Descriptive Comments about Teaching descriptive comments about teaching 1. Teaching of high quality has always been central to our self-definition as a department. The professional culture of historians nationwide has long stressed our role as educators in the tradition of the liberal arts. Beginning in graduate school, we conceive of ourselves as educators who will help and challenge our students to develop their critical reading and writing skills as well as to sharpen their analytical and conceptual abilities. It is our intention that our courses will whet students' appetite for knowledge and will offer them the tools through which they will continue to enjoy and to prize learning throughout their lives.
Historians naturally incorporate their scholarship into their teaching.
Long term research projects often generate ideas that result in the creation of new courses or form the basis of individual lectures. Undergraduate and graduate research projects are also often the result of individual faculty's particular scholarly interest. This commitment to teaching is reflected in the practices of our department. We hire and promote only people who we believe will be effective in the classroom. We have always insisted that every course be taught by a professor.