduate students, builds the department’s schedule of graduate classes, proposes to the Curriculum Committee policy changes in the graduate program, facilitates the progress of History graduate students toward their degrees, and monitors theses and attends oral examinations for examination students in the Standard and Humanities Programs.

The Graduate Committee functions as a graduate admissions and advisory committee. It consists of the Graduate Coordinator, who is a voting member, and four faculty members appointed by the Executive Committee, two from each division. The Graduate Coordinator will submit proposals approved by the Graduate Committee to the Curriculum Committee for consideration; they will then be forwarded to the department for final action.

The Public History Coordinator is appointed by the Executive Committee. He/she will coordinate admissions, serve as the primary adviser for Public History students, and perform other functions appropriate to the Public History Program. The Coordinator receives 3-units of Assigned Time for coordinating the joint Ph.D. program with UCSB.

The Public History Committee functions primarily as an admissions and planning committee for the Public History Program. It consists of the Public History Coordinator and three faculty members appointed by the Executive Committee upon the recommendation of the Public History Coordinator.

The History Precredential Committee is composed of three members appointed for two year terms by the Executive Committee. The Precredential Coordinator receives three units of assigned time per year. He/she oversees the Department’s precredential programs (Social Science and History’s participation in Liberal Studies); facilitates relations with other credential-oriented bodies in the university; coordinates precredential advising to History students; seeks grants dealing with teacher preparation; and proposes changes in the department’s precredential courses and programs.

The Assessment Committee consists of two members appointed by the Executive Committee for staggered terms of two years. It is responsible for evaluating the department’s undergraduate academic program as defined in the History Assessment Policy.

The Curriculum Committee consists of the Department Chair, the Undergraduate Studies Coordinator, the Graduate Coordinator, the Precredential Coordinator; and two

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appointed tenured or probationary faculty members, one from each division. All course proposals and program change proposals are examined by the Curriculum Committee, and then forwarded to the department faculty for final action. The Curriculum Committee proposes full-time hiring priorities to the department faculty.

The Lecturer Coordinating Committee (LCC) consists of three tenured faculty members (including FERPers) appointed by the Executive Committee; it selects a chair from its members. The committee supervises the performance of part-time instructors in the Department. It conducts classroom visitations of lecturers, and in the Spring Semester analyzes student evaluations and writes evaluation letters.

After the lecturer evaluation process is complete, the LCC becomes the Lecturer Ranking Committee (same composition as the LCC), and it ranks lecturers for part-time assignments according to department policy.

Search Committees are elected according to department policy to evaluate applications for tenure track and temporary full-time positions. Decisions on hiring are determined by the Committee of the Whole, i.e., all tenure-track and tenured faculty.

The RTP Committee is elected according to department policy for evaluation of tenure track faculty and making personnel recommendations to the College of Arts and Letters. History faculty are also expected to render periodic service on the Arts and Letters ARTP Committee.

History Faculty Senators (two are currently authorized for our department) are elected by a vote of all full-time faculty members. Their responsibility is to attend Faculty Senate meetings, represent the interests of the History Department in the Senate, and keep the Department Chair and the department faculty informed of important campus-wide issues.

The History Scholarship and Prize Coordinator is appointed by the Executive Committee. He/she is responsible for supervising the scholarship decision schedule, the composition of the scholarship committees, communications with scholarship applicants and recipients, awarding of the scholarships and prizes, etc.

The Library Coordinator serves at the will of the Executive Committee; he/she serves as the liaison between the University Library and the department faculty.

Ad hoc faculty committees are created from time to time to deal with issues such as: social activities for graduate and undergraduate students; communications between the department and the students (newsletter, webpage, etc.); organization of the annual department picnic; the Research Forum in which members of the department may share their research interests.

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B. Student Involvement

Students are indirectly involved in the decision and policy making program in the Department. Through evaluation of courses, assessment work, and general advising, students have the opportunity to express their concerns. These concerns are taken seriously, and the Department is committed to ensuring that it offers a program generally that fulfills students interests and assists with their career goals.

The Phi Alpha Theta chapter (History National Honors Society) in our Department is very active, and PAT is able to represent students to the Department Chair and advisors.

Whether students can be directly involved in departmental policy making is a question that we have not addressed, but there is growing interest in the Department for developing a means for students to become more directly involved in the Department.

C. Relationship of the Department to the College and University

The department has fostered a strong and positive relationship with the College and the University. During the last five years, the Department has worked closely with Dean William Sullivan, Associate Dean/Acting Interim Dean Nancy Tooker, and our current Dean, Jeff Mason. The Dean’s office has been very responsive to the needs of the History Department. The very rapid growth of our major has made the History Department a vital asset to the College of Arts & Letters.

History Department faculty have made themselves available for service on College and University committees, and for media interviews and activities that enhance the visibility of the University. Many faculty have received Research and Creative Activity (RCA) grants from the University, and their work has reflected positively on the Department, College, and University. Our service on University committees exposes the faculty to important issues, and makes us feel that we are helping to shape the future of our campus.

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VI. Institutional Support/Resources

A. Library

The lack of funding for library materials has had a negative affect on our teaching and research. Fifty-nine percent of us rate the library holdings relevant to our field as fair or poor, 41% rate them as good, but no one rates them as excellent. In the ETS survey, only 19% of faculty polled found their library holdings to be fair or poor while 38% rate them as good and 14% rate them as excellent. As funds drop for the acquisition of printed material, students and faculty are being forced to rely more on electronic publications and the internet for research. The traditional book and article, however, remain very important in historical research, and our library is not being allotted the funds necessary to develop good holdings.

Students and scholars of history require three major published resources: monographs, primary sources, and journals. While our acquisitions in Greek History remain superb, thanks to the generosity of the Tsakopoulos Family, collections in other areas are down considerably. The last eight years a dramatic and alarming decline in funds and acquisitions strongly suggests that our library is incapable of meeting the needs of our students and faculty or furthering the goals of Destination 2010—excellent teaching, scholarship, recognition of diversity, and community service.

In the 1998/99 academic year $24,651 was allocated for monograph purchases. The announced budget for 2005/06 is about twenty percent of that number, or $4888. This development is especially problematic given trends within the discipline and publishing. Books continue to rise in cost. Strong collections in traditional subjects (including American and European history) are being eroded from an inability to update them with the newest scholarship and sources. In the meantime, the areas of focus of our department and the profession have broadened in chronological and geographic scope. The discipline of history has changed remarkably in the last decade, making a more representative and global approach to history essential. Our discipline increasingly appreciates the need to study and publish about diverse peoples using new approaches, including cultural history and focusing on gender, ethnicity, and class in new ways. World history has replaced a more western-centered approach to the past. Our department has kept up with these trends, recently hiring new faculty to teach the history of the Middle East, United States women/gender, and Southeast Asia. Yet the collections in these vibrant fields of study cannot be built up because of the dearth of funds.

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History Book Allocations

05000

100001500020000250003000035000400004500050000

1967

/68

1970

/71

1973

/74

1976

/77

1980

/81

1983

/84

1986

/87

1989

/90

1992

/93

1995

/96

1998

/99

2001

/02

2004

/05

Years

Dol

lars

Series1

History Monograph Allocation

0

500010000

15000

2000025000

30000

1998

/99

1999

/00

2000

/01

2001

/02

2002

/03

2003

/04

2004

/05

2005

/06

Years

Dolla

rs

Allocation

Source, Ben Amata, History Reference Librarian

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There are several negative effects of these shortcomings, all of which limit the history department’s ability to fulfill the goals of Destination 2010. First, it is difficult for our students to acquire the latest information for their papers and in their classes. Research and expository papers are forced to rely on outdated interpretations and even inaccurate information, from the 1960s and 1970s, because those are the only books readily available on many subjects. Despite the dedicated faculty we have, the quality of education we can offer (especially to our majors) will decline unless these trends are reversed. This is already having a very serious affect on our graduate students and their ability to pursue and complete their M.A. theses and projects. As many other universities are acquiring the latest materials available in electronic or internet form, our campus is falling further behind, unable to afford these important means of studying history. The failure to acquire more recent information and interpretations promises to erode rather than “strengthen our academic and co-curricular offerings” and prevent our students from “utilizing the best in teaching and learning technology.”1

In addition to causing considerable frustration for our faculty as teachers, these meager resources hinder our faculty’s ability to pursue and sustain active research agendas. Our department has many scholars with active publishing agendas. A drop-off in journals, primary sources, and monographs limits their ability to stay up-to-date on the latest trends. The Herculean efforts of the Interlibrary Loan Department helps to buffer this effect somewhat, but faculty remain beholden to the timeline and deadlines of other universities. Alarmingly, the growing obsoleteness of our collections promises to hinder our department’s ability to recruit or retain scholars necessary to further departmental and university goals of hiring the “best faculty.”2 Anecdotal evidence suggests that our faculty have become disheartened with the situation; under the assumption that the situation is so dire many assume they need not bother trying to get the resources they want purchased.

Destination 2010 states that its goals of “fostering excellent academic and student programs” will be achieved by “recognizing diversity as vital to developing the “New California,” “assessing and strengthening our academic and related co-curricular offerings,” “utilizing the best in teaching and learning technology,” and “providing comprehensive student services and programs.” The History Department is uniquely positioned to assist in these goals; our department has an excellent reputation for teaching and many young scholars have recently joined our department. Yet the limited resources of our library—despite the effort of library staff—severely limit their ability to achieve these goals and meet the needs of our students.

B. Computer/Technology

Many faculty members utilize technology in the classroom. Faculty are making good use of “smart classrooms” with built-in digital projectors in order to utilize PowerPoint slide presentations and internet resources. The History Department has had fairly good access to smart rooms although each semester there is a heavy demand placed on our ASC II to find enough smart rooms for faculty who have requested them. We expect that it will become

1 Destination 2010 goals: http://www.csus.edu/destination2010/main.stm2 Destination 2010 goals: http://www.csus.edu/destination2010/main.stm

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increasingly difficult to locate smart rooms for all faculty who use them and increasingly depend on them for their course material presentations.

The Public History program in particular has been frustrated in not being allowed access to higher quality computer labs on campus that could be used to teach Public History students how to use media and internet technology in recording and transmitting historical content to the public. This is not a particularly new field, but the Communication Studies Department which controls these rooms has not granted us access to them based on their own classroom needs and requirements. Some high level computer labs should be made available to departments that have legitimate instructional uses for them.

In order to assist faculty in their utilization of technology in the classroom, the Department has purchased several laptops for faculty to use in smart rooms, and the Department has also purchased a digital projector that can be used in classrooms that do not have a digital projector. This projector can also be used for other functions such as meetings that require a digital projector.

The Department also owns two video cameras. These are used primarily for teacher training in Hist 400 and also by the Oral History Program for recording interviews.

To support the Oral History Program, the department owns four transcription machines, seven digital audio recorders, ten standard cassette records, and accessories.

The History Department has employed a highly trained graduate student to redesign its website, and we believe that the current site is far more useful and effective for faculty and students than the previous site.

The Department also employs several listprocs for distributing important information including the monthly department newsletter to students. There are separate listprocs for:1) History Majors and Minors, 2) Graduate Students, 3) Public History Students.

C. Student Support Services

Student support services seem to be effective, although the Department doesn’t regularly interface with them. Student advising by the Academic Advising Center appears to be generally good and effective. In some cases, History faculty refer students to the Academic Advising for assistance with General Education requirements. Faculty also refer students to Student Affairs for various forms of counseling and in serious cases of cheating and/or plagiarism.

The History Department utilizes the services of a Learning Skills “Adjunct” instructor typically once per semester. These are special tutorial sections offered in lower-division courses with a population of students likely to benefit for tutorials.

The University’s Learning Skills Center and Writing Center are apparently available for referrals.

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D. Faculty Support Services

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is one faculty support service that faculty regularly use. The CTL’s summer technology workshop is particularly attractive to faculty interested in acquiring skills in web design and WebCT course instruction technology.

The CTL also publishes a newsletter and sponsors a speaker series for faculty interested in a wide variety of topics related to pedagogy, research, and various faculty issues.

Another CTL function is the Visiting Speakers Program through which Sacramento State faculty can request funding support to bring a guest speaker to campus. Unfortunately, the CTL’s funding level for visiting speakers appears to be rather meager and funds tend to be depleted by the late Fall or early Spring each year.

E. Physical Facilities and Equipment

Generally, our facilities are adequate but not optimum. Only within the last four years have our faculty had “single” offices, so this is a huge improvement. Our work space, copy room, and mailroom could be combined, but we have not yet decided whether to rearrange these spaces.

Although there are currently enough offices on the third floor of Tahoe Hall for all full-time faculty, our part-time faculty are located in other offices on campus, mostly in Benecia and Brighton Hall. This makes it somewhat inconvenient for part-time faculty who have office hours in one building, pick-up their mail in Tahoe Hall, and then teach in a third building.

As a Department, 35% of us rate the “laboratories, studios, and equipment needed for teaching and creative work in field” as being poor or fair. Only 12% rate them as good or excellent while 53% did not register an opinion, most likely because faculty believed that this question as more directed toward the sciences.

F. Financial Resources

1. Enrollment and Faculty

As the following chart clearly indicates, the History Department has been extremely “efficient” and continues to become even more efficient in terms of serving larger numbers of students with no increase – and generally decreasing – resources.

In return for its willingness to be “efficient,” most History faculty do benefit from a reduced number of contact hours. Faculty who teach “double sections,” typically carry a 3-3 load rather than the campus standard of 4-4. The Department usually offers 10-12 double sections per semester, and enrollment in these courses varies from about 80 to 130 each. The lack of large classrooms hinders the faculty’s effort to teach more large sections, and the increasing

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demand for large classrooms across the campus is creating an uncomfortable and competitive environment among departments attempting to obtain large classrooms.

It is fair to say that the campus administration has been remarkably short-sighted in not planning for better and larger classroom facilities during the last 10-15 years despite the obvious growth of the student population and demands for new classrooms by faculty. This is not to say that the History Department simply wants to teach large sections. The Department has identified courses which are suitable for large sections, and these are mostly lower-division surveys and a few selected upper-division courses.

It is important to note that there are many seminars, writing intensive courses, and specialized classes that are taught as small sections. The faculty rightly insist that these courses remain small. We feel that we are constantly attempting to protect our smaller classes by over-enrolling other lecture classes and “double sections.” Yet, we understand from the Administration that we may not in the future be able to balance some lower-enrolled courses with highly enrolled courses, that all courses must be filled. We do not understand this course management mentality, and we believe it is short-sighted, particularly in regard to the Administration’s aggressive pursuit of Destination 2010 and its purported agenda to make the campus friendly and attractive to students. How offering only large sections full of students can be “welcoming” is not clear to our faculty.

Despite its willingness to be “efficient,” History faculty uniformly feel that they are regularly expected to carry a very high student-faculty ratio in order to support departments that do not, or will not, increase their SFR. While some programs may have very legitimate curricular and pedagogical reasons for having a low SFR, others simply refuse to teach even moderately large sections, and the University allows them to do so. Clearly, the History Department’s SFR of 30 (2004-05) which was actually down from 33 in the previous year, is about 30% higher than that of the College (23) and University (22).

We are therefore unanimously frustrated with the inadequate funding for our department. The vast majority of us, 76%, rate the overall adequacy of financial resources in support of this program/department as being “poor” and 24% rate it as “fair.” For comparative data, in the ETS survey, only 27% of faculty rate financial resources at their institution as poor, 36% rate them as fair, 28% rate them as good, and 4% as excellent.

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Table VI.F.1History Department Student and Faculty Statistics, 1999-2005

1999-00 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05

History Majors 314 365 355 383 364 414UG Degrees Awarded 59 64 80 80 96 94Grad Degrees Awarded 7 20 15 29 19 21

Full Time Faculty 16 13 16 21 17 19Part Time Faculty 21 26 28 21 26 26

Full Time WTU 148 131 135 188 157 154Part Time WTU 119 148 154 127 142 167

Student-Faculty Ratio 30 34 34 31 33 30College SFR 22 22 22 22 22 22University SFR 21 21 21 21 22 23

Avg. Section Size 41 43 44 44 45 43College Avg. Section 26 26 26 26 26 27Univ. Avg. Section 27 28 28 28 29 30

FTES Lower Division 361 405 419 484 426 446FTES Upper Division 298 309 346 353 369 398FTES Graduate 23 28 33 30 35 32

TOTAL FTES 682 742 797 867 829 876

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2. Program Staff

The History Department is understaffed. There are currently 2 full-time permanent staff positions: ASC II and ASA II. Both positions are filled at this time, but in order for the department to continue to function efficiently and meet the demands of increasing workloads and University deadlines, the History Department needs to add and fill another ASC permanent position. An ASC I classification is required to perform the duties. The suggested areas of responsibility for that position would be human resources and back-up for financial duties. This position would be responsible for hiring part-time faculty, teaching associates, graduate assistants, instructional student assistants, and student assistants for the History Department and adhering to the Universities procedures in this area. The ASC I would function as a back-up for certain financial/budget responsibilities for the ASC II. The ASC II would continue to be responsible for budgets, scholarship account tracking, inputting the class schedule, preparing faculty workload reports and overseeing the administration of the department by staff.

The need for an additional permanent staff position is the result of an increase in staff workloads and job responsibilities, particularly the workload of the ASC II position. The increase in these workloads is due to factors occurring both inside and outside of the History Department. The outside factors include a requirement of academic departments to keep abreast of the significant, ongoing changes in University policies and procedures resulting from the implementation of CMS and the reorganization of Sacramento State administration. In addition, the University’s decentralization of tasks and responsibility has shifted much of this work and responsibility to the academic department level over the past 4 years. Academic department staff are required to spend more time than previously necessary to search for new policies and changes to existing policies and procedures via University websites. Departments are not always notified in a timely manner that procedures have changed. The responsibility is now on departments to constantly check websites for changes in order to keep up with current procedures.

The workload and complexity of many tasks performed by staff have also increased due to the implementation of the new Common Management System (CMS). The implementation of CMS in the areas of budget, procurement, travel, payroll and HR has increased the workload and responsibility of department staff. Based on the changes in department staff workloads so far due to the implementation of CMS, it is anticipated that further implementation of CMS for the student information module and class scheduling will continue to affect department staff workloads significantly. Their workloads will continue to increase and require a higher level of skill to use CMS, track information in CMS and process many of the tasks associated with these 2 areas scheduled to be implemented in the near future.

The internal factors include the impact of hiring 12 new full-time, tenure-track faculty on the department staff workloads during the past 4 years. Several new courses have been proposed by recent faculty hires. Most have been approved and added to the History curriculum. Many of the newer faculty are actively engaged in scholarly research and have received

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research grants. The Department staff assist in the course proposal process, track the research grant money and make sure that faculty are reimbursed with the grant money.

Other internal factors affecting staff workloads in the past 4 years are the change in department chairs. Since 2001, the History Department has had 3 chairs, one of whom had been a Chair previously. The job of department chair is quite different from teaching, and there is a learning curve for the position. The ASA must literally assist in the training of the Chair. In addition to the Chair’s position, the History Department ASA position has seen tremendous turnover since 2001-we are now on ASA employee #5. This creates more work for the ASC and chair and creates a certain instability in the department each time the position is vacated because the department is immediately short-staffed, the extra work of searching and recruiting a replacement is added to the workloads of other staff in the department and the continuity in department administration is diminished.

Generally, the areas most affecting the History Department staff workloads are: 1) faculty support; 2) faculty searches; 3) human resources; 4) payroll; 5) travel; 6) budget; 7) procurement; 8) and course scheduling.

The addition of a third staff position would help distribute the workload of the ASC to a more manageable level and allow the department to deal more effectively with the increase in staff workloads and complexity of job duties evolving within department staff positions.

While the History Department currently employs a student assistant to help with lower level clerical tasks, a student assistant cannot “fill in” for a vacant staff position. They do not perform the same duties and for obvious confidentiality reasons, a student cannot assist with many of the duties assigned to staff. The union and confidentiality issues for the student assistant position limits the scope of their job duties and therefore limits the assistance they can provide to staff and the department.

3. Total Operating Expense Budget

The History Department receives a budget allocation from the Dean’s office. In 2005-06, the Department’s Operating and Expense budget was $43,216 or approximately 2% of the Department’s entire budget of $1,998,000. Full-time faculty salaries accounted for approximately 63% of the total budget while part-time salaries comprised about 24% of the total budget.

2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06

Department Budget $1,616,698 $1,846,535 $1,958,652 $1,875,333 $1,990,982

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VII. Conclusion

The Department of History is a dynamic and expanding program. Being able to hire essentially a new department within the last ten years has brought vitality and enthusiasm to the department. The junior faculty also recognize the outstanding achievements and commitment of our senior colleagues.

The Department continues to place the highest priority on teaching, and our faculty also recognize the intrinsic relationship between scholarship, remaining current in the field, and providing the highest quality instruction. It is very important during these times of budget uncertainty that the University recognize this as well.

The Department also recognizes that there are areas in which we can and should improve. The following list highlights some of those areas:

1) Improve the overall advising program for undergraduates and graduates

2) Continue our very recent and dramatic involvement in teacher education work

3) Develop additional support for faculty research and travel

4) Provide more opportunities for faculty and student interaction

5) Continue developing a meaningful and useful assessment program and in particular improve attendance at the exit interviews

The Department welcomes this opportunity to carefully study and investigate its program, and we welcome the upcoming dialogue with the Program Review Committee.

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Appendices:

A. Strategic Planning Committee Memo (May 30, 2006)……………. 94B. Five-Year Tentative Hiring Priorities (March 2006)……………… 107C. History Department: Roadmap to the Major……………………… 111D. History Department Undergraduate Survey: Questionnaire…….. 112E. Graduate Student Survey: Questionnaire (Fall 2005)…………….. 113F. Graduate Student Survey: Results (Fall 2005)…………………….. 116G. Alumni Survey (2005): Program……………………………………. 117H. Alumni Survey (2005): Employment……………………………….. 118I. Sacramento State Library: Historical Materials Allocations…….. 119J. History Department Recommendation: Year 2000 Self-Study…… 120K. Electives for History Majors (upper division by course number)… 122L. History Course Syllabi………………………………………………. 125M. History Faculty Curriculum Vitae…………………………………. 126

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Appendix A:Strategic Planning Committee Memo

(May 30, 2006)

The following memo has been prepared by an ad-hoc Strategic Planning Committee (Professors Chloe Burke, Henry Chambers, George Craft, Becky Kluchin, Charles Postel, and Mona Siegel) of the History Department. This committee was formed in the spring semester 2006 to assist the Department and the Dean to think creatively about how the College and the University can better help our Department meet its goals. This memo will be presented to the Dean to facilitate a discussion about the ideas contained herein.

Summary: This memo opens by providing statistical data that demonstrates that the History Department serves more students and generates more revenue than virtually any other department in the College or across the University. It then outlines eight of the History faculty’s most pressing concerns, each followed by a proposal for how the concern could be effectively addressed. In brief, these concerns are:

1. The de facto three-course teaching load2. The availability of large classrooms3. The level of funding for graders4. Our shrinking numbers of full-time, tenure-track faculty5. Inadequate administrative support6. Inadequate support for research and conferences7. Uncompetitive salaries8. Inadequate library resources

In conclusion to the memo, we request that you meet with the members of our committee over the summer so that we might hear your impressions and so that we can lay out a plan of action together.

Background on the History DepartmentAll departments in Arts and Letters offer their own unique contribution to the College. It is both the privilege and the burden of the History Department that we offer one of the largest and strongest programs in the College. As such, we teach far more students per faculty member than does virtually any other department in the College or in the University. To be blunt, we are truly a “cash cow” at Sacramento State, and we work very hard to produce these results without compromising our students’ education. This record, however, is not without its costs in terms of faculty retention and morale. The following statistics help elucidate the History Department’s contribution to the College and the University:

FTEs

- During the 2004-2005 academic year, the History Department averaged 841.5 FTEs per semester. In the College, only English and Communication Studies generated more FTES, though these departments did so with considerably more faculty (FTEF), as can be seen in the numbers below.

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- What is more, when it comes to generating FTES, the Department of History outpaces virtually every other department across the University. Outside the College of Arts and Letters, only Criminal Justice and Management generated more FTES than History. In 2004-2005, the History Department generated double the FTES of Economics, Accounting, Kinesiology, and Nursing, to give a few examples.

- Between 2000 and 2005, the number of FTEs generated by the History Department rose 23.4%. It has risen by 38.2% over the past 10 years.

- In the current (2005-2006) academic year, even as numbers of student enrollments have fallen across the campus, History Department enrollment has remained strong.

Class size and student/faculty ratio3

- In the Fall 2005, the average section size for History faculty was 43.3 students. This was compared to 26.5 students for the College and 29.6 students for the University. No other department in the College is producing anything comparable when it comes to average section size.

- Unsurprisingly, the Student/Faculty ratio for History faculty is also very high. In Fall 2005, this equaled 30 students/faculty member as compared to 21.9 for the College and 22.5 for the University.

- The Student/Faculty ratio in the History Department has risen steadily from 27.5 students 10 years ago to 30 students in the Fall 2005. In other words, our faculty have been carrying an increasingly heavy teaching burden with each passing year.

History majors

- The History Department has recorded a rise in the number of students signing up as majors over the past five years. In the Fall 2005, the History Department had 414 undergraduate majors, a 32% increase over Fall 2000. This makes us the third largest department in the College in terms of undergraduate majors.

Graduate students- The growth in our graduate program has been even more steady and dramatic. In

Fall 2004 we counted 100 graduate students in history, a 33% jump since 2000. Along with English, we have, by far, the largest graduate program in the College.

3 Please note: these numbers were derived from the “History Program Profile” from the Office of Institutional Research. A recent report from the College entitled “SFR and budget allocations for 2004-2005” utilizes a different calculation, but it also shows the History Department with a much higher student faculty ratio (30.22) than any other department in Arts and Letters (college average SFR was 20.19). This report also lists the History department as the most cost efficient department in the college at $2,224 per FTES. The college average at the same time was $3212. For the OIR data, see: http://www.oir.csus.edu/Assessment/Prog_lvl/ProgRev/program_profiles/fall_2005/HIST.cfm.

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Retention and graduation rates

- Relative to both the College and the University, the History Department does a very effective job of retaining and guiding our undergraduate majors to graduation. Over the past five years, an average of 51% of native History students graduated within six years. This figure corresponds to 38% for the College and 40% for the University.

Faculty

- Our numbers of full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty are down. In the Fall 2005, the History Department had 19 full-time, tenured or tenure-track faculty members. This is down from 2003 when it had a 21 full-time, tenure-track faculty members.

- The decline in faculty has come at a time when we are teaching and counseling far more history majors and graduate students and attracting more of the general student population to our classes.

- Over 50% of our courses are taught by part-time faculty, well above the target of 25% considered optimal by the College.

Concerns and ProposalsAs a department, we are proud of our service to the College and the University, and we work extraordinarily hard to make the above numbers possible. Even more important, we strive in every way imaginable to teach the large numbers of students, majors, and graduate students that we do without sacrificing quality of education. Nonetheless, we again reiterate our achievements have not come without very real costs. We have lost three junior faculty members in the past three years, some of our most promising teacher scholars. Workload, inadequate support for teaching and research, and cost of living are three of the most important factors driving talented people away. They are also making Sacramento State less competitive than peer institutions when it comes to recruitment, and they are eroding the morale of those who are working hard to build their careers at this institution. Unless the most pertinent matters of concern to the History Department are addressed, we will not be able to recruit and retain the type of committed faculty that have made our department the success that it is. We will not be able to meet the needs of our students or our service obligations to the College and University. Our specific concerns are outlined in the following pages, and each is followed by a proposal or proposals on how to best address the concern. We sincerely hope in outlining our ideas as well as our concerns, we can begin to move quickly toward mutually beneficial solutions.

Concern: The de facto three-course load

- One of the few ways that the College has recognized the extraordinary burden carried by History faculty in the past is by allowing large lecture courses to count as 6 WTUs. Thus, faculty teaching these courses have effectively carried a three course load. In fact,

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many of the faculty who have joined the Department over the past five years have come here with the expectation of a de facto three course load, leaving them at least a small amount of time for new course development and/or research. This policy has benefited the College tremendously in that our classes very regularly fill to capacity or near capacity, and we routinely meet or exceed our FTE targets.

- This system of a de facto three course load has worked decently, but it has had drawbacks, with their attendant costs in the pedagogical coherence of our program and in faculty morale. At times, less-than-full classes have been canceled despite the department’s overall high FTE numbers. This practice leads our faculty to assume that the College only wants us to offer risk-free, popular courses even at the expense of our students’ overall knowledge. To follow this argument to its logical end, it would seem the College would be happy for us to focus exclusively on 20th century American cultural history since these courses pack the halls, and ignore the histories of Africa, or colonial America, or Native Americans. Such a practice is contrary to the University’s goal, as articulated in Destination 2010, of globalizing the curriculum. Even more important, a well-rounded history curriculum cannot and should not be based on a popularity contest. Some very important courses will always draw fewer students than others.

- This practice of canceling classes has also hurt faculty members who, upon joining the department, have tried to launch new or long-dormant classes only to have them canceled before they have a chance to build a constituency. And some of these classes had 20+ students, a normal enrollment for many other departments in the College! We have lost one faculty member over the past few years in no small part over this particular problem.

- This practice has taken a toll on the Chair of the Department as well, as every semester he or she must contact faculty members of “low” enrollment classes to warn them that their schedule might be in peril. The response, invariably, is anger and panic, directed at least in part at the Chair. Recent chairs have admitted that this is one of the most unpleasant tasks of the entire job.

- Faculty members who have been willing to teach a large section have, on occasion, been denied that opportunity because a large classroom was not available. Those faculty members have then been forced to teach an additional course, often added to their schedule at the last minute. Our course load should not be tied to the availability of classroom space.

- This de facto system of creating a three-course load has direct and negative repercussions in our plans for hiring, as each new faculty member brought on is also “competing” for large classrooms and students (most of the retiring faculty are FERPers and do not teach large classes). This leaves some members of our Department hesitant to hire desperately needed faculty out of fear that it will cost them their three-course load.

- While many of us have altered our pedagogical techniques to accommodate large classes at the lower-division, survey level, we are equally committed to maintaining smaller upper-division courses and seminars for our majors. It is here that we ask our students to

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discuss, critique, and write about historical topics in depth. While classes of 20 or fewer students are widely accepted as necessary for other disciplines in the college, no such recognition is accorded to History classes. For example, when we recently requested that enrollment in our sophomore-level “Introduction to History” seminar be lowered from 30 to 20 students, the Arts and Letters Budget and Curriculum Committee refused our request, even as they authorized small classes in other departments. If we are going to accommodate large classes at the survey level, we want it to benefit our majors at the upper-division level.

Proposal: Department autonomy

- The History Department wants the autonomy to determine how it will meet its FTE targets without remaining wed to the formal twelve unit load. There is precedence for such a move. The mandatory 12 WTU system was eliminated over a decade ago by the CSU as the base criteria for workload. Former President Gerth repeatedly encouraged departments to find alternatives to this earlier system. Other Colleges, including Business and Social Science, generally followed this path, as they found the 12 WTU system irrelevant for budgeting. They adopted FTEs as the only relevant criteria for department and college budgeting. Other History Departments within the system, including that at San Francisco State, have formalized the three course load in this way. We want to follow suit.

- More specifically, the Department would like the College to give the History Department a reasonable enrollment target (based on past performance and overall College and University enrollments) and leave us the management responsibility to achieve it. How the target is met would be a department-level decision, divorced from specific course load demands for any individual faculty member or individual class enrollment size. Such a target would be a department one for the combined full-time and part-time faculty allocation. The Chair would be responsible for achieving the FTE by allocating full-time and part-time faculty to courses to maintain the enrollment and History’s responsibilities to the History curriculum, GE, and the Teacher Education program.

- Such a proposal has numerous advantages:1) It allows us to follow a path that you have already expressed strong interest in,

based on your memo to department chairs dated March 17, 2006. 2) It will allow us to assure existing faculty a three course load, or occasionally even

less, for research and course development. 3) By establishing a course-load more in-line with peer institutions, we will be better

able to hire high caliber teachers and scholars. Sacramento State is currently at a competitive disadvantage. The heavy workload on top of exaggerated housing costs in California is going to make it ever harder to recruit and hold talented, young faculty members with each passing year.

4) It is consistent with the University goal, outlined in Destination 2010, of “pursuing workload configurations that will free larger blocks of time for faculty scholarly and creative activity.”

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- Such a proposal also depends on the Department of History’s ongoing access to large classrooms and grader support, as outlined below.

Concern: Availability of large classrooms

- As a department, we generate a very large number of FTEs in large part because we are able to regularly fill a dozen or more survey classes of 90-150 students. Our ability to do so, however, depends on access to the relatively small number of lecture halls available on this campus. The History Department gets no particular priority, however, in securing these rooms. It is forced to compete with other departments that may not be able to use the space as effectively. (We note, for example, that this semester an intermediate Japanese language class meets in one of the lecture halls. It appears that the seats are never more than ¼ full).

- Moreover, given the push to achieve high enrollments across the University, demand for these rooms is growing. Our current department secretary is very proficient in securing classrooms, but it is a cumbersome and time-consuming process, and it comes with no guarantees.

- Since the recent drop in enrollment has become such a concern, granting departments with the willingness and ability to generate FTEs priority over lecture halls would establish more efficient use of campus facilities.

Proposal: Dedicated large lecture hall

- Secure for the History Department one dedicated lecture hall, such as Mariposa 1000, which seats 120 students. The History Department would have priority use of the room. If the Department elected not to use the room, it could then be made available for other departments. We note that there is well-established precedence for such practice on this campus. In our building, Tahoe Hall, the Business school gets right of first use of all of the classrooms on the first floor. We also note that last year Acting Dean Tooker expressed sympathy for this idea, though she was unable to follow through at the time.

- We are pleased that next year the History Department will be given a time slot for the Music Hall for the first time in many years. Though the room has many drawbacks (no desks for the students to write on, for example), we are going to give it try. If we are able to use the room effectively, we hope that we will continue to be given access to the room.

- Finally, it is vital that as part of Destination 2010, the University plan to build more large lecture halls. We hope that you, as the Dean, can stress the importance of this type of planning to the higher administration.

Concern: Funding for graders adequate to departmental needs and equitable distribution of GA funds throughout the College

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- Our ability to meet our FTE target is entirely dependent on the ability of the Department to hire assistants to help with the grading in these courses. In recent years, the College support for GAs in the History Department has been worse than inadequate, and it has forced the Department to raid its own very minimal budget in order to meet its grading needs. The Department should not be forced to give up on basic supplies like paper or basic needs like photocopying to make up for what should rightfully be a separate line item in the budget.

- The current level of funding that the College grants to the History Department for GAs is not just inadequate, it is also grossly unfair when examined in comparison to GA budgets for other departments in the College. Let us be more specific:

- The current semester, Spring 2006, the College has budgeted to the History Department $4,244 for GAs. This compares to $23,340 for Communications, $10,609 for English, $12,731 for Foreign Languages, and $12,445 for Music.

- This means that while the History Department generates 83% of the FTEs that Communications does, it receives only 18% of the comparable budget for GAs.

- The History Department generates 71% of the FTEs that English does, but it receives only 40% of the comparable budget for GAs.

- The History Department generates 168% of the FTEs that Foreign Languages does, but it receives only 33% of the comparable budget for GAs.

- The History Department generates 196% the FTEs that Music does, but it receives only 34% of the comparable budget for GAs.

- The History Department, in other words, is being punished by the College for being the money maker that it is!

-- In the current academic year (2005-6), the History Department has been forced to spend

over $7000 per semester out of its general budget to pay for ISAs. This leaves us virtually no funds for basic supplies, let alone helping to pay for receptions for our students or travel money for our faculty. This practice cannot be sustained.

- Unionization of Graduate Assistants has made them more expensive and further depleted our departmental budget as we are forced to make up for our low GA budget allocation.

Proposal: Increased funding for GA line-item in the History Department budget to 15,500/semester.

- Fully funding the History Department’s need for graduate assistants is an inexpensive way for the College to help the History Department to teach a large number of students without excessively burdening individual faculty members. Similarly, it is an inexpensive way for the College to help the History Department meet its goal of a

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guaranteed 3-3 teaching load. Finally, grading for faculty allows our Masters degree candidates practical experience that will be particularly useful for those going on to Ph.D. programs or moving into teaching careers.

- The amount of $15,500 would cover the expenses of approximately 15 graders per semester. This would allow us to pay the approximately 11 graders/semester that we currently employ and allow us to hire a four more to help cover new large classes on the books (TV classes or classes scheduled for the Music Hall). Any additional money needed to fund ISAs would come from the general History Department budget, as in the past.

Concern: Inadequate number of full-time, tenure-track or tenured faculty to meet our teaching and service needs

- This spring (2006), the History Department has depended on the efforts of 24 lecturers who carried 43% of the department’s in-class enrollment. While their contribution is disproportionately at the lower-division level, 41% of our upper-division classes were taught by lecturers. In past semesters, the in-class enrollment carried by lecturers has topped 50%.

- Although we have a talented pool of long-time lecturers who have contributed substantially to our program, this pool is not large enough to meet all of our teaching needs, and our department is forced to expend considerable resources recruiting, hiring, and evaluating lecturers.

- The large number of lecturers has put extraordinary burdens on our administrative staff, who dedicate large numbers of hours to the paperwork involved with hiring and paying part-time faculty. It has also created a heavy workload for the full-time faculty in the department, who must evaluate each of the lecturers independently each year.

- Lecturers are not required to share the service work of the department, including advising students, overseeing curriculum, serving on committees, running department-sponsored programs and events, and other time-consuming projects. This burden falls disproportionately on the already over-burdened full-time faculty.

Proposal: Allow the department to hire 6 additional full-time, tenure-track faculty positions over the next few years, over and beyond replacing all retiring or departing faculty members.

- During the 2006-2007 school year, to meet its target of 863 FTES, the History Department will have access to 19 full-time faculty (although one is a full-time chair and two will be on professional leave), 5 FERP Faculty, and part-time faculty who will teach up to 330 WTUs (the equivalent of a total teaching staff of about 34 full-time faculty).

- To reach President Gonzalez’s goal of 75% instruction conducted by full-time faculty, the History Department needs to increase its number of full-time faculty to 25 by hiring

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at least 6 additional faculty. Since this calculation does not take into consideration FERPers who will be retiring in the next few years, or full-time faculty who accept other positions, the number of actual hires necessary to reach the 75% instruction goal is probably higher than 6.

- While we are anxious to bring our numbers up, we are also anxious to space these hires over several years so as to avoid having a “glut” of professors who arrive, advance, and depart, in close proximity. We are concerned about the overall and ongoing coherence of our program.

Concern: Inadequate administrative support

- Our department currently has 2 full-time administrative positions (ASC II and ASA II), which allows us to fund a department secretary and a graduate secretary. We also employ a part-time student assistant to help with low-level clerical tasks (photocopying, filing, etc.).

- Currently, this allotment is not sufficient to allow our department to meet its administrative needs. Our two full-time administrative assistants are literally swamped, and changes within the university and within the department have made their burden even heavier. The ongoing implementation of CMS and the decentralization of administrative work have both vastly increased the workload of our staff. The unionization of GAs has added to the administrative paperwork involved in hiring and pay.

- A number of departmental factors have also increased workload for our staff. We depend on a large number of lecturers (as noted above), and the staff members are responsible for overseeing their hiring, evaluation, etc. The hiring of 12 new junior faculty members over the past four years has created considerable work as well. Many of the new faculty members have received teaching and research grants, which require some administrative oversight from the department. With a large number of faculty preparing to retire over the next five years, this type of work is only likely to grow. In short, this situation is not sustainable, and we risk losing the talented and dedicated workers we currently employ.

Proposal: Create new administrative position and raise salaries of current administrative assistants

- Our department requires an additional full-time administrative assistant (ASC I). This person would be responsible for hiring part-time faculty, teaching associates, graduate assistants, instructional student assistants, and student assistants for the History Department and adhering to the University’s procedures in this area. The ASC I would function as a back-up for certain financial/budget responsibilities for the ASC II.

- Sacramento State has repeatedly sacrificed raises for support staff to other budget items. We cannot expect to retain our current assistants if they are not given regularly salaries increases. We hope the dean’s office will encourage the University to make this item a priority.

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Concern: Junior-faculty retention and inadequate support for research and conferences

- Heavy workload, canceled classes, and inadequate grading and administrative help are, sadly, not the only factors driving junior faculty away. Insufficient support for research is also a very important factor.

- Research at Sacramento State is not as well supported as it is at other comparable institutions. The faculty members we have lost over the past three years were committed to both effective teaching and strong research; it is not surprising that they chose to move to comparable universities that offered more support for research and conference funding.

- Junior faculty hired in recent years have been told by university representatives during their interviews that Sacramento State has made a commitment to supporting scholarly research and is actively recruiting teacher-scholars; yet few policies and programs exist to support this claim.

- In terms of conference funding, Research and Sponsored Projects offers $500 to a limited number of faculty who present papers at conferences. The History Department can frequently supplement this with $500 provided by the College, but this is not guaranteed. Given the cost of travel, hotels, and conference registration fees, this sum is often insufficient to fund attendance at one conference per year. Rarely can it support more. Poorly paid faculty members are thus forced to pay partially out of pocket if they want to present their latest research findings to their peers for feedback and review or keep up with the latest developments in their fields.

- Our faculty are also regularly asked to chair and comment on panels. They are also invited to serve as officers of professional organizations, positions which require attendance at annual conferences. To accept, however, often means paying for expenses out of pocket. Others decline because of the cost, both to the detriment of the faculty member’s own professional development and to the visibility of Sacramento State at a national level.

- Not only is regular conference attendance necessary for active scholarship, it is also an important part of teaching as it keeps teachers up-to-date in their field. The History Department’s success in recruiting new majors and graduate students and in maintaining high enrollment, even as enrollment has fallen across the University, can be attributed directly to the popularity of our faculty. And our faculty succeed in no small part because they are active and enthusiastic scholars who believe in the importance of their own research and that of their peers. A university committed to teaching and research requires the consistent funding of conference travel.

- In addition to their success as teachers, our faculty are prolific scholars who publish on a regular basis and who serve on committees and boards in their fields and in their communities. Our scholarly activities bring visibility to the University, College, and

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Department. In order for faculty to continue to be strong teacher-scholars, they need research support. Research and Sponsored Projects offers competitive grants in the form of Research and Creative Activity (RCA) awards; however, university funding for this program has decreased in recent years, at the same time that it has recruited more young and active scholars to campus. Twenty years ago the university offered awards of fifteen units of assigned time; now the maximum is six. This year the University had four and ½ positions to apply toward awards, and this was an increase from the three it offered just five years earlier. We are concerned that more of our promising junior faculty will leave us because they are unable to obtain the research support necessary to maintain a constant scholarly agenda. Research funding and faculty retention are intimately linked.

Proposal: Increase research and conference support

- The University and College should work together to provide adequate research support to allow all History faculty to maintain an active research agenda. Either the allotment of positions for RCAs needs to be raised dramatically, or additional sources of funding for research (money and assigned time) need to be found.

- Part of the need for additional conference money could be met if the College fully funded our graduate assistant needs, as outlined above. Some of the $7000/semester currently being spent on ISAs could then be devoted to helping faculty members cover the costs of travel to conferences. Alternatively, or in addition, the College of Arts and Letters could establish a conference fund intended to supplement the Research and Sponsored Projects awards, such that all faculty members would have the ability to attend at least one conference per year.

- The History Department specifically recommends that the University offer summer stipends to junior faculty members at two intervals, in the first and fourth summers of their tenure at Sacramento State. It should also offer some course release time during those same years. Summer stipends and assigned time will assist junior faculty members struggling to balance research and teaching, will demonstrate to junior faculty that the university does value research, will strengthen the reputation of the University, and will increase the quality of education for the students.

- Such a proposal helps fulfill the University’s commitment, outlined in Destination 2010, of “funding professional conference presentations and competitive summer projects at both the University and College levels.”

Concern: Junior-faculty retention and inadequate salaries

- The salaries of junior faculty at Sacramento State are not competitive, especially when placed in the context of the cost of living in Northern California. The cost of living is too high for most junior faculty to live comfortably with their families in the Sacramento area; indeed, in some cases it actually qualifies them for low-income housing!

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- Low salaries and high cost of living are a significant obstacle to the goal laid out in Destination 2010 of being able to “continue attracting and retaining top teacher-scholars.”

Proposal: Offer higher starting salaries to incoming faculty and raise the salaries of current faculty commensurately

- This issue, clearly, needs to be addressed at the University or even System level, but it should be forefront among the priorities of the College. The current furor over the “experience penalty” (salary inversion and salary compression) as well as over SSIs shows just how passionately the junior faculty feel about these issues. They will not go away, and they will take a huge toll in faculty morale and retention until they are addressed.

Concern: Inadequate library resources for our students

- History faculty simply cannot teach without adequate access to monographs, primary source collections, professional journals, and digital materials.

- For the past eight years, the library has suffered repeated and dramatic decreases in its budget. In the 1998-1999 academic year, the library was allocated almost $25,000 to purchase history monographs. Today, that figure stands at less than $5000. And this alarming decrease has come at the same time that the average price of a monograph has risen dramatically. Collections in American and European history are now utterly out-of-date, while the collections in the histories of Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and minority cultures within America and Europe are embarrassingly sparse. While faculty members can reasonably be expected to conduct their research partially in outside, research libraries, the same is not the case for undergraduate students and graduate students, who struggle to write research papers and theses based on the holdings in our library.

- We are particularly concerned that in determining the library budget for individual departments, the University looks to enrollments rather than discipline-specific needs. Historians need library resources more than specialists in other disciplines. Utilizing this logic, history should receive the same amount of money for lab equipment as biology! For historians, the library is our lab. With inadequate resources in the library, we cannot do our jobs.

Proposal: Reinstate the library budget for purchasing history monographs, at least to 1998-1999 levels.

- We hope that the Dean of the College of Arts & Letters will be able to serve as our voice at campus level budgetary meetings, emphasizing that for historians, libraries are our “labs.” While we appreciate money put into digital media, at this point in time, monographs, journals, and printed sources remain the starting point for all that we do with our students, inside and beyond the classroom.

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- We also hope that the Dean will stress that in order for the University to meet its goal, expressed in Destination 2010, of “increasing curricular attention to the role of globalization and immigration in shaping definitions of diversity and developing the ‘New California,’” the University library will need to significantly increase its holdings in the histories of global societies as well as minority groups within the United States.

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Appendix B: Five-Year Tentative Hiring Priorities

(March 2006)

Fall 2006Modern Mexico: The retirement of Richard Kornweibel creates a major void in our curriculum, making this position a top priority. The colonial and national histories of Latin America, especially Mexico, are of great interest to our students and an integral part of our world history curriculum. We are thus looking for a scholar who enhances our undergraduate and graduate offerings in the history of Mexico. This person would be responsible for teaching both halves of the History of Mexico series (HIST 135A and HIST 135B) and both halves of the History of Modern and Contemporary Latin America series (HIST 138A and HIST 138B). Responsibilities will also include lower-division survey courses in world or United States history.

Early America: In 2004, our department lost our only colonial and revolutionary historian. In order to remain a well-rounded department, it is important for us to regularly offer HIST 150 Colonial America and HIST 151 The Age of the American Revolution. In addition, alterations in the history pre-credential program (specifically the addition of a new pre-1900 upper-division US history requirement) and the creation of the Liberal Studies course HIST 187: Topics in United States History 1600-1900 make adding a historian of this period a high priority. We are interested in scholars with special teaching and research expertise in any of the following areas: European empire and colonization, the Atlantic World, the Caribbean, race relations, Native American peoples, law, women, slavery, the age of revolution, and early borderlands. We see this position as complementing our department’s desire to promote an understanding of American history in a global context. This person would also be responsible for teaching HIST 17A.

Chicano/a History: Sacramento State’s changing and diverse student population make having a historian who can regularly teach Mexican-American history especially attractive. We believe that bolstering and extending our offerings in this area would reach a large and growing percentage of our student body (14% of Sacramento State students in 2004-05 described themselves as ethnically “Hispanic”) while also enhancing the depth and breadth of our department. Subfield, geography, and time period are open. In addition to courses in the individual’s sub-field, this hire would be expected to teach HIST 178: Mexican-American history, HIST 186: Ethnic Minorities in California History, HIST 17A and/or 17B, and possibly the newly designed liberal studies courses in United States and California history. The department would also expect that the faculty member would develop additional courses related to Chicano/a history.

British Empire/South Asia: A combined search in British and South Asian history will greatly enhance the depth and breadth of our department’s current offerings. British history and the history of the British Empire have long been taught at Sac State. With the retirement of Karl von Den Steinen our department will loose its main resource in this field. At the same time the historiography of British and British Imperial history has increasingly focused on the cultural and political relationship with the empire’s colonial holdings in South Asia. We

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are therefore proposing that our search for a historian of modern Britain be combined with a search for a scholar of modern South Asia. The ideal candidate will be a scholar who will be able to teach courses in the social, cultural, intellectual, and political history of Britain and South Asian since the eighteenth century. This position will add to our existing strengths in modern European history as well as add to our desire to expand our coverage of non-western and Asian history.

Fall 2007Ancient History – The Department of History will lose its sole ancient historian to retirement in the Fall 2007.  We have three very popular history classes on the books:  Ancient Near East (HIST 110), Ancient Rome (Hist 111), and Ancient Greece (Hist 112).  Further popular courses in the classical era overlap with the Humanities and Religious Studies program.  Moreover, the History Department would welcome a scholar who could contribute expertise in the late Roman/Byzantine period.  Finally, with the establishment of the Hellenic Studies program on the Sacramento State campus, it is clear that the History Department must have a talented scholar committed to offering classes regularly in Ancient Greece.  A timely hire in this position will allow us to maintain continuity in our course offerings and to build upon students’ interest in the ancient period and the Hellenic world.

European History/Central Europe: Over the next three years, the Department of History will be losing three senior European historians to retirement. The remaining European historians in the department have geographical specialties in Great Britain, France, Russia, and Greece. Over half of us focus on the twentieth century. Currently we have no faculty members who specialize in the enormous territory stretching from the Rhine River to the Caucuses, and we have few whose primary research and teaching interests pre-date 1900 or extend beyond 1945. It is imperative that we hire a new faculty member who will allow us both to continue to meet our students’ demand for European history courses and to ensure broader geographic and chronological coverage. We are thus seeking to hire a scholar whose area of specialty is in Central Europe, and who will be responsible for offering courses in German and Eastern European history. We are particularly, though not exclusively, interested in candidates with research and teaching interests in early modern, 18th-19th century, or post-1945 Central Europe and in political or military history.

Fall 2008California: In 2010 the department will lose its California historian, Joe Pitti. California history has been and promises to remain a central part of our undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Social Science pre-credential students are required to take HIST 183B 1860-1970. In addition this person would likely teach HIST 183A and the newly-developed Liberal Studies course California Studies LBST 110. A large percentage of our masters students work in California history making an energetic individual willing to help direct such projects essential. This individual would also be expected to teach lower division surveys and upper-level courses in American history.

Fall 2009Native American History: The importance of Native American history and culture to both California and U.S. history suggest that the department should continue to offer courses in

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this area after Charles Roberts retires. This faculty member may develop new courses and teach our existing courses including Native American People (HIST 172); American Indian Ethnohistory (HIST 171); and California Indian History (HIST 185).

Fall 2010China – The rising importance of China in the global community has made it imperative for Americans to understand the complex cultural, political, and economic history that has shaped the modern Chinese state. Currently, the Department of History has only one Asianist and one world historian who teach courses on Asia, and their specialties are respectively Japan and colonial Indochina. This hire will allow us to broaden our course offerings in Asian history, strengthen our existing Asian Studies program, and meet the growing demand across the disciplines for courses on China. To help expand the chronological coverage of our world history curriculum, we are particularly interested in candidates whose scholarly and teaching interests predate the Qing dynasty (pre-1644). Candidates for this position will also be able to teach a survey course in World Civilizations up to 1600.

Asian American Race/Ethnicity: Although the department has many American historians as well as two Asian historians, we do not have a scholar who specializes in the Asian American experience. This specific area of expertise has particular significance to our diverse student body and to this region, and for these reasons we believe that it is important to include such a scholar among our ranks. We are seeking a candidate with expertise in American ethnicity, with particular interest in Asian American history. This hire will be expected to teach undergraduate and graduate seminars in Asian American history as well as introductory surveys of American history.

History of Science/Technology:  Given the tremendous contemporary emphasis on science and technology across fields and disciplines, as well as in K-12 education, the History Department believes that a large and natural student constituency for courses in the history of science and technology already exists.  We are interested in attracting a diverse pool of candidates to this job, and thus do not intend to restrict the position by geographical focus or chronological field.  This person would be asked to develop general undergraduate surveys in science, technology, and society that might appeal to engineering, science, and pre-medical students as well as to history students.  He or she would also be invited to develop upper-division courses and graduate seminars in his/her field of specialty.  Finally, we would like this person to contribute to the recently established Center for Science, History, Policy, and Ethics.

Jewish History— Jewish history intersects with a number of fields and specializations already represented in our department (American history, European history, Middle Eastern history, and Asian history). We have not, however, traditionally offered courses focusing specifically on Jewish history and culture. Given our interest in expanding our course offerings into new areas that have traditionally been underrepresented in our department, we would like to propose establishing a new position in Jewish history. Our interest is to define Jewish history broadly, without respect to geographical focus or chronological field. The ideal candidate would develop courses in his or her area of specialization at the upper-

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division and graduate level, and teach the lower division survey that best corresponds with his or her academic training. In addition, given our ongoing collaboration with the Humanities and Religious Studies department we should consider the possibility of pursuing this as a joint position with that department.

* Approved at the March 4, 2006 History Department faculty meeting.

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Appendix C:History Department: Roadmap To The Major

This is a suggested guideline for a full-time History major who has already fulfilled the University foreign language requirement. Many students will not be able to follow the suggested roadmap exactly because of schedule conflicts, reduced load, or additional requirements for a minor, double major, or GE. This roadmap does not replace formal major advising, and it is not a substitute for general education advising.

FRESHMAN YEAR

First Semester Second SemesterHist 21 Freshman Seminar%

Hist 17A*

GE requirements

Hist 17B*Hist 4# OR Hist 50#

GE requirements

SOPHOMORE YEAR

First Semester Second SemesterHist 5# OR Hist 51#

GE Requirements

Hist 100Hist upper-division elective (3 units)

Take Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE)

GE requirements

JUNIOR YEAR

First Semester Second SemesterHist 100 (if not taken as a sophomore)Hist upper-division electives (6 units)

Any remaining GE requirements

Hist upper-division electives (6 units)

Any remaining GE requirements

SENIOR YEAR

First Semester Second SemesterHist 192+ (A, B, or C)

Hist upper-division elective (3 units)

Any unfinished requirements for graduation, 120 units required

Hist 197+ (A, B, or C)

Hist upper-division elective (3 units)

Any unfinished requirements for graduation, 120 units required

% Does not count for the major* Counts both for major and general education area D3# Counts both for major and general education area C1+ Must have passed WPE to enroll

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Appendix D:History Department Undergraduate Survey: Questionnaire

(Spring 2006)

The History Department is very interested in your judgment of how well our program and classes are meeting your needs and expectations. The results of this survey will be included in our departmental Self-Study report. Please complete this survey using the following scale (written comments may be made on the back of this form ):

-- PLEASE COMPLETE THIS FORM ONLY ONE TIME --

1. I am a: A = Freshman; B = Sophomore; C = Junior; D = Senior; E = 2nd BA or Open Univ.; F = Graduate Student

2. Classification: A = History Major; B = History Major/PreCredential; C = Other 3. This is a A = Seminar; B = Writing Intensive Course; C = Lecture Course_______________________________________________________________________A = Strongly Agree B =Agree C = Neither Agree or DisagreeD = Disagree E = Strongly Disagree F = Not Applicable_______________________________________________________________________My studies as a major in history have:4. ___ increased my appreciation of American history and culture;5. ___ increased my appreciation of the history of other cultures;6. ___ improved my critical and analytical skills;7. ___ improved my research skills;8. ___ improved my writing ability;9. ___ improved my ability to express my views in group discussions;10. ___ made me more aware of the complexity of historical events;11. ___ made me more interested in politics and current events;12. ___ helped me determine my career goals.13. ___ The courses I needed/wanted were available at times when I could take them.14. ___ The professors were available during office hours.15. ___ The History Department staff was helpful when I needed their assistance.16. ___ The graduate and teaching assistants were helpful when I consulted them.17. ___ I am satisfied with the quality of student advising in the History Department.18. ___ I am satisfied with the quality of instruction from the professors.19. ___ I found the History Department newsletter useful.20. ___ I would recommend the history major to others.

WRITTEN COMMENTS MAY BE MADE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SCANTRON FORM

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Appendix E:Graduate Student Survey: Questionnaire

(Fall 2005)

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Which program are you in?1. Standard M.A 2. M.A in Public History3. Joint Ph.D. in Public Historical Studies

2. Did you have a B.A. in history before beginning the graduate program here? 1. Yes 2. No

3. What was your overall GPA as an undergraduate?1. = 3.5-4.0 2. 3.0-3.49 3. 2.5-2.99 4. 2.0-2.49 5. less than 2.0

4. How would you describe your background in history PRIOR to arriving at Sacramento State?1. Well Prepared 2. Adequately Prepared 3. Moderately Prepared 4. Poorly Prepared 5. Not Prepared at all

5. How many years have you been at Sacramento State? 1 2 3 4 5 6=6+

6. How many graduate classes have you taken at Sacramento State?1 2 3 4 5 6=6+

7. What is your GPA in graduate classes at Sacramento State?1. = 3.5-4.0 2. 3.0-3.49 3. 2.5-2.99 4. 2.0-2.49 5. less than 2.0 6. Don’t have a GPA

8. How many hours per week do you work? 1 = Full-time (30 or more hours) 2 = Part-time (10 – 30 hours) 3 = Less than half-time ( 1 – 10 hours) 4 = None

9. Do you plan on completing a Masters Thesis or Public History Project for your culminating requirement? 1 = Yes 2 = No

10. What do you hope to do after receiving your degree here?1. Teach at a Junior or Community College2. enter into a Ph.D. program in history 3. Teach secondary or elementary education4. work in a museum or archival repository5. other 6. do not know

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11. Are you interested serving as a grader or graduate assistant within the Department?1 = Yes 2 = No

DEPARTMENT ASSESSMENT: Please use the following scale to reflect yoru opinion or judgment on the following statements:

1. Strongly Agree 2. Agree 3. Neither agree nor disagree4. Disagree 5. Strongly Disagree 6. Not Applicable

12. Courses that I needed/wanted were available.

13. Courses were available when I wanted to/could take them.

14. When I entered the graduate program, I knew what courses I wanted to/should take.

15. When I entered the program, I knew what my career options were.

16. Professors have been available for consultation about courses and career options.

17. The Department office staff has been helpful when I needed assistance.

18. I am happy with the quality of student advising in the Department.

19. I am happy with the quality of instruction from the professors in graduate seminars.

20. I am happy with the amount and quality of contact with fellow graduate students.

21. I have found the resources at Sacramento State’s library adequate for my studies and research.

22. I have found the required historiography classes (HIST 201, HRS 202) useful for furthering my understanding of various approaches to history.

23. I have found the Research Seminars (HIST 200) useful in developing my skills as a practitioner of history.

24. I have found the Reading Seminars (HIST 280 and HIST 281) useful in providing me with a deeper understanding of the respective topics.

25. I have found the Elective Courses I have taken useful in enhancing my graduate school experience.

26. I have taken or plan on taking the HIST 400: Teaching History in College course.

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27. Overall the courses I have taken in the program have increased my critical and analytical skills in history.

28. The courses that I have taken in the program have enhanced my skills as a researcher and writer.

29. The courses that I have taken in the program have increased my knowledge of history.

30. I am pleased with the overall experience with the Department’s Graduate Program.

31. I believe that the graduate program at Sacramento State has or will provide me the skills that I need in order to be successful in my chosen career.

32. I would recommend the history graduate program at Sacramento State to a friend.

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Appendix F:Graduate Student Survey: Results

(Fall 2005)

StandardPub Hist

Hist/HRS

Pub Hist

MA MA MA Ph.D.Question N=26 N=13 N=3 N=112. When I entered the program, I knew what courses I wanted to/should take. 3.77 3.92 4.67 413. When I entered the program, I knew what my career options were. 4.04 3.54 2.67 314. I found the Graduate Coordinator available and helpful. 3.52 3.9 4 415. Professors have been available for consultation about courses and career options. 4.17 4.46 4.33 516. I am satisfied with the advising I have received from readers. 4.23 4.38 4.67 417. The Department office staff has been helpful when I needed assistance. 4.09 4.25 4 518. I am satisfied with the overall quality of student advising in the Department. 3.82 4.17 4 519. Courses that I needed/wanted were available. 3 3.54 2.67 420. Courses were available when I wanted to/could take them. 3.27 3.46 2.67 421. I am satisfied with the quality of instruction from professors in graduate seminars. 4.69 4.17 5 422. I am satisfied with the amount and quality of contact with fellow graduate students. 3.85 4.31 4.33 523. I have found the resources at Sacramento State's library adequate for my studies and research. 3.5 3.85 2.33 224. I have found the required historiography classes (201, 202) useful. 4.31 3.18 4.5 425. I have found the Research Seminars (200) useful in developing my skills. 4.31 4.13 4.5 426. I have found the Reading Seminars (280, 281) useful. 4.6 4.22 4.33 427. I have found the Elective Courses I have taken useful. 4.09 4.08 4 528. I have taken or plan on taking HIST 400: Teaching History in College. 3.76 3.3 5 529. Overall the courses I have taken have enhanced my critical and analytical skills. 4.5 4.31 4.33 530. The courses have enhanced my skills as a researcher and writer. 4.5 4.46 4.33 531. The courses have increased my knowledge of history. 4.73 4.54 4.33 532. I am pleased with the overall experience with the Department's Graduate Program. 4.35 4.08 4 533. The program has or will provide me skills I need to be successful in my career. 4.31 4.15 4.33 434. I would recommend the history graduate program at Sacramento State to a friend. 4.23 4.15 4067 5Overall Average for Category 2 4.07 4.03 4.05 4.35

Note: Students were asked to use the following scale to reflect their judgment on these statements:Strongly Agree; Agree; Neutral; Disagree; Strongly Disagree; Not Applicable. The way these numbers are tabulated by the computers Strongly Agree reflects a 5 (positive) and Strongly Disagree a 1 (negative). The above are cummulative numbers of these figures broken down by program. More specific breakdowns for these numbers are available.

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Appendix G:Alumni Survey (2005): Program

Rate your level of satisfaction in specific aspects of the History programVery       Very

 130 Respondents Dissatisfied Dissatisfied Neutral Satisfied Satisfied% % % % % Average

Your access to and/or help from History faculty 3% 2% 8% 37% 50% 4.28Your access to and/or help from the History Department staff/Department Chair 3% 9% 20% 35% 30% 3.81Your knowledge of what was going on in the Department (e.g., Newsletter, Clio, announcements, postings, etc.)

2% 17% 42% 23% 14% 3.32Written skills taught in the History curriculum 1% 3% 7% 38% 52% 4.36Research skills taught in the History curriculum 2% 5% 5% 29% 58% 4.38Communication skills taught in the History curriculum 2% 5% 26% 43% 25% 3.85Overall quality of instruction provided by the History faculty 3% 1% 7% 47% 42% 4.25Overall quality of education you received as a History major 3% 2% 6% 48% 42% 4.23

A. Did the Faculty inspire you to continue studying history?

  Percent 4%No 14%Yes 82%Total 100%

B. Did the Department’s scheduling of classes to allow you to graduate within a reasonable amount of time?

  PercentBlank 2%No 5%Yes 94%Total 100%

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Appendix H:Alumni Survey (2005): Employment

Which bests describes your first job or educational experience after graduation?  Frequency PercentBlank 2 2%Work For local, state or federal government 21 16%Graduate School 18 14%Teaching Credential Program 26 20%Work in the private sector 47 35%Other 19 14%Total 133 100%

"Other" Experience  Frequency PercentSecondary School, Assistant Librarian 1 5%Teaching K-12 substitute, community college" 1 5%Adjunct Professor at a Community College 1 5%Community College Professor 1 5%Housewife 1 5%Intern positions at various museums. 1 5%Military 1 5%N/A 1 5%non-profit museum 1 5%none 1 5%Nonprofit organization 1 5%nonprofit- Americorps 1 5%Private Law School program 1 5%Solo Proprietor of Coffee House 1 5%Stay at home mom 2 11%Still in litigation; re: mom's Trust 1 5%Teaching community college 1 5%U.S. Army 1 5%Total 19 100%

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Appendix I:Sacramento State Library:

Historical Materials Allocations

Year Books

1967/68 $15,6791968/69                    $33,5981969/70                                                               $18,0001970/71 $24,0001971/72 $34,0001972/73 $42,1371973/74 $36,0001974/75 $28,93975/76 $25,5031976/77 $18,3081977/78 $19,1381978/79 $16,5121980/81 $31,5341981/82 $38,1841982/83 $28,5981983/84 $44,4001984/85 $46,4001985/86 $46,4001986/87 $45,6001987/88 $39,6201988/89 $35,9501989/90 $39,4801990/91 $36,0051991/92 $32,3331992/93 $33,5091993/94 $34,1131994/95 $24,3521995/96 $26,2071996/97 $36,7131997/98 $37,0611998/99 $24,6511999/00 $19,9362000/01 $16,1192001/02 $14,5832002/03 $13,6432003/04 $13,1822004/05 $10,4522005/06 $ 4,888

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Appendix J:History Department Recommendation: Year 2000 Self-Study

We recommend that the Department of History study and take action on the following issues:

Recommendation 1 -- The Department found a History Club to allow students who do not meet Phi Alpha Theta membership standards to participate in the honor society’s activities.

Recommendation 2 – The Department faculty undertake in 2000-2001 a fund-raising campaign to create undergraduate scholarships for History students.

Recommendation 3 – The Department implement the 1995 Advising Policy to improve academic and career advising for History and History/Social Science students.

Recommendation 4 – The Department investigate ways to improve career counseling for our graduate students with particular attention to community college placement.

Recommendation 5 – The World History Division rethink the articulation and sequencing of its course offerings with initial emphasis on European history.

Recommendation 6 – In its full-time hires over the next several years the Department make reasonable efforts to expand the number of faculty members from “diverse” backgrounds.

Recommendation 7 – The Department list part-time instructors with one-year or two-year contracts by name in the Class Schedule, and consider other ways to improve the status of part-time instructors in the Department.

Recommendation 10 – The Department appoint an Ad Hoc Committee to study possible changes in the administrative and governance structure of the Department of History.

Recommendation 11 -- The Department investigate ways to improve the accuracy and comprehensiveness of information available to community college students about the Social Science Precredential Program.

Recommendation 12 – The Department study the graduate historiography sequence (History 201 and 202) with an eye to including more recent history theory.

Recommendation 13 – The Departments of History and of Humanities/Religious Studies look into the structure of the History/Humanities Concentration with an eye to strengthening the History component and ensuring that all required courses are offered with sufficient frequency.

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We address the following recommendations to the University:

Recommendation 8 – The University authorize the Department of History to hire two new faculty per year for at least the next five years so that the Department will have approximately 18 full-time faculty on its books in 2007. This is the key recommendation without which all the others will be in vain.

Recommendation 9 – The University at least triple its support for faculty research efforts over the next two years.

Recommendation 14 – The University improve janitorial and maintenance services to create a better learning environment for students and faculty.

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Appendix K:Electives for History Majors (upper division by course number)

HIST 101 History of Modern GreeceHIST 103 Mediterranean Europe: From the Renaissance to the European

UnionHIST 105 Great Ages and Issues in Modern EuropeHIST 107 History of the Physical SciencesHIST 109 Medieval England to 1485HIST 110 The Ancient Near East: A Cultural HistoryHIST 111 Ancient GreeceHIST 112 Ancient RomeHIST 113 Early Medieval EuropeHIST 114 Europe in the High Middle AgesHIST 115 The Renaissance and Reformation in EuropeHIST 116 Europe, 1648-1815, The Age of RevolutionHIST 117 Europe, 1815-1914HIST 118A World War I: Causes, Conduct, ConsequencesHIST 118B World War II: Causes, Conduct, ConsequencesHIST 119 Europe Since 1945HIST 121 Democracy and Human Rights in the Era of the French

Revolution and NapoleonHIST 122A History of Women in Western Civilization,

Prehistory-Middle AgesHIST 122B History of Women in Western Civilization,

Renaissance-PresentHIST 124A Warfare: Alexander to NapoleonHIST 124B European Warfare from the French Revolution to the PresentHIST 125 Twentieth Century GermanyHIST 126 Evolution of Christianity to the ReformationHIST 127 Evolution of Christianity Since the ReformationHIST 128A Tudor and Stuart EnglandHIST 128B British History, 1714-PresentHIST 129A Russia 800-1917HIST 129B Twentieth Century RussiaHIST 130 The Fall of CommunismHIST 131 Contemporary World History Project

(designed for pre-credential students)HIST 132 Topics in World History

(designed for pre-credential students)HIST 135A History of MexicoHIST 135B Revolutionary and Modern MexicoHIST 138A Modern and Contemporary Latin AmericaHIST 138B Modern and Contemporary Latin AmericaHIST 141 History of Africa

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HIST 142 The History of Women in AfricaHIST 143A Middle Eastern History to 1800HIST 143B The Modern Middle EastHIST 146A Cultural History of Japan to 1800HIST 146B Modern Japan, 1800-PresentHIST 148A China: Antiquity to 1600 A.D.HIST 148B China: 1600 to PresentHIST 149 Southeast Asian HistoryHIST 150 Colonial AmericaHIST 151 The Age of the American RevolutionHIST 152 Young Republic, 1790-1840HIST 153 Civil War and Reconstruction, 1840-1890HIST 154 20th Century United States, 1890-1940HIST 155 20th Century United States, 1941-PresentHIST 156 The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of RageHIST 157 History of International Relations in the 20th CenturyHIST 158 Military History of the United StatesHIST 159 History of U.S. Foreign RelationsHIST 160 The United States in Vietnam, 1940-1975HIST 161 The American VisionHIST 162 Social History of the United StatesHIST 163 The City in U.S. HistoryHIST 164 History of American CapitalismHIST 165 American Environmental HistoryHIST 166 Popular CultureHIST 167 History of American WomenHIST 168 Images of AmericaHIST 169 Hollywood and AmericaHIST 170 History of Religion in the United StatesHIST 171 American Indian EthnohistoryHIST 172 Native American PeopleHIST 173 The History of the Civil Rights Movement: From Reconstruction to

Deconstruction, 1865-1997HIST 174 Women in North America and Britain, 1600-1850HIST 176 African Cultural Heritage in the AmericasHIST 177 The African-American Experience, 1603-PresentHIST 178 Mexican-American HistoryHIST 179 American Immigration HistoryHIST 182 American WestHIST 183A California History, 1542-1860HIST 183B California History, 1860-1970HIST 184 California Architecture and Urban HistoryHIST 185 California Indian HistoryHIST 186 Ethnic Minorities in California HistoryHIST 187 Topics in United States History 1600-1900

(designed for pre-credential students)

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HIST 195 History InternshipHIST 196 Experimental Offerings in HistoryHIST 199 Special Problems

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Appendix L:History Course Syllabi

(see electronic course syllabi folder submitted to Academic Affairs)

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Appendix M:History Faculty Curriculum Vitae

(see electronic course syllabi folder submitted to Academic Affairs)

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