Assessment Details
Academic Year: 2019-2020 Level: Undergraduate
Campus Department: Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences [UG and Grad]
Program Type: Major [UG] / Program [Grad]
Program Name: History BA (Link)
Description of Data Collection:
Each of the faculty teaching Honors thesis seminars or senior colloquia or supervising theses evaluate research and/or discussion papers written by seniors
using an assessment form on a scale of 1-5 for each of the learning outcomes. We had planned to devise and implement more holistic ways of assessing undergraduate learning this academic year but were unable to given the disruption of Spring 2020.
Review Process:
The Director of Undergraduate Studies typically assembles the data from the assessment forms and, together with the department’s undergraduate committee,
prepares a report to the faculty for either the first department meeting of the fall semester or the last department meeting of the spring semester. The report summarizes the results and offers recommendations for any remedial action. The conclusions of this faculty discussion are summarized in the department’s annual report. We anticipate that we will continue in this manner, though we may form a dedicated Assessment Committee to do this work.
Resulting Program Changes:
The department now offers senior colloquia in addition to the Honors seminars (for thesis writers) as a way to better evaluate student performance on the third learning objective and as a capstone experience for non-thesis writing history majors. We have also focused on encouraging more seniors to write Honors theses. We are continuing to work on developing our Pathways, a new framework that will help students to think about course selection and the history major in more coherent ways. We had planned to start rolling out the pathways in Fall 2021 (after putting them in place in 2020-2021). Given the disruptions of Spring 2020 we are no longer sure about this timing. In 2019-2020, the department voted to revise the minor such that minors are now required to take at least one LAMA (Latin America, Asia, Middle East, Africa) course. These changes bring our minor in line with other minors in MCAS and take fuller advantage of our department’s non-European/American course offerings. We believe that too many BC students test out of the history core and graduate from a liberal arts university without having taken a single college-level history course. We have been working hard to reach out to undergraduates, who are often interested in historical topics but not persuaded of the utility of studying history. We’ve strengthened our social media presence and focused on strengthening our advising across the department. The Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Director of Undergraduate Engagement have taken on extra advising work. We have also created a student mentoring program, in which selected junior and senior majors are available to give advice to their fellow students. Finally, we have better aligned our program requirements with Lynch to facilitate more double-majoring and have spoken with CSOM about similar measures.
Date of Most Recent Program Review:
The department now offers senior colloquia in addition to the Honors seminars (for thesis writers) as a way to better evaluate student performance on the third learning objective and as a capstone experience for non-thesis writing history majors. We have also focused on encouraging more seniors to write Honors theses. We are continuing to work on developing our Pathways, a new framework that will help students to think about course selection and the history major in more coherent ways. We had planned to start rolling out the pathways in Fall 2021 (after putting them in place in 2020-2021). Given the disruptions of Spring 2020 we are no longer sure about this timing. In 2019-2020, the department voted to revise the minor such that minors are now required to take at least one LAMA (Latin America, Asia, Middle East, Africa) course. These changes bring our minor in line with other minors in MCAS and take fuller advantage of our department’s non-European/American course offerings. We believe that too many BC students test out of the history core and graduate from a liberal arts university without having taken a single college-level history course. We have been working hard to reach out to undergraduates, who are often interested in historical topics but not persuaded of the utility of studying history. We’ve strengthened our social media presence and focused on strengthening our advising across the department. The Director of Undergraduate Studies and the Director of Undergraduate Engagement have taken on extra advising work. We have also created a student mentoring program, in which selected junior and senior majors are available to give advice to their fellow students. Finally, we have better aligned our program requirements with Lynch to facilitate more double-majoring and have spoken with CSOM about similar measures.
Attachments (if available)