AY 2014-2015 ACADEMIC PROGRAM REVIEW SELF-STUDY TEMPLATE
Reporting School/College: St. John’s College
Program Reviewed: BA HISTORY
Date Submitted to Department/Division Chair: September 2015
Overview and Program Review Summary: Please summarize this program’s mission and its relationship to the vision and mission of St. John’s University, and the program’s School/College. Identify similar programs regionally and nationally and distinguish this program from them. In addition, summarize your findings as they relate to (1) program quality, (2) market growth potential, and (3) student learning. Also, summarize any significant changes, achievements (by faculty and students and the program itself), and plans for the future. Finally, based on the information gleaned from the data in the self-study, give an overall rating of the program’s Enrollment/Market Potential by categorizing it as one of the following: (1) Enhance; (2) Maintain; (3) Reduce support, Phase out, Consolidate, or Discontinue.
(Suggested limit 1 page)
The St. John’s History Department is one of 70 institutions involved in the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project. Tuning consists of five processes by which faculty groups identify what students earning a given degree in a given discipline know and can do. The process grows from the assumption that faculty, those who know a discipline best, should be the party responsible for determining the discipline’s core.
From 2012, the History Department developed new goals and outcomes that focus on the skills of a historian: communication, information literacy, critical thinking, global and diverse perspectives, historical knowledge, historical thinking, and research skills and professional development.
Since the 2008 review, the History Department has reworked the BA in History. Currently, the BA in History focuses on offering students a range of content: U.S., European, and World while also focusing on developing skills that they can apply to an array of fields. Students take a sequence of classes that scaffolds skills beginning with the introductory HIS1000C and HIS1010 courses, where they learn basics of how to think historically. The sophomore seminar introduced students to information literacy and communication methods of historians while further building their historical knowledge and thinking. Other course work introduces them to global and diverse perspectives and hones their critical thinking skills. In the capstone seminar,students demonstrate all they have learned, through a final project that is a research paper based on primary evidence. The paper may be used as a writing sample for graduate school.
The members of the department work closely with the other sectors of the university, such as the library, CTL, and Career Services, to improve students’ professional development. The faculty members work with embedded librarians to introduce students to new technologies, the library, and research methods on campus as well as in NYC. As part of the Tuning process, the chairperson has worked with Career Services and met with potential stakeholders, who gave feedback on the goals and outcomes. They applauded the department’s efforts, since the goals and outcomes demonstrated the skills necessary for an entry-level professional position.
The main challenge of the department is two-fold. First, the department continues its efforts to further curricular reforms and mentoring efforts intended to ensure that students meet high academic standards in line with national standards. Second, the department requires more resources, to foster intellectual exchange. Our facilities are poor and our resources are minimal, and as a result it is difficult to build an intellectual community, since few want to linger in the department. We are also hampered by lack of funds to help students develop professional experience at conferences. Nonetheless, we have aimed to create a sense of community with our resources and in particular through online mechanisms, such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.
The program also offers extensive dual enrollment (College Advantage) classes at local high schools in three boroughs, Long Island, and New Jersey. The university has long ignored the significance of these programs by not allocating funding for professional development for teachers and supporting the department to provide better oversight. In October 2014, the History Department chair held a workshop with teachers in the program to ensure that they teachers offered a college level class. Along with the DE classes, there are history classes offered through CPS as well as additional College Advantage classes that do not follow the same professional standards as those in the SJC college because of the department’s active involvement with the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project and the collaboration between the department and the College Advantage partners.
The program should be enhanced. The department will continue to work with the library, CTL, Career Center, the AHA, other professional organization, and the department has also forged collaborations with museums, libraries, archives, and historical sites to offer students more professional development opportunities. The BA would be further improved with more funding for “doing history.” This would envision the expansion of digital humanities projects in which students would create and curate historical materials. With additional funding for digital history and the “doing of history,” the department could offer professional development seminars to local teachers to enhance their classes and their teaching of introductory history classes.
STANDARD 1. The purpose of the program reflects and supports the strategic vision and mission of St. John’s University, and the program’s School/College.
1a.What evidence can you provide that demonstrates that the program embodies the Catholic, Vincentian, and metropolitan identity of St. John’s University? (Suggested limit 1/3 page)
St. John’s University encourages its constituent schools, departments, and scholars to reflect upon the world with the openness and respect characteristic of Catholic institutions. The B.A. program in History does just that: the success of all its courses depends on the willingness of students and faculty to approach history from many different intellectual angles and with due regard for the multiple perspectives and traditional affiliations of historical actors. In keeping with the University’s Vincentian heritage, many of the department’s courses and faculty research projects enlarge our understanding of poverty and other social disadvantages and of how these problems have shaped the development of communities, nations, and transnational movements. Prof. Lara Vapnek’s work on female factory workers and Prof. Elaine Carey’s on the illicit drug trade are exemplary in this respect.
The University’s metropolitan character is reflected in the History Department’s motives and methods. All of our professors bring to each of our classes an intense interest in cultural diversity. Many of our professors pursue that interest and express related concerns about socioeconomic and political difference by a close study of cities, among them Paris, Mexico, Moscow, Rome, Beijing, Berlin, Calcutta, and of course New York. Moreover, the faculty encourages St. John’s students to adopt a cosmopolitan approach that understands the urbane as being contextualized by regional as well as international relations.
As for methods, the department is committed to using our home city’s abundant resources. Professors regularly accompany undergraduates to New York’s museums, libraries, and historical sites: the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its Cloisters annex, and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. The faculty has also established relationships with smaller institutions, such as the Jazz Museum in Harlem and King Manor Museum, a Queens neighbor.
1b.What evidence can you provide that demonstrates that the program embodies the University’s vision. (Suggested limit 1/3 page)
The B.A. program in History has been very forward in offering and pursuing the “innovative teaching, research and service” imagined by our University’s vision statement. Our chair, Prof. Carey, with the assistance of other members of the department, has led the effort to “tune” the core course in History so that its compass is truly global and its appeal universal to today’s students. This is not just an institutional effort, but a national one: the department’s efforts are in the vanguard of those recommended by the American Historical Association ( We have incorporated new technologies into our teaching as well as our research; this is the instruction best suited to our young constituents. Professors have offered seminars at the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning in the use of electronic portfolios to advance the quality of our work and the student experience.
The character of the department, its curriculum, and the University’s extraordinary population are such that the production of “diverse learners” – another desired outcome of the University’s vision – is a natural occurrence. Our students have benefited from faculty research and fieldwork around the globe: in England, Germany, Jordan, Mexico, China, India, Russia, Bangladesh, and Cameroon.
That field work enhances the university’s reputation. The last site of global fieldwork, Cameroon, deserves special mention. For fifteen years, Prof. Konrad Tuchscherer has organized a grass-roots effort to assemble all available knowledge of a provincial West African script from the contributions (in other words, from the closets and letters and family Bibles) of Cameroonian villagers. Prof. Tuchscherer’s project is an outstanding example of what the University vision calls “global community”; it is also an exercise in social justice: knowledge is proverbially power, and the local people involved in this project have come to know themselves and their history through this common enterprise. This work has complemented other faculty projects that examine the legacy of slavery, labor exploitation and reform, and the campaign to provide affordable housing to a broadening cross-section of citizens.
1c.What evidence can you provide that demonstrates that the program embodies the vision and mission of the program’s School/College? (Suggested limit 1/3 page)
St. John’s College expects its faculty to foster the “critical consciousness” that marks nimble minds. Students accordingly gifted will thrive and lead in today’s world and in the future. The College’s vision statement connects this flexibility to a strong foundation of research and scholarly inquiry. The B.A. program in History is thoroughly attuned to these goals. Its faculty is research-oriented, because, among other virtues, this is the approach that produces the most animated classroom experience. Students find most relevant that knowledge which is most alive; they want to be at the center of the action.
The faculty’s research activities are reported in attached curricula vitae, and there is no room here to list the many articles and conference presentations. Allow instead the books of just the last few years to tell the story: histories of our notions of Paradise, of the social and cultural networks created by modern bankers, of German engineering, of an African princess, of the technology of sound, of the reimagining of history by Chinese historical novelists, of Islam and nationalism in colonial India, South Asian popular culture in theater and film, and of female drug traffickers. This research activity enhances the faculty’s devotion to teaching, which is evident in the B.A. program’s diverse course offerings and its comfort with the most responsive pedagogical techniques and technologies.
Standard 1.Additional comments if needed. (Suggested limit 1 page)
None.
STANDARD 2.The program attracts, retains, and graduates high quality students.
2a.Undergraduate SAT and High School Average
SAT Scores / High School Average2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013
School/ College - Q / 1089 / 1077 / 1087 / 1098 / 88 / 88 / 88 / 88
Total University / 1097 / 1087 / 1096 / 1104 / 87 / 87 / 88 / 89
Freshmen SAT Scores
Fall 2010 / Fall 2011 / Fall 2012 / Fall 2013
Computed / Computed / Computed / Computed
HIS / 1,114 / 1,083 / 1,087 / 1,119
Freshmen High School Average
Fall 2010 / Fall 2011 / Fall 2012 / Fall 2013
High School / High School / High School / High School
HIS / 86 / 88 / 88 / 89
Intended college major for 2012 college-bound seniors
SAT / Test-Takers / Mean ScoresIntended College Major / Number / Percent (%) / Critical Reading / Mathematics / Total
History / 1,803 / 1.3% / 529 / 505 / 1034
* For further information, please visit
2b.Undergraduate 1st Year Retention Rate
Fall2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012*
# Fresh / # Ret / %
School/ College - Q / 76% / 74% / 72% / 905 / 683 / 76%
Total University / 78% / 78% / 76% / 2757 / 2195 / 80%
*The % of students started in Fall 2012 and returned to the program in Fall 2013
Note* The % of students started in Fall 2004 and returned to the program in Fall 2005
** The % of students started in Fall 2008 and returned to the program in Fall 2009
2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012Total / Returned / DNR / Total / Returned / DNR / Total / Returned / DNR / Total / Returned / DNR
# / % / # / % / # / % / # / % / # / % / # / % / # / % / # / %
HIS / 26 / 17 / 65% / 9 / 35% / 30 / 24 / 80% / 6 / 20% / 24 / 17 / 71% / 7 / 29% / 15 / 12 / 80% / 3 / 20%
2c.Undergraduate 6 Year Graduation Rate
Fall2004 / 2005 / 2006 / 2007
School/College Average Rate - Q / 57% / 57% / 57% / 51%
Total University / 58% / 58% / 59% / 55%
Fall 2004 cohort / Fall 2005 cohort / Fall 2006 cohort / Fall 2007 cohort
Total / Graduated / Total / Graduated / Total / Graduated / Total / Graduated
HIS / 19 / 11 / 58% / 18 / 10 / 56% / 24 / 16 / 67% / 23 / 16 / 70%
2d.Graduate Standardized Test Scores
The Undergraduate Program in History (B.A.) has 108 students, including 92 majors and 16 minors. The Department of History also houses a minor in Africana Studies for which History provides the only core courses. Students are educated for success in an increasingly globalized world through the global framework of our courses, and our students in turn enhance our program in that they are a diverse group of learners representing a spectrum of ethnicities and nationalities and are a balanced group of both men and women. The program attracts many of the leading incoming students at St. John’s University, with students in the program having higher SAT average scores for the cumulative five-year period (1101) than the averages for the university (1096) and college (1088), and on par with the high school average for both the university and college (all are 88). The first-year student retention of history majors is also on par with that of the school average (74%), slightly lower than the university average (77%). The History Department is several points higher (63%) than both the school (56%) and the university (58%) in terms of the 6-year graduation rate. In 2007, the most recent year of data, the graduation rate for the Department majors stood at 70% in comparison to the school’s (51%) and the university’s (55%). The future viability of the program, therefore, is consistent with that of the school and the university as a whole and very strong in terms of its long-term graduation of majors.
2e.Please describe how the program compares with peer and aspirational institutions.
(Suggested limit 1/2 page)
The St. John's History Department is extremely strong in both its faculty and curricular offerings. The faculty covers a wide range of historical methods, conceptual focuses, and geographic diversity. What is distinctive about our faculty is our cutting-edge research. Each member of the faculty has a strong research agenda that produces original published results that are creative and methodologically sophisticated. Many of our faculty members are already international experts in their fields, and their work is considered to be the gold standard for scholarship. They are widely recognized as experts in their fields; they have received prestigious grants and consult on an array of topics.
While the department has won national and international recognition for its research and methods, the program is constrained by resources allocated by the University. As a result of a lack of resources, faculty members are not able to attend conferences as frequently as faculty at other institutions. While students benefit from the curricular changes made by the department since the last review, the department cannot offer them a suitable space for meetings and can provide only limited resources for travel, grant writing, and conference travel. As a result, the heart of the program – the faculty and its students – is on par with a research university; however, the fiscal constraints and lack of autonomy in administrative matters, including maintenance of the departmental website(s), hamper the department's ability to market itself. Despite these limits, the department compares well with the other Queens and Long Island universities, but it does not compete in the national market even though its faculty members are leading researchers in their respective fields.
2f.If applicable, describe the program’s student performance over the past five years on licensure or professional certification exams relative to regional and national standards. (Suggested limit 1/4 page)
History is a discipline that does not require licensure or professional certification. However, the SJU history department is one of 70 institutions involved in the AHA’s Tuning Project. Tuning consists of five processes by which faculty groups identify what students earning a given degree in a given discipline know and can do. The process grows from the assumption that faculty, who know their discipline best, should be the party responsible for determining the discipline’s core.
The program provides service to School of Education students by offering courses essential for their earning teaching certificates. Furthermore, many graduates in History pursue teaching certificates following graduation.
2g.Number of majors and minors enrolled over the past five years. See table below.
Fall 2010 / Fall 2011 / Fall 2012 / Fall 2013Majors / Majors / Majors / Majors
MAJORS / HIS / BA / 113 / 108 / 89 / 87
BA/MA / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5
Total / 121 / 115 / 95 / 92
Fall 2010 / Fall 2011 / Fall 2012 / Fall 2013
Minors / Minors / Minors / Minors
MINORS / History / 14 / 16 / 18 / 16
Fall 2010 / Fall 2011 / Fall 2012 / Fall 2013
Total / Total / Total / Total
Total / 135 / 131 / 113 / 108
2h.Number of degrees granted during the past five years. See table below.
10/11 / 11/12 / 12/13Degrees Conferred / Degrees Conferred / Degrees Conferred
SJC -UG-Q / HIS / History / BA / 35 / 38 / 24
Below is comparison of data n degrees conferred for local and national institutions based on data retrieved from the IPEDS website. This is based on the Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) Code of 54-History.