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Graduate Studies

category: History Department, 

 

If your intention is to pursue History as a career choice, you should strongly consider attaining a Graduate History Degree. Although a Bachelor's Degree can certainly get you employed in a History related field, a History Master's will grant you significantly more options and a greater chance of employment. Also, if you are interested in teaching, a Master's Degree in History is the next step toward getting yourself into a PhD program.

A Graduate History Degree at WOU is, by necessity, more broad than the undergraduate degree. Western's small faculty offers two to three 600 level courses each term, with each professor teaching roughly one of these seminar courses each year. Thus, the topics for the 600 level courses differ significantly from term to term, making it difficult to maintain a narrow focus. 400/500 level courses, where graduate students are integrated into an undergraduate class, are your best option for continuity in subject matter, but the 600 level courses will better prepare you for continued studies. You will need to take courses that are outside your specialization and in fields of study that you probably have little background. The faculty understands this and will offer any assistance you need to understand the material.
If you are considering working on an MA History, you should be aware of the kind of work you will be doing. Although it can sound impossible, you will be surprised how quickly you adapt to a graduate workload. There are two types of 600 level courses at WOU: 600 Seminars and 610 (Europe), 620 (World), or 630 (U.S.) Historiography courses. The Seminar courses are primarily research classes where you will choose a topic within the theme of the course and write a journal length paper, around twenty pages. Essentially, the process is similar to condensing the 499 Senior Seminar course for undergraduates into one term. The Historiography courses are intended to accelerate you through a selection of the scholarship in the topic field. Typically, there is not a research paper in these classes, but the student will produce a series of book reviews (1,000 words each) as the class reads and discusses monographs chosen by the professor. On average, these courses will cover a book each week, though that pace varies with the density of the material.

The only 600 level course that each student will need to take during the History Graduate Program is HST 698: Methods, Research, and Writing. Undergraduates at WOU will already be familiar with HST 420: Philosophies of History, which asks students, "What is History?" 698 is similar to 420 in structure, but with a graduate workload and requiring a higher level of critical thinking. This course follows the guidelines for a 600 level Historiography course, as above, but the students also write a fifteen page paper looking at the development of a particular topic. What have historians written about it? How has the discussion changed over time? Why? The best part of this paper is that the topic is chosen by each student, meaning that you can research and write about anything that interests you, so long as there is enough material for the paper. Whichever term you are taking 698, be careful about your class load. While it is not significantly more work than the other 600 level courses, you could find yourself overwhelmed if you have a heavy load.

It might sound clichéd, but the best way to keep the graduate workload balanced is careful time management. Where you might have gotten away with procrastination in your undergraduate degree, putting off term papers until a couple of days before they were due, the accelerated nature of the History Master's program and the higher standard for grading means that you need to work on research papers as early as possible. As a chronic procrastinator, I can tell you that it is not feasible to wait until the last minute as an MA History student. That being said, I will recommend scheduling time off for yourself during each week. Especially during your first term in the program, it can easily feel like you need every minute to catch up on reading, but you will be much more productive if you take breaks from your work periodically.
Cost is the other concern you should be thinking about while applying to a History Graduate Program. Graduate school can be expensive, but you should ask your history department and financial aid office about scholarships and other assistance that is available to you. WOU offers scholarships that are only available to students in the History Master's program. You will also want to apply for a Graduate Teaching Assistantship (GTA), which will not only help you with the cost of school, but also give you teaching experience that will give you insight into how professors manage their classes.


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