The courses offered by the department are designed to provide students with a knowledge of their own society as well as a concept of the present that can only be achieved through an understanding of the past. Our responsibility in history, and in education generally, is to develop a student's powers of comprehension, analysis and evaluation. We achieve these goals through the study of history, political sciences and related fields such as psychology and religion. The Department requires students to elect U.S. History in their junior year and to take one additional course.
Students regularly elect social studies in either the freshman or sophomore year.
Most of our students will not become historians, but the processes which they study are processes which rational and responsible citizens in a democratic society must understand and use continually.