This roundtable brings together a group of historians who are also academic deans and provosts from an array of institutions to engage in a conversation with the audience about the state of history, and more broadly the humanities, in higher education. With declining majors, reduce state support for higher education, and ongoing strategic resource allocations, some history departments, and other humanities programs, have been consolidated or have lost the ability to offer a major or a master’s degree. While the AHA’s Tuning Project and Career Diversity have helped historians articulate the significance of the discipline in an array of fields and professions, this panel serves to broaden the conversation about the changes in higher education and the impact of those shifts on history and the humanities. Panelists will consider an array of issues confronting history departments, the humanities, and higher education. The panelists will address the role of history, advocacy, resource allocations, curriculum development and changes, student learning, and faculty impact.

Topics include:

History and Humanities

1. How can we better prepare historians to teach students who will only ever have one class in history during their college/university experience?
2. In the area of recruitment, what are the best ways to encourage enrollments by emphasizing transferable skills and then, just as importantly, helping majors be able to articulate those skills to potential employers?
3. How do we instill a love of the past and make the history marketable without making it vocation?
4. What additional efforts will be needed to convince students and their families that the study of history is a worthwhile venture?
5. From an administrative position, how do we protect our shrinking tenure lines in the humanities with the national loss of majors and the erosion from dual enrollment?
6. What ideas and concepts should historians and graduate students learn from state social studies standards and the National Council for Social Studies C3 Framework? How should historians better advocate for the learning of history and social studies?

Changing Nature of Higher Education

1. Based on what we see from our administrative positions, how do see the future of higher education and the role of the humanities in it, and how do we see faculty (history faculty per se) best contributing to the longevity of higher-education’s broader educational mission?
2. What advice do we have for academics seeking to move along the administrative path? Is it truly the “dark side?”
3. If study after study has determined that one of the main obstacles to transforming graduate education in the Humanities is faculty mindset, how much might the habits and inclinations of faculty themselves/ourselves have to change in order to secure a more robust place in the university?
4. How should historians and humanists respond to strategic resource allocations, strategic plans, declining budgets, and shifting priorities?
5. Community engagement or industry experience is central to many academic disciplines. Should community engagement be a central component of a professor’s job and part of graduate education?