Facts

Key Benefits

• Critical reading, writing and thinking skills.
• A critical understanding and appreciation of the past.
• An informed understanding of the connections between the ideas and institutions of the past and those of the present.
• Conceptual skills, research competence and writing fluency.
• Strong foundation for graduate study.

Allegheny Distinctions

• Emphasis on student/faculty interaction in small classes such as first-year colloquia and junior seminars.
• Wide choice of areas of concentration within the broader confines of the discipline.
• Opportunities for one-on-one interaction with faculty in independent study projects and Senior Projects.
• Emphasis on history as the central discipline in the humanities and social sciences, through use of multidisciplinary materials in the study of the past.
• Closeness of student/faculty working relationships, most notably when students work as research assistants to faculty.

Endorsements

• History department faculty includes two past recipients of Allegheny's Julian Ross Award for excellence in teaching.
• Since 1920 the department has ranked in the top 6.8% among private, undergraduate institutions in production of eventual Ph.D.s.
• "My years as a student-the small classes and close relationships with both professors and fellow students, the general excellence of instruction, the broad range of curricular and extracurricular opportunities given me, the subtle but pervasive stimulus to seek higher goals-have had a profound effect on my life." - Raymond Philip Shafer '38, former governor of Pennsylvania
• "Probably the best course I had was an independent study in history my senior year, researching a couple of historic buildings in downtown Meadville for the Crawford County Historical Society. It exposed me to the whole idea of historic preservation. It created an awareness that doesn't have much to do with my career now, but it's still interesting to understand something about how preservationists work." - Chip Seamans '80, general manager, Sunday River Ski Resort
• "I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't know what field to go into. The liberal arts education I received and the eclectic course load I took was a perfect fit for the multi-media business." - Jonathan Nelson '89, CEO, Organic Online, San Francisco-based provider of Internet Web site development and design

Facilities Strengths

Pelletier Library: collection of rare books from 18th and 19th centuries; unusually extensive American and English history collection; the Ida M. Tarbell Collection: her personal papers and collection of materials on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War; and artifacts and papers of former governor Raymond P. Shafer '38. The library is also a repository for government documents.

Student Research and Special Projects

The most important component of our major is the College-wide requirement of the Senior Project, or bachelor's thesis, where students are expected to research and write as historians. Every Alleghenian completes a Senior Project in his or her major field-a significant piece of original work, designed by each student and a faculty advisor, that demonstrates to employers and graduate schools the ability to complete a major assignment, to work independently, to analyze and synthesize information and to write and speak persuasively.

Recent Senior Projects

• "A Civilizing Trend: The Church and the Knighthood in the Time of the First Crusade"
• "Lillian Smith and Her Search for Truth: A View of Southern Tradition"
• "Peasant-Proletarian-Ethnic American: The Slovak Immigrant in Western Pennsylvania, 1880-1945"
• "An Interpretation of Lord Mansfield's Judgment in the Case of James Sommersett"
• "Economics, Trade and Conquest: An Examination of the Ottoman Economic Policy in the Sixteenth Century"
• "Caught Up in the Hope: Student Activism at Allegheny College, 1960-1973"
• "Barbados: The Rise of the Plantation System in English America, 1627-1740"
• "Hydeoshi, History, and the Korean Invasion of 1594"
• "Sherwood Anderson and Clyde, Ohio: The Biography of a Relationship"
• "Hollywood's Home Front: Film's Depiction of the American Family During World War II"