SJSU Annual Assessment Report
Academic Year 2012-2013
Electronic Copy of Report Due July 1, 2013
Send to Undergraduate Studies (Kim.Huynh@sjsu.edu), with cc: to your College
Associate Dean and College Assessment Facilitator
Department/Program
Contact Person
History/Master of Arts
George L. Vásquez
Date of Report:
June 4, 2013
email george.vasquez@sjsu.edu Phone (408) 924-5528
Program Accreditation (if any) None
Please refer to expanded instructions for each item. The narrative portion of the
report should not exceed four pages. Appendices should be included as part of
the report.
1.
Overview and Context:
In 2010 the History Department’s graduate committee began to assess the
MA program via students’ culminating experiences, since there is no
single course or set of courses that all graduate students in our program
take. Students specializing in Ancient/Medieval history write theses. Those
specializing in Modern Europe, the United States, and the World take
comprehensive examinations unless they are applying to doctoral
programs and the department’s graduate committee has approved their
thesis proposals. These comprehensive examinations are known as the
Plan B Exam. All students pursuing the MA with a Concentration in History
Education (CHE), whether specializing in US History of World History take
comprehensive examinations.
2.
Assessment Data:
Students identify and analyze the fundamental problems of historical
interpretation and recognize some of the “schools” of historical analysis
in western and non-western fields across historical time.
The Plan B Exam, the culminating comprehensive written exam taken by
History MA students, is directly related to this PLO which corresponds to
the fifth-year PLO in the History Department Program Plan. The students
take four hours to write three essays in their field. On the Modern
European History exam, they have three sections in which they must
choose one of two or three questions. On the US exams, the students are
given eight or nine questions and they must choose three of those. While
they are expected to define a thesis and demonstrate extensive knowledge
of content, the essays must engage the historiography. One each of the
three essays, the students are required to cite relevant books from the
reading list and to engage with the historical debate. The questions often
overtly ask the students to discuss historical debates. For instance, the
first two questions on the Plan B exam for the Spring 2013 U.S. History
Post 1865 exam, asked:
1. Compare the successes and failures of Reconstruction. What
were the causes and results of these outcomes? How have
historians explained them? Be sure to discuss African Americans,
northern Republicans, and southern whites in your answer.
2. Compare the interpretations of America's westward expansion put
forth by Frederick Jackson Turner and Patricia Nelson
Limerick. How have they interpreted the process differently? Be
sure to consider Native Americans and Mexicans in your answer.
And, a sample question from the Modern Europe exam:
3. How did industrialization and technology affect intellectual and
cultural history from approximately 1800 to 1945?
In the Fall, three students took the exam and all passed, two in US (1865 to
present) and one in Modern European History. In the Spring, seven
students took the exam, three in Modern European History and four in US
(1865 to present). We had no World History exams this year and no US
History pre 1865. In the Spring, all but one student passed the exam. That
student will try again in December of 2013.
Because the exams adhere so closely to this PLO, it is difficult to pull out
quotes or examples, as each essay is historiographical in nature. One
student, on the Modern Europe exam writes:
“Romanticism was one of the most powerful cultural and intellectual forces
of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. George Mosse argues in his
Culture of Western Europe that Romanticism was the wellspring for many
intellectual movements during this time and typified the reaction to new
technology and social changes brought about by industrialization.
Nationalism could be viewed as a way of creating a new community for
those who had lost theirs in the transition from rural to urban
communities.”
In fact, the one student who did not pass the exam and will need to retake
it, failed to adequately engage the literature. The faculty grader’s response
to the exam reads:
“On the third answer, responding to a question about the causes of the
Republican party's rise to power between 1964 and 2000, the student
disregarded the issue of race in the general shift of white voters away from
the Democrats, especially in the South, starting in the late 1960s. The
student did not mention Dan T. Carter's From George Wallace to Newt
Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution or Michael Schaller
and George Rising's The Republican Ascendancy: American Politics, 19682001, both of which books on the Plan B reading list would be crucial to
answering this question. … Next time the student should focus on crafting
an argument directly in response to the question with evidence from
history and insights from books on the required reading list woven
together in the fabric of the student's own argument.”