2021 cycle

https://calstatela.curriculog.com/proposal:6273/form

D1 - Fit with the Institutional Mission or Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILO) - 2024 Cycle

The Cal State LA History Department’s PLOs (see section D2) and Mission are well-aligned with Cal State LA’s ILOs:

1. Knowledge: Mastery of content and processes of inquiry
2. Proficiency: Intellectual skills
3. Place and Community: Urban and global mission
4. Transformation: Integrative learning

The Cal State L.A. History Department faculty believes that historical perspective is
fundamental to understanding the world in which we live. To that end, the department offers a great variety of courses to both majors and non-majors that explore both past and contemporary societies and their peoples. These offerings cover all areas of the world in all time periods, from ancient to modern, explore all aspects of history, and offer both graduate and undergraduate degrees. The department also provides an institutional home for the university’s minors in religious studies and in labor and working class studies, and includes a student organization: Phi Alpha Theta (the History Honors Society). It also sponsors Perspectives, a student-edited journal publishing works of original research by both its undergraduate and graduate students.

The study of history is among the most broad and interdisciplinary of disciplines. The Cal State L.A. History Department’s curriculum and faculty offer unique strengths in:

• The place of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in human experience;
• The evolution of ideas, cultures, values, ideologies, and knowledge-systems;
• The development of contemporary nations, states, peoples, and political structures; and
• Transnational and comparative studies, including the history of the Americas and world history.

As a department, we are committed to providing our students with a transformative
education that is student centered, interdisciplinary, and rich in undergraduate and
graduate research opportunities, while also enhancing the critical skills of writing,
thinking, and analysis necessary to comprehend the range of human experiences from a historical perspective.

We are likewise committed to fostering a community of scholars comprising both
professors and students that is ethnically diverse, professionally outstanding, and
dedicated to advancing knowledge, changing lives, and transforming local and global communities.

And we are committed to educating our graduates to be successful professionals and responsible community leaders. To this end we aim to provide

• The best secondary-school history-social science teacher preparation in the state of California;
• An outstanding foundation for careers in public history, law, journalism, business,
• international affairs, public service, and community college teaching; and
• A rigorous pathway to further study of history at Ph.D.-granting institutions.

 

D2 - Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs) - 2024 Cycle

At the completion of their program, History BA graduates will be able to:

1. Develop a body of historical knowledge with breadth of time and place-as well as depth of detail-in order to discern context.
2. Acquire knowledge of the variety of historical methods required to interpret the various dimensions and multiple perspectives of the human past.
3. Apply historical methodologies to decode the historical record with the awareness that its provisional, contradictory, and incomplete nature - in both its qualitative and quantitative dimensions - requires a preference for complexity and comfort with ambiguity.
4. Create and communicate historical arguments and narratives. 
5. Practice ethical historical inquiry as a central component of active citizenship that can apply the study of the past to issues of contemporary concern.
6. [Additional Outcome for Teacher Preparation Option:] Use their knowledge of historical content and methods to develop lesson plans for classroom grades 6-12 that effectively convey the content and significance of history to students in an engaging manner.