At this roundtable, four history department chairs from small liberal arts colleges will discuss the opportunities and challenges facing their departments. They will touch on themes like history enrollments, diversity and inclusion, the challenges of the pandemic, and recent curricular and pedagogical changes pursued by department members, before opening the discussion up for Q&A with the audience.

This roundtable is part of a three-part series on the future of history at small liberal arts colleges. In recent years, liberal arts college history departments have faced many of the same challenges and opportunities as departments at other types of institution, but the experiences of faculty and students at SLACs are in many ways distinct; liberal arts college history departments have also been the site of exciting experiments in curriculum and pedagogy likely to interest the larger field of history. This series is intended to give SLAC history faculty a place to discuss issues of common concern, to build a greater sense of community, and to highlight the exciting things taking place in their departments, while entering into dialogue with each other (and the rest of the field) about the future of the historical profession.

Although faculty at small liberal arts colleges are the primary audience for this roundtable, anyone is welcome to come, including prospective SLAC faculty and other historians interested in learning about the future of history at liberal arts colleges.