History, B.A./B.S. Student Learning Outcomes

Goal 1. Context: Students gain a broad, comparative understanding of the human past. Graduates with a BA/BS from the Department of History:

• Objective 1.1: Change and Continuity: Demonstrate both broad and deep knowledge of long-term historical developments.
• Objective 1.2: Diversity: Understand how societies have constructed and experienced history across time, place, and person.
• Objective 1.3: Explanation: Explain distinctions between different historical periods, places, actors, events, and forces by using disciplinary categories of analysis and academic language.

Goal 2. Critical Thinking: Students learn to think critically about the past and develop the curiosity needed to pursue in-depth knowledge of particular historical subjects. Graduates with a BA/BS from the Department of History:

• Objective 2.1: Consciousness: Display an appreciation of causation, chronology, contingency, complexity, multiple perspectives, historical empathy, and contemporary relevance.
• Objective 2.2: Curiosity: Develop the ability to ask historical questions in the language of the discipline.
• Objective 2.3: Historical Scholarship: Read works of historical scholarship for argument, historiographical context, and perspective.
• Objective 2.4: Historical Record: Use primary sources to address historical questions.

Goal 3. Creativity: Students develop original and complex interpretations of the past. Graduates with a BA/BS from the Department of History.

• Objective 3.1: Research and Engaged Learning: Use libraries, archives, museums, databases, reference works, and other research resources to locate primary and secondary sources
• Objective 3.2: Discovery: Design, research, and write original interpretations that are based on evidence from the historical record and situated within relevant scholarly literatures.

Goal 4. Communication: Students express historical interpretations both orally and in writing. Graduates with a BA/BS from the Department of History:

• Objective 4.1: Expression: Convey oral and written explanations of the past in clear and grammatically correct language.
• Objective 4.2: Convention: Write in the conventions of the discipline of history and conform to the profession’s current practices of citation and quotation.

• HIST 495 Assessment (1-4)
• HIST 495 Exit Survey (1-4)