Historical Thinking Objectives

The Department of History has developed the following objectives as a guide to the design of the undergraduate major and the outcomes for specific courses.

We use this list to review the department’s course offerings to make sure that the students have adequate opportunities to develop toward these goals.

1. Analyze historical developments and position the ideas, motivations, and actions of people in the past within their local, national, regional, and/or global contexts.
2. Employ chronological thinking by identifying continuity and change, cause and effect, and other analytical thinking skills related to historical change through time.
3. Apply historical research skills to locate and interpret primary and secondary sources.
4. Evaluate historical argumentation by analyzing a variety of perspectives and sources of evidence.
5. Develop original historical questions and formulate historical arguments based on evidence to answer those questions.