History Curriculum Grid

History Department

Results of Assessment

2007-2008 (submitted 01/09/09)

Department Integration with Academic Affairs Overarching Goals and Measures

Learner-Centered Educational Experience in a Multi-Campus Environment

In addition to a continuing commitment among the majority of the faculty to traditional content emphasis in the classroom setting, a few Department members have engaged in such currently popular strategies of the "new pedagogy" as group/team learning, service learning, journal keeping, and nontraditional examinations, such as take-home exams and group projects in lieu of closed-books testing. Nevertheless, most Department members continue to believe that such "active learning strategies" seldom work well in the discipline of history. As a result, the Department has devoted itself to a strategy of excellence in content mastery and commitments to effective classroom presentation and out-of-class mentoring of students in the traditional setting of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century University. These strategies rarely lend themselves to measurement with presently fashionable "university-wide indicators."
While the Department has been engaged for decades in fostering undergraduate research and mentoring students in cooperative projects, the Undergraduate Research Initiative Funding has attracted several historians, including most notably Dr. Kathryn MacKay and Dr. Susan Matt, to work closely with students in several successful projects that have received funding. Despite many successes and because of their common practice of fostering undergraduate research, many in the Department consider the funding as unnecessary boondoggle and await respectable data that it has indeed resulted in a genuine increase across campus in the amount of undergraduate research and faculty mentoring of students engaged in research.
Due to its routine practice of requiring undergraduate research in all upper-division courses, the Department does not maintain a specific departmental undergraduate research committee.
The Department's exit interview has proven effective in gauging the sense of students relative to the clarity of instructional and programmatic objectives. Students have been able to identify remarkably well holes in the Department's plan for the development of competent history graduates. For example, graduating seniors have described with surprising acuity some redundancy as well as gaps in their studies. The Department has already begun to deal with the issues they raised. Interestingly, a few years ago these exit interviews suggested a problem with a sophomore and senior seminar, inasmuch as their seemed to be some redundancy between the two. This led to a decision be the Department, in conjunction with articulation problems, to eliminate the required sophomore seminar and to retool it as an upper-division elective. Recently, after exit interviews suggested that History 3000 should once again become a requirement, the Department in Fall 2007 designated it as a prerequisite to the Senior Seminar. This is emblematic of the way the Department continually evaluates such information with an eye toward responding to student input.

The Department has identified the following student learning outcomes for the history program:

History majors and minors should master the skill of chronological thinking.
History majors and minors should master the skill of historical comprehension.
History majors and minors should master the skills of historical analysis and interpretation.
History majors and minors should demonstrate historical research capabilities.
History majors and minors should demonstrate the skills of historical-analysis and decision-making.
As a consequence of these skills, History majors and minors should demonstrate values associated with the study of history.

As the chart below indicates, the Department has come to rely heavily on the Senior Seminar as its principal assessment tool. Capstone papers written in the Seminar undergo intense scrutiny both collectively and individually. Each student thesis undergoes an intense critique by the professor directing the Seminar with the assistance as needed of other faculty members who are particularly familiar with the subject. Faculty discuss and analyze weaknesses in the papers and direct efforts to prepare students better in upper-division courses. This seems to be working quite well, after a trial period of establishing two-person committees for each thesis resulted in too many complications and interfered with the orderly conclusion of the course. All Teaching Majors and History-emphasis Social Science Composite Teaching Major present their theses to the public in order to satisfy a requirement for a "recital" on the part of the Teacher Education program.

Despite the difficulties inherent in assessment of liberal arts curricula, the Department remains confident that its efforts in this direction are effective and satisfy institutional demands.

Outcome	How Assessed	When Assessed
Master chronological thinking	Written assignments and exams	Upper-level courses, Senior seminar
Master historical comprehension	Written assignments and exams	Upper-level courses, Senior seminar
Master historical analysis and interpretation	Written assignments and exams	Upper-level courses, Senior seminar
Demonstrate historical research capabilities	Research projects	Upper-level courses, Soph. & Senior seminars
Demonstrate skills in analyzing historical decision making	Written assignments and exams	Upper-level courses, Senior seminar
Demonstrate values associated with the study of history	Written assignments and exams, exit interview	Soph. & Senior seminars, exit interview

Papers produced in the Senior Seminar have been quite effective in demonstrating ways in which the curricular and programmatic requirements succeed and fail in their efforts to craft competent and knowledgeable historians. Unlike some disciplines, however, such as business and nursing, where there are quantified sets of constructs and data streams that can be tested with a national standards exam, history deals with much more elusive bodies of information and skills. There is simply no way to test baccalaureate students on the subject of history, due to the infinite size of the data base and the fluid nature of such ideas as critical thinking, which might appear in one effective form in one student and in a completely different but effective form in another. For example, the Graduate Record Examination’s advanced exam for history has failed to impress most graduate schools, because of its hit-and-miss results and its often contradictory indications relative to undergraduate GPA, faculty recommendations, and the verbal and analytical sections of the examination. Consequently, many history graduate programs do not require it or consider it as they screen candidates for admission. This underscores the difficulty the discipline faces in terms of crafting some comprehensive exit examination process. So, in the end, the senior theses provide admittedly too subjective instruments for outcomes assessment, but they are considerably superior to objective pre- and post-examinations that may work well in less literary and intellectually expansive disciplines. The Department is committed to work assiduously in light of these difficulties to improve its outcomes assessment.

The Department expects to propose no new degree programs in the next year, although it just shepherded through the curriculum process a dramatic redesign of the Social Science Composite Teaching Major. Coordinator of the program Dr. Stephen Francis worked closely with social science coordinators from the local school districts to determine what courses the districts suggest would be helpful to prospective social studies teachers. This resulted in the dropping of the former cafeteria-style selection of three mini-minors and the establishment of tracks for various majors that will prepare them to teach in other disciplines within the social sciences. This new program passed the Faculty Senate by a unanimous vote on April 17, 2008. It constitutes a major improvement in the major and one that will more easily satisfy educational accreditation agencies and the demands of the school districts on our graduates.
Department data are inconclusive in terms of the impact of expanded degree offerings at Davis, Online, and other locations. History has long been able to offer a minor through various Continuing Education opportunities. In other words, it has been possible for many years for a student to obtain a history minor without attending classes during the day at the Ogden Campus. Despite admittedly barely sufficient offerings Online, off-campus, and through Distance Learning, the effects of this effort have not increased the number of majors or minors, although there are not date to suggest definitively that they have not. At the moment, however, most members of the Department are either uninterested in various Distance Learning schemes or are philosophically opposed to them, or both. This has resulted in no real progress toward more and better Distance Learning and Online offerings. Currently, Department faculty show virtually no inclination to develop further Distance Learning opportunities in History. Indeed, the tendency is in the other direction, especially since Continuing Education began the process of converting all paper-and-pencil courses to online.
Recent dramatic declines in enrollment in both the College and the Department relative to the rest of the institution led to some analysis in the Department relative to causation and possible solutions. During the academic years 2002-2003, 2003-2204, and 2004-2005, History’s percentage of SCH production in the College increased slightly every year. From Fall 2002 to Fall 2005, it increased from just more than 18 percent to almost 21 percent. The recent three-year decline in University-wide Fall enrollments and our College’s vastly disproportionate share of that decline seemed strange, because History’s numbers seemed strong. At first glance, the Department’s research seemed to validate that impression for the most part, but as it looked more closely at the numbers it turned out that there was indeed reason for concern. Here is what the numbers indicated:
- History's upper-division SCH production from Fall 2005 to Fall 2007 increased 9 percent, from 1,197 in 2005 to 1,323 in 2007. (It was at 1,326 in 2006, so the numbers held steady since Fall 2007.) That was good news and that disputed the provost’s general assertion that Social Science’s decline was in upper-division SCH production (at least for the History Department).
- Less positive news was that SCH production in lower-division American history offerings declined by 9 percent each year since Fall 2005, from 4,470 in 2005 to 4,176 in 2006 to 4,044 in 2007. This matched closely the College’s enrollment decline during the same period. (There was some reason to believe that this was largely a manifestation of the general decline in freshman enrollments University-wide.)
- In World History, SCH production held steady from Fall 2005 to Fall 2006 at 1,071 each year. Since Fall 2007, however, World History SCH production fell by almost 8 percent, from 1,071 to 831.
While the Department does not see any reason to become terribly alarmed by these data, it recognizes the need to begin to think more actively about ways to bolster its enrollments, particularly in its World History program. While majority of the faculty continues to resist the notion, a minority believes that more online offerings would be a great help, because departmental data as well as data from across the University continue to suggest that online sections add many more students to departmental SCH production than they may take away from traditional sections. It simply does not seem to be true that all or even most students who enroll online would take a traditional section if an online section was unavailable.

Supportive Infrastructure
The Department now has redundant multimedia instructional capacity in all of its six assigned classrooms. Permanent stations exist in five assigned classrooms, and the Department has three portable units (see II.A.9. below). During this past year, the Department added a new multimedia classroom (SS217) and is seeking funding to add another (SS213). An ongoing effort is to get more members of the faculty competent and anxious to use the equipment to augment their presentations to students. There is some resistance among a decreasing number of faculty who do not believe in the effectiveness of such media in the face of common practices of the so-called "new pedagogy." College support for individual faculty capacities for high-tech research and capability has been extraordinary. The dean has been remarkably generous with College funds that make faculty offices up-to-date in technologies that facilitate very effectively both faculty research and teaching objectives.
Environment of Support and Engagement for Students, Faculty, and Staff
1. Department faculty produced two books, several articles in refereed journals, and numerous conference participations and book reviews during the past year (see II. D. below).
2. Dr. Susan Matt spent Fall Semester on sabbatical to work on her book on the history of homesickness and to undertake a fellowship at Yale’s Beinecke Library. Dr. Greg Lewis was on sabbatical Spring Semester to continue his scholarship in Chinese culture and history. Dr. Gene Sessions spent the year 2007-2008 as vice chair of the Faculty Senate and was elected to another year on the Executive Committee Dr. Sara Dant served on the demanding Salary, Benefits, Budget & Fiscal Planning Committee of the Faculty Senate. Dr. Richard Sadler is continuing his service on the State School Board.
3. A number of History graduates were accepted to impressive graduate programs, including Rebecca Muller, who finished her masters at Cambridge and will begin a PhD program at the University of Arizona in the fall. Seven students received funding under the Undergraduate Research Initiative.
4. The Department remained very active in fostering undergraduate research both through its traditional emphasis on research in all upper-division courses but also in working with students to obtain Undergraduate Research funds and to help them publish papers. Two papers from the Senior Seminar, for example, appeared recently in the Utah Historical Quarterly.
Connections with External Communities
1. The Department initiated a new partnership with the Weber County School District following a one-year break from its four-year, million-dollar grant from the U.S. Office of Education to work to improve the K-12 teaching of American history. During 2006-2007, Dean Sadler sponsored an additional year of enrichment workshops to keep the momentum going in anticipation of the successful funding of another such grant that began last fall. It also cooperated during an additional year in a similar grant with the Davis School District (see II.D.1. below for details), which was also successful in an new grant application that will begin this fall. Finishing its second year of a half-million-dollar Teaching American History grant, the Tooele School District has also partnered with the Department and College, and the Ogden School District was successful a year ago in its application for another such grant. The Department and College is thus partnering with four school districts at the present time.
2. The successes of the Department’s work with the school districts in helping history teachers improve their craft caught the attention of Salt Lake City philanthropist Larry H. Miller who has over the past year worked with the University to create the Miller Education Project. This has involved a large donation to the University and will sponsor nearly 100 history teachers statewide to participate in three extensive in-service seminars this summer, one an eleven-day excursion to Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, one a six-day journey over the overland trail in Wyoming and Utah, and another a five-day tour of southern Utah, northern Arizona, and southwestern Colorado. This opportunity for the Department to impact the teaching of history in Utah will undoubtedly grow and promises to benefit not only the public school teachers and their students but also to build a growing connection between Miller and the University. This has already spread to his sponsorship of a similar program for science teachers in partnership with Department of Physics.
3. The Department has received numerous small donations in kind (books, videos, framed pictures) from local residents, but it has also benefitted enormously from such College-managed funds as the Critchlow and Lampros, which continue to sponsor lecture series that bring outstanding scholars to Weber to address faculty, staff, students, and the community. The dean has also helped sponsor lectures, including this spring of a Utah War series in cooperation with the Weber Historical Society, speakers for Black and Women’s History Months, and a special lecture from prize-winning historian Richard L. Bushman.
4. Perhaps the most outstanding departmental community partnerships are those with local educators, including not only the Weber, Davis, Ogden, and Tooele grant activities but also the ongoing History Alliance. The Department has developed very strong ties with these K-12 educators as well as with their administrative leaders. In addition, faculty routinely speak at local community meetings and remain actively involved in the community in many ways through ordinary citizenship activities that represent the University, the College, and the Department in generally quiet but typically effective manners.
5. Building on the success of travel-study efforts with local school districts and Larry Miller, Dean Sadler and Dr. Sessions are continuing to conduct history tours for the community of the West and Washington, D.C. In May 2007, they conducted such a tour to the Washington, D.C., area that was so successful that they repeated the tour in May 2008 with the addition of two days in the Philadelphia area. These tours have attracted many people with few previous connections to the University and promise to construct valuable new contacts for the Department and the College, which have traditionally had few such opportunities for development in the external community.
Inclusion and Diversity
1. The Department awards annually two privately-funded scholarships specifically targeted toward under-represented populations: The Richard and Rose Ulibarri and the Lola Allred Sessions History Scholarships.
2. The Department supports annual with faculty time and sometimes funds the Holocaust Commemoration, Black History Month, Women's History Month, Native American Emphasis Week, and Latino Emphasis Week.
3. The Department of History offers more Diversity courses per number of total courses than any other department on campus. In addition, it believes strongly that all History offerings, by virtue of the nature of the discipline, would qualify as Diversity courses but for political considerations in the Faculty Senate.
4. The Department of History is as diverse ethnically and in terms of gender as any similar-sized unit on campus, with five women, two Hispanics, and an African American. Indeed, there are few departments on campus of any size or anywhere in the country that can exceed the demonstrable commitment and devotion of the History Department at Weber to issues of inclusion and diversity in terms both of its students and of its faculty.

Department Internal Goals and Progress Made

Department Goals
1. Increase the percentage of upper-division student credit hours (SCHs) to total SCHs to the University goal of 25 percent; increase or hold stable the Department’s percentage of the College’s total SCHs.
2. Recruit additional history minors and majors through an active and aggressive campaign that focuses on the hundreds of students who experience American Institutions and General Education courses in the Department.
3. Articulate history offerings with other institutions from which Weber attracts significant numbers of transfer students and to which significant numbers of Weber students transfer.
4. Justify through increasing numbers of SCHs an additional permanent faculty position in the Department. (This is the position Dr. Richard Ulibarri occupies at present on administrative funds.)
5. Convert the history faculty position at the Davis Campus from a yearly full-time position to a tenure-track position, and increase history’s contribution to daytime instruction at the Davis Campus.
6. Augment the Department’s offerings in online and distance-learning instruction, so that the regular history minor is more readily available (presently available with limited course options) through those media, and so that the elective requirements for the history major, history teaching major, history minor, and history teaching minor are abundantly available through those media, and to help bolster SCH production.
7. Foster interdisciplinary instruction and collaborations through active recruitment of colleagues to offer cross-listed courses in the department and to continue to support the Honors Program.
8. Encourage increased scholarly production through active and aggressive pursuit of grants and supplemental inducements, to include travel opportunities, research monies, and released time where appropriate, and to raise the expectations of tenure-track faculty relative to scholar expectations for promotion and tenure.
9. Develop further multimedia capacity in the classroom and work to increase faculty expertise in the use of multimedia means of instruction.
10. Enhance service learning and cooperative learning opportunities for students by highlighting the public history emphasis and developing more relationships with public and private entities in the community that will offer history-related internships and service-learning positions.
Progress Made
1. Inasmuch as College figures parallel closely the University’s trends in SCH production, perhaps the most telling of SCH data are figures indicating that the Department’s share of the College’s enrollment grew steadily between 1995 and 2002 and have held fairly steady since, although the College and Department figures are sagging compared to general University figures (see I.A.7 above). These data are interesting for a number of reasons. First, although the number of full-time faculty increased from 10 in 1995 to12 in 2005, the number of sections of both lower- and upper-division courses per term have remained essentially static. The additional two full-time faculty members have picked up a number of courses that were previously assigned to part-time faculty. Second, it indicates a healthy competitive position when History’s offerings and faculty go head-to-head with comparable courses and colleagues from sister departments in the College. Third, it illustrates the strong appeal and effectiveness of the Department’s faculty, courses, and other activities, including a positive departmental image, History’s student-outreach emphasis, and the growing popularity of the discipline nation-wide. Indeed, virtually every upper-division section attracts many students who are neither majors or minors but who are merely interested in the subject matter of a particular offering. The most heartening data are those that show progress towards increasing the percentage of upper-division SCHs relative to total SCH production. The University goal of 25 percent is within reach of the Department, now at nearly 20 percent. This is a particularly difficult goal for a department like History, inasmuch as it offers so many sections of General Education and American Institutions courses, so it is all the more remarkable that it is able to rise to a position within range of the University goal for percentage of upper-division SCHs. With the increase of upper-division online offerings in preparation (Goal 6), and as the number of majors and minors increase, the percentage of upper-division SCHs will hopefully rise. Goal 2 involves aggressive recruitment of majors and minors, and particularly minors. The chair writes a personal letter to the best students in each lower-division course at the end of each semester inviting them to consider majoring or minoring in history. This program has begun to bear fruit and reflects itself in the rising numbers of upper-division SCHs.
2. Under Goal 3, Dr. Kathryn MacKay is heading a Department effort to articulate its courses with the other state institutions. So far, the Department has completed the process with almost all of the other institutions in the USHE system. Dr. MacKay has also represented the Department at a series of USHE meetings to deal immediately with lower-division articulation across all nine institutions. Among other outcomes, these meetings have resulted in a decision to number all World History courses in the state as HIST 1500 and HIST 1510 rather than HIST 1010 and HIST 1020. The Department’s position was that World History courses should maintain the basic numbers of 1010 and 1020, but the other institutions (historically offering only Western Civilization) insisted that those numbers be reserved for Western Civilization. This decision comes despite growing evidence that institutions across the nation as well as high school AP programs are turning increasingly to World History over the more ethnocentric Western Civilization as the fundamental courses of history departments. In keeping with this development, the Department has ceased giving credit to transfer student for HIST 1500 and 1510 who bring from their previous institutions credits in Western Civilization.
3. Despite an enrollment decline that has afflicted both the University and the College, comparatively steady SCH production statistics should help the Department make the case for making Dr. Ulibarri’s position permanent (Goal 4).
4. Dr. Stan Layton has accepted another one-year appointment to the Davis Campus for the next academic year (2008-09), but has indicated that this will be his final year of full-time teaching. As a result, the Department has obtained permission from Dean Sadler to convert this position to the tenure-track and will advertise for an assistant professor during the coming year to assume that position. History is committed to maintaining a full-time presence at Davis. The Department will continue to seek opportunities to increase its offerings at Davis, depending on demand and success in attracting sufficient enrollments (Goal 5).
5. Dr. Sara Dant, Dr. Kathryn MacKay, Dr. Stephen Francis, and Dr. Susan Matt have made major commitments to the Honors Program, and in particularly this year with Dr. Matt becoming a member of the Honors Steering Committee. These faculty members and others have developed strong interdisciplinary contacts and work often with faculty from other departments in developing programs and initiatives that foster cross-departmental activities for students. Dr. Stephen Francis team-taught the Idea of Europe course for the European Studies Program, cross-listed in the Department. Dr. LaRae Larkin has team-taught a couple of courses with Dr. Nancy Haanstad of Political Science. This is typical of the kind of effort that the Department fosters under Goal 7. In conjunction with Dr. Bob Wadman of the Criminal Justice Department, Dr. Allison also published a couple of years ago a book on the history of police departments in America. This also is typical of the energy and trends in the Department (Goal 8).
6. Dr. Kathryn MacKay is a leader in the University’s service-learning initiative, and received last year the first John A. Lindquist Award for her involvement in this initiative. She also coordinates the Department’s Public History Emphasis. As a consequence, Goal 10 is perhaps more viable and holds more promise in History than in any other department on campus. The University has linked its Undergraduate Research Initiative to the general impetus from the Provost’s office to engender community-based projects. The Department is anxious to increase its energies in these areas, to include increased oral history training for students. During the Summer and Fall, the Department was heavily involved in the operation of the Utah International Center Fellowship program and the resulting October Symposium. Dr. Tom Alexander (of BYU), and John Sillito and Dr. Stan Layton were the 2007 UIC Fellows.
Outcomes of Program or Accreditation Reviews
The Department underwent its ten-year Program Review in 2005-2006 and concluded that process with a final hearing before the University Program Review Committee in Fall 2006. There have been no other program or accreditation reviews of the Department since that time. See the Department of History Annual Report for 2007 for a detailed description of the outcomes of the ten-year Program Review completed that year.
Significant Community Outreach Activities
1. The Department is in midst of participating in four U.S. Department of Education grants, two for nearly $1 million each that have come to the Weber and the Davis School Districts and two others for half that amount for the Tooele and Ogden School Districts. These program work to enrich the understanding of public school teachers in the history of the United States and in particular the history of the American West. Teachers receive stipends and have expenses covered as they participate. For its part, the Department contributes expertise as the districts work to improve the teaching of American History at both the secondary and elementary levels. Department faculty present workshops, conduct historic tours, and in other ways assist the districts in achieving the goals of the grant. Department members Drs. Richard Sadler, Gene Sessions, and LaRae Larkin have been particularly active in working with district personnel and Dr. Larkin serves as official liaison between the districts and the Department. During the past few years, the Department has conducted numerous workshops and has directed travel-study excursions with district history teachers all over the West and to the East Coast. All four districts and their grant evaluators express entirely positive reactions to the Department’s efforts in working with their TAH projects. In addition to these activities, Dr. Larkin has successfully integrated the various TAH programs into her ongoing History Alliance seminars.
2. The successes of the TAH grants have attracted the attention of Salt Lake City philanthropist Larry H. Miller, who has created a partnership with the University to provide similar experiences for history teachers statewide (see I.D.5. above).
3. Dr. Kathryn MacKay’s service-learning activities have led to several strong compliments from the community, including the sisters of St. Benedict, who have enjoyed the attention of Dr. MacKay and her students.
4. The Weber Historical Society maintains a strong connection with the community through its monthly history lectures in co-sponsorship with the Alumni Association.
5. Department faculty commonly accept speaking engagements in all kinds of community venues that provide significant and ongoing outreach to the community.
General Education Activities
1. The current campus-wide General Education study has involved the Department significantly in connection with the directive to analyze the American Institutions requirement. One of the results of this multi-year study in cooperation with the Political Science and Economics Departments was a successful initiative to raise the minimum grade for satisfying the AI requirement from a D- to a C. The measure passed the Faculty Senate in April 2007 and has been in effect this past academic year with no discernable problems.
2. As part of his role as departmental curriculum chairman and member of the College Curriculum Committee, Dr. Stephen Francis has been at the center of campus-wide discussions on General Education. The Department offers only HIST 1500 and 1510 as Social Science courses and maintains that if World History is not general education, then nothing is. Beyond that, it is anxious to help the University to discuss once more its perpetual redefinition of General Education. Dr. Francis was recently appointed to a three-year term on the University Curriculum Committee.
Support for Part-time Faculty
The Department has experienced a reduction in its numbers of veteran part-time faculty, largely through voluntary attrition. In addition, the chair, in consultation with the departmental part-time faculty committee, has ceased to offer opportunities to some part-time faculty due to low performance indicators, mostly student evaluations. As a result, there exists a strong need for more mentoring of departmental part-time faculty members. The Department is committed to a major improvement in its work with part-time faculty, to include:
- better evaluative procedures, to include peer evaluations and classroom observations.
- including part-time faculty in Department e-mailings and other informational activities.
- occasional faculty development seminars that include part-time faculty.
- more printed material to guide part-time faculty in course preparation and instructional material selection.
- better communication with regular faculty members and especially with the chair.
- a mentoring program that will assign a full-time faculty member to each part-time faculty member.
As evidence of the generally high quality of the part-time instruction in the Department, Dr. Bob Becker recently received the designation of Outstanding Adjunct Faculty member on campus.
Department Goals for the Coming Year
1. A major goal for the year 2007-2008 was to fill the vacant position created by the retirement of Dr. Lee Sather and which last year’s search had failed to complete. Following advertising in three media historians routinely peruse, the Department of History received through Human Resources nearly ninety applications for a vacancy in the faculty for a tenure-track position in Modern European History. A paper screen of those applicants for minimum qualifications winnowed the file down to some twenty. Under the leadership of Dr. Stephen Francis, the search committee then invited the remaining candidates to interview with the committee at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington, D.C.. The committee scheduled the candidates for half-hour interviews during two days, January 3-4, 2008, in a suite at the Marriott on Connecticut Avenue.
  
  Before the committee left for Washington, one candidate withdrew and another announced that she was unable to attend the conference due to pregnancy. So the committee met with the remaining eighteen in a series of very interesting and revealing interviews. All committee members (Stephen Francis, LaRae Larkin, Henry Ibarguen, Richard Sadler, and Gene Sessions) participated in each interview. On Friday afternoon, January 5, following the final interview, the committee met in the suite to decide on three candidates it would invite to Ogden for further investigation. Immediate consensus developed for three top candidates. A secondary group also surfaced fairly quickly.
  
  Upon return from Washington, the committee reported to the entire department on January 7 its recommendations. The Department voted unanimously to proceed with setting up campus visits for the three finalists and instructed the chair to write regrets letters to those who had been eliminated. In the next few days, the three candidates came to campus for interviews and teaching opportunities. At the conclusion of the visits, the Department met to rank the three candidates. Each member of the Department rated the candidates numerically and voted on them accordingly. As a result of a unanimous vote, the dean offered the position to Dr. M. Brady Brower, who had filled a one-year position in the Department. He immediately accepted.
  
  Dr. Brower’s area of focus is the French Third Republic. He has very strong letters of recommendation, submitted excellent student evaluations both at Rutgers where he received his doctorate in 2005, at Idaho State University where he subsequently taguht, and during his one-year appointment at Weber, was a Fulbright Fellow in France, and received a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He works on such subjects as mourning and the psychic effects of war. Subsequent to his appointment, he worked with Dr. Francis to revise the three courses in Modern Europe to two and to reestablish the History of France course the Department had dropped a few years ago. His routine teaching assignments will be in World History, the two upper-division Modern Europe courses as well as the History of France and the History of Germany. Dr. Brower will also serve next year as advisor to the history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta.
2. Another ongoing goal is to expand Online course offerings, although the Department faculty has displayed major reluctance to plunge full-force ahead into this medium, both due to predilection and in some cases philosophical issues. In any case, within five years, the Department needs to reach a level of stability with regard to distance-learning offerings, and in particular Online offerings, as the faculty reaches a natural level of maximum development in that direction. It needs to add a number of upper-division courses, especially in the European group where there are currently no Online or Distance Learning courses available to students.
3. An important goal for next year will be to determine how much to offer at the Davis Campus, especially as Dr. Layton spends his last year there. Recent experience, especially in the Summer of 2007, demonstrates that demand there is capricious at best. It is therefore difficult to determine how much energy to put into that effort, especially inasmuch as part-time faculty become very skeptical about accepting a course there when so many of them do not make. Fortunately, Dr. Layton, the Department’s full-time professor at Davis, has been very popular and able to fill his classes, particularly his American Civilization sections. As he leaves after next year, a challenge in that regard is to select upper-division courses for the faculty member there to offer that will certainly make. In any case, with no additional resources on the horizon to accomplish deal with the Davis challenge, the History Department will need careful planning to determine the level of service courses it can provide there and to what extent its upper-division offerings will extend to Davis. This will require the Department to be flexible in its teaching assignments and for other faculty members to be willing to schedule some of their courses at Davis. For the next year, this goal will require some creative uses of full-time and part-time faculty, but the Department should be able to increase its commitment to Davis, as the scheduled new building there creates even more demand.
4. The Department will work to increase the percentage of upper-division SCHs it produces relative to lower-division. Aggressive recruitment of history minors represents one intermediate method for accomplishing this goal.
5. Another dramatic challenge has to do with summer enrollments in general, particularly during this period of University-wide enrollment decline. Scheduling well and attracting full-time faculty to summer offerings are the keys to success here. The strong employment situation in the area probably contributes significantly to our current downturn in summer enrollments. As the economy cools, this problem may ease, but only temporarily.
Significant Faculty Achievements
1. Teaching on phased retirement during 2007-2008, Dr. Lee Sather finished his last year with the Department as a regular faculty member, but he has indicated his willingness to continue to teach a course or two on an occasional basis in the future. The Department hosted him, his spouse Wendy, and daughter Kate at a retirement dinner at Rickenbackers on Friday evening, April 25. Not in retirement mode, however, he gave a paper in late February at the "Europe in Upheaval" Conference in Helsinki sponsored by the Finnish Historical Society and the office of the Finnish Prime Minister.
2. Dr. Stephen Francis has begun to show the ability to be a very productive scholar as he focuses his energies more on getting some scholarly achievements under his belt. His article on the management styles of Marriner Eccles has been accepted for publication in the Utah Historical Quarterly and his work on John Calvin in Mormon memory will also appear this year. He has other projects in the hopper and will undoubtedly produce very nicely in this area, but he understands the new importance of this imperative. His Eccles piece grew from his term as Utah International Center Fellow and a presentation at the annual Center Symposium in October 2006. Dr. Francis is liaison to the library and chair of the department curriculum committee. The latter assignment also placed him on the college curriculum committee where he has ably represented the department’s curriculum efforts for several years. He was recently appointed to a two-year term on the University Curriculum Committee.
3. Dr. Kathryn MacKay has been active on campus and off in making presentations, particularly related to service learning and community-based research. She also remains active in presenting programs in various settings on women’s history, American Indian history, and American literature. She continues to serve as associate editor of Weber Studies, responsible for the "Reading the West" feature. Her ongoing work with the Benedictine Sisters of Ogden has the potential of bringing her scholarship to a new level, as she works to complete the organization of their archives (papers, photos, etc.). A faculty member of the Fulbright International Teachers Summer Seminar in American Studies, she has served as a judge/moderator for Mock Trial Competitions and Ethics Bowl Competitions, as well as College Bowl Competitions at Weber. She works diligently to help students in securing Undergraduate Research Grants, mentoring several students to successful awards in 2007-2008. In the Department, she has during the past year willingly devoted her time to innumerable projects, such as handling articulation issues, developing a new course for internships, and directing the Public History Program. In that connection, she supervises many students in cooperative work experiences and internships. In recognition of her work for Utah Humanities Council, particularly her service as a book group scholar, she was designated as a Distinguished Scholar of Humanities in 2007.
4. Dr. William T. Allison has accepted an appointment as department chair at Georgia Southern University and will be leaving the Department at the end of the Spring 2008 Semester. This is a great loss to the program, the University, and the community. Dr. Allison’s prodigious output has compiled record of astonishing scholarly production. Typically working on two or three books at a time, he is currently under contract for a book on MyLai, another on 1968 to deal with radicalism and conservatism in the 1960s, and still another on the Gulf War. In addition, during the past two years he has published two books, one on military justice in Vietnam and another (co-authored) that surveys American military history. He also published this year a co-edited volume of the Critchlow Lectures. Well-known in his field nationally and internationally, he makes the most of his extensive contacts in military history to have become a leader in the field. He is truly a world-class military historian. He has participated actively in an effort to bring visiting scholars to campus, has served as departmental webmaster, and has assisted in the maintenance and improvement of the Department’s multimedia equipment, and has routinely assisted his colleagues in the use of that equipment. In addition, he has served in the Faculty Senate, on numerous College (including ongoing membership on the College Ranking and Tenure Committee) and University committees, including representing the Department as a member of the College Computer and Technology Committee. His work there has led to the Department obtaining perhaps more than its share of computing resources and making certain that they are used wisely. Perhaps his most exciting service recently has been his work in bringing the Society of Military History Annual Meeting to Ogden in 2008, growing out of his service on the Society’s Membership and Recruitment Committee. This conference was a thumping success, with some 400 international military historians attending, presenting papers, and bringing recognition to Ogden and the University.
5. Dr. Susan J. Matt’s scholarly output continues to shine brightly. In addition to signing a contract with Oxford University Press for another book, this time on the history of homesickness in America, she enjoyed a fellowship at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2007 and has published a chapter in a book on consumerism from the University of Pennsylvania Press (2007), and articles in the Journal of American Culture and the very prestigious Journal of American History. Dr. Matt is currently the Endowed Scholar of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences She has also published a half dozen book reviews in prestigious journals during the past year. Elected to take over as department chair on July 1, 2008, Dr. Matt has in addition shown remarkable leadership as a campus and community citizen. Just elected to a two-year term on the College Rank and Tenure Committee, Dr. Matt has also been recruited to serve on the governing board of Phi Kappa Phi. In Spring 2007, she organized two lectures, arranging for journalist Larry Tye to speak on the history of Pullman Porters for Black History Month, and for Women’s History Month, a visit by Elaine Tyler May of the University of Minnesota. Beyond the campus, she has refereed articles for some of the top journals in the historical profession, and has delivered numerous lectures in the community and for the local school districts’ Teaching American History grants as well as the History Alliance.
6. Dr. Richard Ulibarri once again served as chair of the Department Ranking and Tenure Committee and on the Department Scholarship Committee.
7. Dr. Vikki Vickers’s monograph entitled My Pen and My Soul Have Ever Gone Together: Thomas Paine and the American Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2005) has garnered international attention leading to an invitation by the British Academy to give a paper at a symposium in Edinburgh in March. Dr. Vickers continues to work on another monograph (under contract with Greenwood Press) entitled America’s First War: The American Revolution with a projected publication date of 2009. In addition, she is co-authoring an article with Ron Hatzenbuehler with potential to publish in the prestigious William and Mary Quarterly. A member and participant in the Front Range Early American Consortium annual meetings in both 2006 and 2007, she has also served as a panel moderator at Phi Alpha Theta conferences at the University of Utah and Westminster College. She also maintains active memberships in a number of professional associations that keep her at the center of her fields of interest. She continues to participate in such events as the Holocaust Commemoration, serves as faculty advisor to Delta Psi Nu (the African-American Honor Society), coordinates bringing in the Black History Month and Women’s History Month speakers, and has served for three years as the advisor to Phi Alpha Theta. In this latter position, she has fomented a phenomenal rejuvenation of the history honor society and proposes to lead yet another history organization for students who have not qualified for PAT. Volunteering to advise students heading for graduate school and those preparing to take the PRAXIS exam, Dr. Vickers also coordinates the History Fair at Weber, directs the Department’s participation in Major Fest, and has delivered seminars to History Alliance and Teaching American History in-services.
8. Professor Henry Ibarguen provides an extensive program in Latin American history, including a special course on the Cuban Revolution following a recent visit to the island in company with a number of other professors of Latin American studies from across the country.
9. Dr. Greg Lewis’s ongoing work on the Chinese cinema project has brought considerable recognition to the University and has consumed much of his professional and scholarly energy during the year. More films continue to join the collection as the reputation of the project grows. He has published recently or has forthcoming two refereed articles, has written several reviews, and has delivered numerous presentations, as well as penning an article on Chinese cinema for Weber Studies. A Spring 2008 sabbatical further strengthened his resume as am internationally recognized scholar of Chinese culture and history. In addition to carrying his Chinese films project to the campus and community at large, Dr. Lewis serves as chair of the Athletic Board, advisor to the Racquetball Club, as a member of the Union Building Board and Renovation Committee, and Wyvern (Japanese anime). During the past year, he continued his tenure as Asian Studies Program Director which position he has held since 1999, and on other University and Department committees. Bringing Chinese scholars to campus has had a salutary effect both at Weber and in the community. In this connection, he has assisted the Stewart Library in significant acquisitions of Asian films and books, including the purchase of approximately 1,600 Chinese films and 400 books related to Chinese history. Also significant this past year is his service on the nominating panel for the National Security Education Program and as executive board member of the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies.
10. Dr. Sara Dant has built on her reputation as co-author of a two-volume Encyclopedia of American National Parks in 2004 to enter into a publisher’s contract for a second book, this one on the environment in the American West, and she has an article forthcoming in the prestigious Pacific Historical Review. She received the 2007-08 Joy Hilliard Fellowship in Environmental History from the Denver Public Library and works as a peer reviewer for several university presses and professional journals which further underlines the respect she has garnered in her field of study. She also remains active in a number of professional organizations and present papers on a regular basis, including major presentations before the Western History Association last fall and serves on the local arrangements committee for the upcoming WHA annual meeting in Salt Lake City. Her long tenure as president of the Weber Historical Society has brought a rejuvenating freshness and a needed efficiency in planning and presenting its programs. She has serves on no less than a half dozen departmental committees as well as College and University committees, including memberships on the important Salary, Benefits, Budget & Fiscal Planning Committee of the Faculty Senate and on the University Medical Benefits Advisory Committee. In addition, she has found time to serve on the board of the Ogden Nature Center and on the Zoology Department Program Review Committee and manages the History Faculty Book Award. She also delivered a number of public addresses during the past academic year.
11. Dr. Stan Layton serves on the Advisory Board of Editors of the Utah Historical Quarterly and thus remains in close contact with his former institution, the Utah State Historical Society, writing book and article reviews for the Quarterly and for such publications as the Journal of Mormon History. His public-speaking opportunities during the past year include addresses to such organizations as the Fort Douglas Museum Association and the Utah Genealogical Association, and he chaired a session at the 2007 annual meeting of the Utah State Historical Society. Last summer, he served as a Utah International Center Fellow and presented a paper at the UIC October Symposium. He has participated in federally-funded Weber and Davis School District teacher-improvement activities and the History Alliance. In addition, he has published a series of books on his favorite articles from his years as editor of the UHQ, with the fourth volume now at press (Signature Books) and two more in the works. Dr. Layton volunteers for a good deal of department service, including chairing the student recruitment committee, serving on the Faculty Book Award Committee, donating regularly to various funds, and presenting annually the Utah Historical Society Student Award. He continues to serve as the Department’s Davis Campus coordinator, insuring there the scheduling and other interests of the program.
12. Dr. Gene A. Sessions concludes at the end of the year six years of service as department chair, three years on the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, and three years as vice chair of the Senate. He has delivered numerous papers and addresses during the past year, many of them in connection with his post as program chair for the Utah War Sesquicentennial Commemoration Committee, including papers on the Utah War at the Mormon History Association (where he was on a total of three panels), the Utah Historical Society, and the annual meeting of the Society for Military History. His major scholarly effort this year has been the revision and publication of a second edition of his biography of Jedediah Morgan Grant, first published at the University of Illinois Press in 1982.

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