History is the key discipline for establishing society's memory of itself, serving as a reference point for encounters with other societies and cultures, and providing a context for the development of a common and comparative intellectual base for undergraduates. By showing the complexity and diversity of human experience, yet explaining these in reference to the main traditions that have built American society, history helps students to understand and find their own places in history.
The history department imparts a fundamental understanding of the past to undergraduates across the university, provides elective courses for diverse constituencies from the various colleges, and helps students to enhance their basic skills in areas such as critical thinking and analytical writing. History undergraduate and graduate degree holders are highly competitive, and faculty members, whose research is known nationally and internationally, challenge their students with demanding ideas and stimulating work.
The History BA and BS are, by all measures, strikingly successful. Student interest is strong; faculty commitment to quality undergraduate teaching is of the highest order; and history majors have competed successfully for major awards such as the Rhodes, Truman, Mellon, and Madison fellowships. Faculty members devote special attention to developing the analytical and expository abilities of history majors in seminars, internship settings, and other venues. Course offerings have expanded to cover more diverse groups and world regions. Nine out of the twenty faculty have won college-wide, university-wide, and national professional organization teaching awards. Among the constant number of twenty faculty, the undergraduate advisory staff has been expanded from thirteen to seventeen.
The department serves the university as a whole by offering basic survey courses in western civilization, U.S. history, and world history. At the advanced level, majors and non-majors alike benefit from the department's diverse offerings, which include a full range of specialized upper division courses in U.S., European, and Non-western history, as well as topical offerings in agricultural/environmental history, history of science, military history, women's history, and religious history. Recent additions to the department's offerings have strengthened the international dimension of the program by increasing coverage of Latin American, Asian and Pacific Rim societies. Departmental courses also contribute to the richness of secondary majors, and support interdisciplinary emphases in Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, American Ethnic Studies (especially in the fields of Native American and African American history), Women's Studies, and Latin American Studies.
At all levels history courses require students to complete detailed reading assignments, produce substantial written work, and demonstrate skill in historical argumentation and reasoning.
The core of the History Ph.D. effort is in land-grant-related fields of military history, American west, and science and technology, with related issues in natural resources and the environment, and the study of public institutions and values. Faculty members have guided graduate students to excellent records in winning external grant and fellowship support, as well as in compiling a fine record in presentation of professional papers and in publication. Master's degree recipients have been placed successfully in post-M.A. programs or in meaningful employment, and there has been steady demand for this department's targeted fields. Recent faculty hires in the fields of military history and environmental/agricultural history ensure that the department can sustain a highly focused Ph.D. program with a favorable national reputation.
History has a demonstrable leading role in research productivity and excellence in publication in humanities and social science areas. History faculty have favorable national and international reputations for sustained high-quality performance in research and publication at a rate, in books and articles, that is the match for History departments anywhere. Faculty members conduct highly creative research in "cutting edge" fields, and have authored and/or edited numerous books, journal articles, and book chapters. Sustained high emphasis on faculty research is the guarantee of the highest quality of instruction in undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as the insurance that the most promising students will be able to enter the most appropriate and prestigious institutions and professional roles after leaving Kansas State University.
History faculty have an exceptionally strong record in winning individual grants and fellowships from regional, national and international organizations. Greater emphasis is now being placed on project and program grants generating sponsored research overhead, and on grants that will help the department to support graduate students--an issue that is becoming increasingly important in the competition to recruit and retain gifted graduate students.
History faculty constitute a major presence in service to the historical branch of the academic profession, and some two thirds serve in one or more important role in national or international historical organizations. The high degree of favorable recognition they bring to the university in this manner is the result of their cumulative high-quality performance throughout their careers, particularly their research accomplishments.
History faculty provide generous service to other units in the university, to community groups and to various county, state and regional organizations. All forms of service are included among the specified responsibilities of the faculty, but faculty routinely exceed what is expected of them. Total service, measured in quantity and quality, is at a high level, reflecting the greater emphasis won by the faculty on the strength of their research records.