The History Section prides itself on its ability to educate a wide diversity of students and to provide a solid background for a variety of career pursuits.  Whether a person takes only one introductory-level course or completes a master’s degree, the History Section guarantees its students a challenging experience that will make the student a better learner.

Among the many points of pride in the History Section are:

• The Area Studies Program.  This unique and interdisciplinary approach to education is designed to prepare students for an increasingly global economy

• Teacher Training.  For over 150 years, Eastern Michigan University has been preparing students for careers in teaching history and social studies at every level.  Recent Michigan test certification scores reveal that 82% of EMU students qualified to teach Social Studies, while statewide, the rate of success was only 66%.

• Preparation for Graduate Studies.  Graduates with degrees in History from EMU have gone on to a wide variety of pursuits.  John S. Ellis went on to complete his Ph.D. at Boston College and currently teaches history at the University of Michigan at Flint.  Lindsay F. Braun went on to complete a master’s degree at Michigan State University is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at Rutgers University.  Braun was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to South Africa in 2002.

• Strong International Focus.  Long before many peer institutions, the History Section had a strong international focus, exemplified by the first textbook in twentieth-century world history,  produced by Professors Janice Terry, Dick Goff, Jiu-Hwa Upshur, and Walter Moss, The Twentieth Century World (1979), now widely used in general education classes at many institutions.  After the success of that book, Goff, Terry, and Upshur were joined by Professors James Holoka and George Cassar in developing a broader textbook, World History (1991), which spanned the whole course of human history, for courses in world history that are increasingly replacing the old Western Civilization surveys. 

• An Inclusive Curriculum.  The section has always had strong support for an inclusive curriculum within the United States, with long-term offerings of African American and Native American history supplemented by a number of new permanent courses, including History of the Civil Rights Movement; a course on the history of African-American women, and Sexual Communities in American History (a gay and lesbian history course), and Native American Women. 

• Faculty Research.  The American Historical Association presented Professor Robert Citino with the 2004 Paul Birdsell Prize, offered biennially for a major work in European military and strategic history since 1870.  Professor JoEllen Vinyard won an Earhart Foundation Research Grant for the academic year 2004-05, allowing her to take a leave to finish her book, Behind Democracy: Grassroots Movements from the Ku Klux Klan to the Michigan Militia.  At least ten faculty members have won various internal grants in support of their research, ranging from full-year sabbaticals and Faculty Research Fellowships to Spring/Summer grants and New Faculty research grants. 

• Faculty Service to Professional Associations.  Professor Philip Schmitz is a founding member of the International Phoenician-Punic Studies Association and Professor Emeritus Janice Terry served as the editor of the Arab Studies Quarterly.  Professor JoEllen Vinyard has served on the editorial board of the Michigan Historical Review since 1987. 

• Faculty Service to the Community at Large.  The senior faculty in particular has made a variety of presentations to various community organizations, ranging from senior citizens’ groups to local art museums.  Professor JoEllen Vinyard has served as a consultant for the Detroit 300 Tercentennial Committee and for the NEH grant to the Rex Dobson Ruby Ellen Farm Foundation.  Professor Mark Higbee serves on the Washtenaw County Historic District Commission, as one of its professional members.  Professor Michael Homel has continued a monthly History Readers Group at one of the local bookstores that has been going since it was begun by a faculty member no longer with us in 1996.  The section as a whole reached out to the community in its Automotive Heritage Lecture Series, bringing in noteworthy scholars from outside the department to public lectures well attended by members of the community.