WELCOME MESSAGE

History affords the opportunity to appreciate the diversity of human encounters through

the inquiry of one’s own and other’s cultures and societies as they have developed over time. 

The study of history is a meticulous intellectual discipline involving research techniques,

problem solving, and the critical evaluation of evidence.  Historians seek and critique what

women and men of the past have left behind, what they have created and what imprints they

have left on the global society.                                                                              

Park University’s Program of History endeavors to infuse in its majors the knowledge that no understanding to shape the past meaningful, the present intelligible, or the future conceivable can be disjointed from the effort to embrace alternation over time.  The program fosters the intelligent application of that effort by demanding students to contemplate themselves and their culture as changing actualities in a historical continuum—not as the intention or finale of the past.  The Program’s core objectives are to:

• Nurture critical understanding, sensibility of the past, and advancement of intellectual, analytical, and rhetorical abilities;
• Augment student’s aptitude to reason historically and to nurture a recognition of the contested nature;
• Assess historical knowledge by encountering the diversity of means in which historians appeal to and render the past;
• Engage matters of contention that incite historical debate; and
• Experience the nature and practices of historical evidence.

Majors are involved in the historical profession by attending and presenting historical related research at national and regional conferences.  History majors have presented their research at the American Historical Association annual meeting, Northern Great Plains History Conference, national Phi Alpha Theta Biennial meeting, and the Missouri Valley History Conference.

All majors are required to complete an internship which represents the accumulation of their academic careers.  Recent locations have included the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Plimouth Plantation, Plymouth, Massachusetts; the National World War I Museum (Kansas City); Shawnee Methodist Indian Mission (Shawnee, KS); and Jackson County Historical Society (Independence, MO) to list a few.

Samuel Schuman recently wrote in Old Main: Small Colleges in Twenty-First Century America that “students at private colleges are more satisfied with faculty contact and quality than are other students” and “there is a strong relationship of an institution’s size to its educational effectiveness.”  Current majors and faculty truly believe and personally advocate the credo that small colleges, like Park University, “deal with real people, one at a time.”  You will have access to all your professors here at Park University.

Please contact me (tim.westcott@park.edu) if you have questions concerning the admission/application process, scholarships, or the Program of History.  I encourage you to visit the web page periodically for updates.

Sincerely,

Timothy C. Westcott, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of History and Chair, Department of Social Sciences

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