Jesse O'Neill's U.S. history classes only meet a few days a week, but he hears conversation among his classmates every day about history related topics. All students enrolled in introductory U.S. history courses at participating campuses receive daily e-mail with comments from students and faculty speaking to various history related topics and questions. A faculty person from a participating campus monitors the comments to ensure that only those pertaining to history are included.
All students are welcome to add their comments to the ongoing discussion.
I wrote to the list when I was really interested in the topic being discussed and once when I found the comments of certain people subscribing to be totally unfounded. It's primarily an intense interest that is needed to drive me to lay down my thoughts for the rest of the state to see. Dr. James Oberly, professor of history at UW-Eau Claire, is the leader of the project, which he says appears to be the only one of its kind in the country. Other state university systems are looking to the UW Student History Network for information, he said, noting that colleagues in Texas and California have been particularly interested. This is a way to make students at the two-year Centers feel more like a part of the UW System.