WMU History Department Provides Curricular and Programmatic Models for the Nation
The Department of History at Western Michigan University has recently gained national attention for efforts related to student success.
The Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association have published reports based on the department's efforts. A book on history teacher preparation also puts the WMU History Department on the national map.
These publications discuss undergraduate curriculum reform, work with secondary history teachers, and structure for enhancing graduate student success.
At the request of OAH, WMU historians Linda J. Borish, Mitch Kachun, and Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, wrote about the department's recently enacted undergraduate curricular reforms in the article, "Rethinking a Curricular 'Muddle in the Middle': Revising the Undergraduate History Major at Western Michigan University," published in the Journal of American History, 95: 4 (2009) 1102-13.
Referencing the successes of a departmental curriculum reform of the early 1990s, the authors describe how institutional changes since then, as well as data obtained from recent assessment reports, led to the newest restructuring of the undergraduate curriculum.
A multi-year departmental reform effort led to the new curriculum, designed to progressively enhance students' writing and research skills while building a foundation of content knowledge. The article, in one of the leading professional history journals, is designed to promote discussion among history departments nationwide.
Teacher education is the subject of another national publication. Since Western Michigan University's founding in 1903, the history department has had a special role in working with secondary history teachers.
The department's history education specialist, Wilson J. Warren, described distinctive qualities of WMU's program in a newly published article,"The Evolution of a History-Centered Teaching Program: Western Michigan University's Preparation of Secondary Teachers." It appeared in the book, History Education 101: The Past, Present, and Future of Teacher Preparation, edited by Warren and D. Antonio Cantu (Information Age Publishing, 2008).
The department is also committed to maintaining close professional ties with K-12 teachers in the field. Several multi-year Teaching American History grants from the U.S. Department of Education and a 2007 NEH-funded summer workshop for teachers, have brought classroom teachers into interaction with WMU faculty in efforts to assist teachers in updating their disciplinary knowledge and work collaboratively with them on classroom pedagogy
Wilson Warren summarized the results of six years of TAH grants and suggested new ways to continue to create ties between university historians and secondary history teachers. His article, "Bridging the Gap between K-12 Teachers and Postsecondary Historians," appeared in Perspectives on History, American Historical Association: 46:7 (Oct. 2008). This article puts Western at the center of a nationwide discussion on the improvement of history in the schools.
In the area of graduate education, at a national AHA workshop for Directors of Graduate Study in history departments, WMU's James Palmitessa recently reported on the department's successful strategies to retain and to facilitate the success of graduate students.
Impressed with what they heard, AHA directors asked Palmitessa to submit his report so that it could be published for the profession as a whole. "Retention of Graduate Students," appeared in Perspectives on History, published by the American Historical Association: 45:9 (Dec. 2007).
WMU historians maintain traditions established as early as a century ago, under the leadership of Dwight Waldo, Western's first president and a historian. They are dedicated to improving the undergraduate curriculum, fostering the education of classroom teachers, and creating a structure of success for graduate students. The department take a lead in contributing to national discourse on these topics.