The Monmouth College history department is celebrating new changes in its requirements and hopes to completely revamp the program in the next few years. Previously, the department required three survey courses, historiography and one non-Western course for the major. These survey courses are meant to cover wide spans of time as opposed to other classes that focus on a shorter time period or  a single event. Instead, majors are now responsible for two United States history courses, two Western history courses, two non-Western history courses and historiography, as part of the required thirty hours.

There are several reasons why the department has changed its curriculum. First, the department has a very tiny faculty for the number of students who come into the major in comparison with other Associated Colleges of the Midwest The department has a commitment to its three constituencies:  history majors, the mandatory integrated studies courses and electives for everyone else who has an interest in history but is not a major or a minor. This change will allow professors to teach different classes as there will potentially be less of a call for the three survey courses formerly required. Also, the change came about because it appears majors often put off the freshmen-level survey courses until their senior year and in so doing, flood the incoming freshman with their senior ideas and input overwhelming them and taking over the class. In this pattern, no one stands to gain from taking the class because for seniors the class is much less challenging than for the freshmen or non-majors who take these courses. 

These changes are hopefully the beginning of a wholly revamped new program.  Professor of History, Dr. Stacy Cordery said, “We are thinking about a totally new program and are very excited about it.”  This new prototype major will hopefully squelch the number one complaint of history majors:  there aren’t enough diverse classes. 

The new system will start with freshmen-level courses with really engrossing topics and titles that will be based on primary documents.  There would be a wide array of these, serving the whole College with interesting elective classes. Second year classes  will focus more on secondary sources; the third year will concentrate on research skills and the fourth year will conclude with senior-level survey courses. 

This new program is yet to be developed, but the History faculty hope to achieve several things with the new ideas:  to provide all Monmouth College students with fascinating electives that will help to really teach cultural literacy as well as historical understanding.

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