HIST PPR 2019-20-Final
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
1 California State University, Fullerton College of the Humanities and Social Sciences DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY PROGRAM PERFORMANCE REVIEW 2019-20 SELF-STUDY January 31, 2020 CONTENTS AND ELEMENTS OF THE SELF-STUDY I. Department Mission, Goals, and Environment 2 II. Department Description and Analysis 6 III. Documentation of Student Academic Achievement and 13 Assessment of Student Learning Outcomes IV. Faculty 16 V. Student Support and Advising 18 VI. Resources and Facilities 22 VII. Long-Term Plans 24 VIII. Appendices Connected to the Self-Study 27 2 Part I: Department Mission, Goals and Environment A. Briefly describe the mission and goals of the unit and identify any changes since the last program review. Review the goals in relation to the University mission, goals and strategies. The Department of History’s mission is to serve a diverse body of students as they learn to interpret the past, function as engaged citizens, and prepare for professional careers. In this endeavor, it fosters a vibrant intellectual community of students, faculty, and alumni committed to rigorous, evidence-based critical perspectives on the past and informed engagement with the Southern California region and the world beyond. The Department is committed to preparing its graduates to thrive in and serve an interconnected global environment, developing research and communication skills to shape a more just and equitable world. We pride ourselves on balancing an undergraduate major, a graduate program, GE requirements, and pre-credential training with our scholarly and creative activity. The model we hold ourselves to is a hybrid that combines the best characteristics of a small, liberal arts college and with the strengths of a large-size research university. Our faculty identify as teacher- scholars. Our teaching formats range from engaging lectures fit for 100 students to project-based team-learning in small seminars of 20. We teach General Education courses, upper-division History major courses, as well graduate courses. Many of our courses involve high-impact educational practices (HIPs), such as undergraduate research, writing-intensive projects, and collaborative assignments, and several incorporate service-learning and community-based learning projects. Our faculty members are talented, versatile, and intellectually and socially engaged scholars who publish books and articles in their respective fields and carry local, national, and international distinction. In addition, we value and promote the small-college model where faculty are also advisors and mentors of undergraduates. While the demands of our teacher-scholar-advisor model are numerous and the expectations high, the Department is committed to the CSU system’s mission to strengthen California’s working and middle classes. Our goals reflect the CSUF Strategic Plan, 2018-23: 1. Provide a transformative educational experience and environment for all students. 2. Strengthen opportunities for student completion and graduation. 3. Recruit and retain a high-quality and diverse faculty and staff. 4. Expand and strengthen our financial and physical capacity. B. Briefly describe changes and trends in the discipline and the response of the unit to such changes. Identify if there have been external factors that impact the program (e.g. community/regional needs, placement, and graduate/professional school). The Department strives to be at the forefront of the discipline of History. We balance the needs and demands of serving the university’s General Education program, an undergraduate major and minor, a graduate program, as well as teacher-training. In the face of recent external and internal changes, we made efforts to boost our presence in GE, grow the number of History majors and minors, and maintain the current stability and strength of our graduate program. 3 We regularly revisit our list of desired future hires and restructure it in accordance with developing trends, needs, and demands. It is for that reason that we hired two digital historians in 2014 (Jamila Moore-Pewu and Anelise Shrout) in order to keep pace with the “digital turn” in the discipline. In addition, the Department has devoted resources to further developing the Center for Oral and Public History (COPH), which is closely connected to the Department and administered by History faculty members, including the director Natalie Fousekis and associate directors Cora Granata and Benjamin Cawthra. Fousekis succeeded in securing a $425,000 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Grant, which jump-started the process of raising funds to build a new, state-of-the-art space for the Center on the 6th floor of Pollak Library, to open in May 2020. The administrators of the Center have also continued to raise its profile and outreach, maintaining it as a hub for oral history research on the West Coast and, most importantly, a highly effective teaching/training and research/resource archive and laboratory for undergraduate and graduate students. Our course offerings in Oral, Public, Digital, and Community History continue to draw undergraduate enrollment and our graduate program track in Oral/Public/Digital History attracts on average a third of our Master’s students. For example, at census in Fall 2018, 26 of the 85 graduates had declared the Public History track in the M.A. program, approximately 33% of our enrolled students.1 Furthermore, the Center’s interactions with the wider community are extensive, reaching from Southern California to Europe and beyond, as will be detailed below in this report. During this period of review, the Department’s commitment to and close relationship with the Center has remained steadfast. Over the past three decades, the field of History has increasingly emphasized a global, rather an US- or Euro-centric perspective. The CSUF Department of History has long been a leader in the teaching of World, Global, and Comparative History and understood that one of its primary purposes was to provide students in the GE program, as well as History majors and minors, with a global historical perspective. To that end, in the past fifteen years, the Department hired almost a dozen faculty with Transnational and/or Global History expertise (Kate Burlingham— US and the World, Margie Brown-Coronel—US-Mexico Borderlands, Aitana Guia—Modern Europe, Jonathan Markley—Ancient China, Maged Mikhail—Medieval World, Jamila Moore- Pewu—Digital/African Diaspora, Stephen Neufeld—Modern Mexico, Stephen O’Connor— Ancient Greece, Jasamin Rostam-Kolayi—Modern Middle East, Lisa Tran—Modern China). Since our last period of review, significant external pressures beyond our control have destabilized the program. The first concerns the national decline in History undergraduate majors during the period of the Great Recession. In the past ten years, History has seen the steepest decline in majors of all disciplines, according to a recent study by the American Historical Association.2 Even in the face of economic recovery, this trend continued. By and large, the Department was able to withstand this trend. As outlined in Appendix A, Table 4, the number of graduated History majors has varied over time, but has remained steady. In 2018, the Department graduated 119 History B.A.s, putting it in the top five percent of four-year public universities.3 Far more devastating for the Department was the CSU Chancellor’s Office issue of a revised Executive Order (EO) 1100, which changed GE categories. The implementation of the revised 1 “Fall 2019 Census Report,” prepared by Whitney Youngren, Courtney Scaramelia, and Phuong Nguyen, Dean’s Office, College of Humanities and Social Sciences. 2 Benjamin M. Schmidt, “The History BA Since the Great Recession: The 2018 AHA Majors Report,” Perspectives on History, November 26, 2018. 3 “Where do History and English Majors Come From?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 12, 2020. 4 EO at Cal State Fullerton led to the dissolution of two GE subareas that had been serviced exclusively by the History Department. The revised EO introduced in Fall 2017 and clarified in subsequent semesters led ultimately to the decimation of our lower-division World History offerings. This drastically reduced the demand for HIST 110A: “World Civilizations, Origins to 1500” and 110B: “World Civilizations, 1500 to the Present,” which are now placed in subareas with multiple courses. For example, the number of seats in HIST 110B fell from 1,834 in Fall 2015 to 625 in Fall 2019. Prior to the revised EO, 82% of the Department’s enrollments came from lower-division GE courses. Thus, World History no longer has as prominent a placement in GE as it did during the last period of review. The implementation of a CSU-wide ethnic studies requirement in GE, which is currently under serious consideration in the California legislature, may bring more changes to History’s performance and stability in GE categories C.1 and D.2. These external factors have forced the Department to think creatively and proactively on a number of fronts. Though we recognize our strengths and distinctions as rooted in the Center and our oral/public/digital training, as well as our global emphasis reflected in the high number of faculty who teach non-US history, we also acknowledge that we must communicate to undergraduates and the public the relevance and value of historical study. Thus, in the past year, we have undertaken the following initiatives: 1) Designed new courses bound for GE, including 200-level “gateway” offerings 2) Revised the History Minor 3) Drafted a Department strategic plan 4) Initiated student retention efforts 5) Developed career preparation materials and modules to integrate into all courses and in particular HIST 300A: “Historical Thinking” C. Identify the unit’s priorities for the future. The Department’s future priorities below are not ranked in any particular order nor according to importance. We have assigned individual faculty members and/or committees to carry out the following priorities, with the exception of #1, #10, and #11, which require College and Provost- level budgetary and funding decisions.