Section 3:  COMPREHENSIVE STANDARDS

The Department of History is in compliance with this standard.

The department identifies skills and levels of analysis that it requires for individual courses, majors, and minors in several places in its Strategic Report and also identifies overall standards in its vision statement. Our Undergraduate Studies Committee monitors these standards as does the department chair. The department has established rules for textbook selection and examination standards that it enforces. Our capstone course, History 4398 requires students to demonstrate specific skills in reading, research, organization, and writing that amount to the equivalent of an exit exam for history majors. The history advisor for undergraduate programs makes no exceptions to the department’s required areas of geographic knowledge without the consent of the department chair or Undergraduate Studies Committee chair.

We have several meetings of area specialists each year within the department to assess among other matters the student outcomes in the courses in each area. For example, the Americanist historians who teach the introductory U.S. survey courses and the Europeanist historians who teach introductory Western Civilization, each meet as a group to discuss student performance and demand. These meetings often result in curriculum changes and changes in pedagogy within the curriculum already offered. We also offer essay prizes for papers and request the best papers in each upper-division class to be submitted: this provides a healthy check and monitor of the performance of the best students. We also commission a formal survey of majors to be administered by the Political Science Department survey laboratory to assess student satisfaction. This report goes to the chair and Executive Committee for their consideration. We also write all recent graduates and encourage them to offer thoughts on the program and to stay in touch with the department after graduation. For graduate students, we hold an annual department meeting devoted to discussing the program and then we discuss each graduate student individually—every one of them. For students entering our Ph.D. program, the student is required to meet with his/her entire committee which usually consists of five professors to assess the students level of preparation and the course of study that will be required in order to take the qualifying Ph.D. exams. The chair of the department examines the student evaluation scores of all persons teaching in the department; the Executive Committee examines the scores of all non-tenured members; and the Executive Committee, two-person committees, and the graduate advisor examine the scores of all graduate instructors and teaching assistantships. Anomalies in all cases are noted and discussed among those examining the scores and the instructors.  Please see at http://www.depts.ttu.edu/historydepartment/ , Strategic Report, “Mission Statement,” and “Vision Statement;” and see also Undergraduate Programs.

PROGRAMS

The Department of History is in compliance with this standard.

All department courses go through a rigorous vetting to ensure appropriate standards. New proposals are submitted to the department chair who then submits them to the Undergraduate Studies Committee. If they are approved at these levels, they are then sent to all members of the department for comment and if there are negative comments or suggestions for re-thinking, the author of the new course, the Undergraduate Committee members, and the department chair consider these and reconcile problems before submitting the proposals to the Arts and Sciences Committee on Academic Programs where they must, of course, be approved. Graduate courses go through the same process with the Graduate Studies Committee and the Graduate School for approval.

Please see Undergraduate Studies Committee files and Graduate Studies Committee files in History Office, 131 Holden Hall.

The Department of History is in compliance with this standard.

All of our on-campus courses—except for a small number of individual tutorials that are primarily offered at the graduate level--meet for the required number of hours prescribed by the catalog and we make no exceptions. For those few individual tutorials, we require the faculty member and student to draw up a contract that specifies the nature, quantity, and scope of the work to be done and it is available for examination or discussion. The department offers seven Extended Studies courses all of which use textbooks that are comparable—and usually the same—as ones used when the course is taught on-campus. All of the Study Guides for these courses have been reviewed in the past two years and five of them have been revised. They will continue to be reviewed and revised and all of them require the submission of at least nine assignments which is more than is required for on-campus cohorts.

Please see Extended Studies Course Guides in History Office, 131 Holden Hall or in Extended Studies Office, West Hall.

The Department of History is in compliance with this standard.

Our advising office is staffed by a full-time advisor, and students are also encouraged to consult the department chair, the undergraduate advisor, the graduate advisor, and members of the Undergraduate Studies Committee and the Graduate Studies Committee. The graduate advisor does not permit registration for graduate students unless they have an annual meeting with him/her. All of our requirements are listed on our department website, in the university catalog, and are available on a handout sheet available in the History Department office. Representatives of the department attend the career and major-day symposia held by the university and respond to all e-mail requests for information.

Please see, “Undergraduate Programs”, and “Graduate Programs”, at http://www.depts.ttu.edu/historydepartment; or see “Undergraduate Programs,” and “Graduate

Programs,” fact sheets available in History Office, 131 Holden Hall or in Undergraduate Advisor’s and Graduate Advisor’s offices, Holden Hall.

The Department of History is in compliance with this standard.

All undergraduate courses are numbered 4000 and below and graduate courses are numbered 5000, 6000, or 7000. Clear distinctions are drawn. Graduate courses assign much more reading and always require involvement with primary materials and extensive writing of usually more than 25 pages total per course. They incorporate materials that go well beyond undergraduate courses in depth and sophistication. We require two explicit methodology courses for all graduate students at either the M.A. or Ph.D. level. M.A. theses are usually of 70 to 120 typescript pages in length and Ph.D. dissertations are always over 200 pages and usually well over 300 pages. M.A. theses require at least two readers who must approve after a rigorous, public defense and Ph.D. dissertations require at least three readers and a rigorous public defense. Both theses and dissertations are submitted to University Microfilms for microfilm publication. M.A. students who do not write a thesis—a minority of our M.A. graduates—must pass a comprehensive oral exam.

Please see “Course Descriptions,” “Undergraduate Programs,” and “Graduate Programs,” at http://www.depts.ttu.edu/historydepartment/ and in Texas Tech University Catalog (History Department). See also copies of all History Department dissertations and theses in Texas Tech University Library.

The Department of History is in compliance with this standard.

All of our faculty have Ph.D. degrees in history or in one case in Classics which is appropriate for a scholar teaching ancient history. All faculty members who teach graduate courses are members of the Graduate Faculty and are reviewed formally every six years. A record of continuing serious scholarship is required to stay on the Graduate Faculty and this scholarship must be vouchsafed by the publication of books, articles, or appropriate government reports and by active participation in the discipline of history which must be demonstrated through the presentation of conference papers or academic lectures and other scholarly involvement such as editorial work, book reviewing, and solicited assessments.

All GPTIs (with or without M.A.s) are required to submit their syllabi to the Department Chair and the faculty member assigned to supervise graduate instructors and T.A.s. All GPTIs must use a textbook and ancillary texts approved by the department. All must conform to department standards set for grading schema. All GPTIs must take our special course for graduate students who are TAs or GPTIs in their first year as instructors. All GPTIs are supervised and evaluated by a faculty committee of two members who write a written report which is given to the GPTI and to the Chair and Departmental Executive in order to identify strengths and weaknesses of the GPTI.

Please see “Faculty,” at http://www.depts.ttu.edu/historydepartment; and please see “Faculty Spreadsheets” (2004) deposited with Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, R. Stewart.
 

The Department of History is in compliance with this standard.

The department encourages faculty members to apply for grants, leaves, and other professional opportunities; it supports travel to conferences to deliver academic papers or to take part in symposia; it brings in at least 15 scholarly speakers a year to interact with faculty and students; it has a system of internal colloquia which hones and burnishes academic skills; and the department rewards those faculty that publish scholarly work. Our Strategic Report specifically identifies goals of intellectual attainment and development in several places and our local culture shows that we prize scholarly accomplishment. In most years, 100% of our faculty have either published serious contribution to historical literature or have them accepted for publication. Our yearly evaluations require annual evidence of scholarly accomplishment for every faculty member.

Please see at http://www.depts.ttu.edu/historydepartment : Strategic Report, Goal 2, “Academic Excellence,” Objectives 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4; Goal 5,”Partnerships,” Goal 5, Objectives, 5.2, and 5.3; and Goal 6, “Human Resources,” Objective 6.2.