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Although our department has an international reputation as a center of
scholarship and graduate education, all of our faculty spend the great
majority of our teaching hours in the undergraduate classroom. Many of
us teach in the College Core Curriculum; all of us teach undergraduate
lecture courses and seminars in history; most of us also regularly
supervise senior theses and independent studies. We consider the
opportunity to teach Columbia students one of our greatest privileges.
To judge from the many teaching prizes our faculty has won and from the
number of majors we attract, we seem to do it well.
Our undergraduate curriculum covers all areas of the world and most
periods of written history. Our courses employ many different
approaches to the past. We emphasize no particular "brand" of history,
no single interpretive model, and we encourage our students to
experiment with a wide range of ideas. Our principal goal in the
undergraduate classroom is to develop the intellectual breadth and
analytical skills of our students. To that end, our courses emphasize
work in both primary and secondary sources, and serious, critical
writing.
There are several distinctive aspects of our undergraduate program. In
addition to a number of traditional survey courses in some of our major
fields, we offer an introductory course, The Historian’s Craft (W4900),
which is designed to introduce students to the practice of history. The
heart of our undergraduate curriculum are our seminars – small,
intensive courses taught, as are all our courses, by members of the
faculty. They are normally limited to fifteen students each, and they
involve reading, discussion, and writing. Every undergraduate major is
required to take at least two of them.
Students who wish to be considered for honors in history must also
write a senior essay. There are two methods of doing this. One is the
senior thesis seminar, a two-semester course that engages a group of
students in the process of producing a serious work of research and
that offers guidance and collaboration. The other method of writing a
thesis is to work directly with a member of the faculty for one or both
semesters while receiving credit for independent study. About 40
percent of our students write senior essays in any given year.
Some of our undergraduate majors go on to careers in academia, but most
do not. We believe that the study of history offers a sound background
for many careers and, perhaps more important, valuable preparation for
becoming a knowledgeable and engaged citizen.
For more information about our program, we encourage you to explore
other areas of this Web site especially the undergraduate handbook,
lists of courses, and profiles of our faculty. We encourage you as well
to contact the department’s Undergraduate
Administrator, the Undergraduate Education Committee (UNDED), the
Undergraduate History Council (UHC) or individual members of the
faculty if you have questions or need advice.
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