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Key Ideas in History at Texas A&M University

This presentation delves into improving history education at Texas A&M University by discussing current practices, challenges, and potential enhancements. It covers topics like meaningful teaching experiences, dissertation supervision, job placements, and supporting off-campus research. The emphasis is on fostering gender balance, professional development, and instilling diverse intellectual traditions. It also explores training methods for graduate students and the need for competitiveness through compelling dissertations and interdisciplinary engagement. Diversification and internationalization strategies, funding students, fostering interdisciplinary endeavors, and final challenges of reconciling diverse visions are discussed for institutional change.

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Key Ideas in History at Texas A&M University

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  1. Key Ideas in History at Texas A&M University CID Presentation 17 January 2004

  2. Background • What is done well • Meaningful teaching experience • Dissertation supervision • Job placement • What could be done better • Support for off-campus research • Gender balance in the student body • Professional development

  3. Competing Visions - I • How to train graduate students for jobs in schools unlike our own • Adopt a pragmatic professional point of view vs. • Introduce students to the intellectual traditions of historians and historiography

  4. Competing Visions - II • How much preparation should students have in common? • Standardization (core courses; syllabus preparation; the dissertation) vs. • Preserving individualized student initiative and faculty guidance

  5. Competitiveness • The department, most of whose students find academic jobs, seeks to improve the jobs they secure, through • Intellectually compelling dissertations • Interdisciplinary engagement • Broader teaching and course experience • Fields • Kinds of experience

  6. Diversification • The department, disproportionately white and male, seeks to redress the imbalance by • Recruiting students from within the TAMU system • Reconceptualizing fields of strength • Developing select new fields • Hiring strategically

  7. Internationalization • The department, dominated by historians of the U.S., seeks to broaden its scope with • Flexible course offerings • New foundation courses • New hires • New areas of focus

  8. Other questions • How better to fund students • Reassessing preliminary exams • Fostering interdisciplinary endeavor

  9. Final challenges • Reconciling competing visions in a way that enhances students’ diversity, competitiveness, and transnational awareness • Institutionalizing change

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