The OAH/FIPSE Project

To the casual observer of American higher education, it must seem a clear case of the efficacy of the big stick. Having received a string of good thumps in the form of reports calling for educational reform, it ap­pears that presidents, deans, depart­ment heads, and faculty are belatedly scurrying around trying to repair their institutions and curricula after years of wanton neglect.

As those of us who have made higher education our lives know, the sense of alarm and calls for reform originated from within the colleges and universities, especially from within the humanities disciplines. While we are certainly com­mitted to creating positive changes with­in higher education, it is important to realize that we are reacting not to the outrage of outsiders but to our own long-developing sense of dissatisfaction. The Organization of American Histori­an’s FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education) Project is just one example of how the humanities disciplines have been leading rather than following the movement for change.

The OAH’s first efforts to develop a project that would address the problems of teaching American history go back to 1979. Over the next few years, the OAH explored various ideas. Gradually the right concepts began to emerge. In 1982, Dr. Jerry Bobilya, OAH Assistant for Professional/Educational Programs, submitted a proposal for a pilot project to the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postse­condary Education. FIPSE responded by funding a Pilot Project for fifteen months, beginning in the fall of 1983.

Dr. Bobilya took a holistic approach to the proposal. He recognized that in the long run, the rejuvenation of American history would depend upon the discipline’s success in bringing into syn­ergistic interaction four elements: the secondary schools; undergraduate and graduate departments; the graduate students; and their potential employers in business, industry, and government. In order to receive good students inter­ested in history, the departments must look to the schools. In order to attract a reasonable number of history majors and graduate students, the departments must be able to demonstrate that history is an asset, not a liability, in the nonaca­demic marketplace. And, in order to do this, departments must become more involved in developing ties to communi­ty leaders outside of academia. In the process of expanding the horizons of our own professional self-interests, we may also discover new ways in which historians and history may serve the emerging post-modern society.

Where to start, however? To make sure the Project did not dissipate itself by going in all directions at once, the Pilot Project to Revitalize Graduate Training in American History was de­signed to test the efficacy of two closely related programs. The first was a series of workshops for department chairs and graduate program directors. The sec­ond and more ambitious effort called for the formation of consulting teams of historians to visit and work with inter­ested departments of history involved in self-evaluation and departmental planning.

The first organizational meeting of the OAH/F!PSE Pilot Project Team, as it was soon called, was held in October of 1983. Professor Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. of the University of Michigan was elected chairperson of the Team. Pro­fessor Joan Hoff-Wilson, Executive Sec­retary of the Organization of American Historians, acted as Project Director.

Over the next year and a half, the OAH/F!PSE Project Team put its experimental approach to the test, re­sponding to invitations from four Midwestern history departments: University of Kentucky, Indiana State University, Purdue University, and Ball State Uni­versity. Four Team members plus Pro­ject staff participated in each visit, which were followed-up by written reports to the department heads.

During this period, the OAH/FIPSE Project also sponsored two regional workshops: one at the University of Maryland at College Park and the other at Northwestern University in Evanston. The purpose of these workshops was to focus attention on the major problems facing graduate departments. Chief among these were the career options open to history graduates.

Since it was essential that the partici­pants in the Team visitations and work­shops be well informed about the vari­ous issues to be addressed, the Project was actively involved in conferences and symposia. These efforts included host­ing a meeting of representatives of the University of Chicago’s Baker Commis­sion on Graduate Education; hosting a conference at Indiana University to ex­amine placement issues and career al­ternatives for humanities-trained graduates; and participating in the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded conference “Humanities and Careers in Business.”

By the end of the Pilot Phase, the OAH/FIPSE Project came to the follow­ing conclusions, set forth in the project’s final report (June, 1985):

1. The graduate curriculum in American history needs substantive revision at most institutions and mod­est adjustments at many.
2. The instruction of American his­tory at all levels is in need of rejuvena­tion and improvement.
3. Both graduate students and facul­ty in American history need assistance with attitude adjustment . . . so that they might be more receptive to op­portunities available.
4. The vistas and horizons of both graduate students and faculty in American history (and, some evi­dence would indicate the humanities in general) need broadening.
5. Cooperative ventures among his­tory departments, other humanities disciplines, schools of business, and schools of education should be under­taken.
6. Collaborative efforts need to be struck among the worlds of academe and the worlds of business, industry, government, and media.
7. Learned societies and academic as­ sociations must assume a leadership role in both evaluation and in the encouragement of improvement en­deavors.
8. More substantive and effective col­laboration between those teaching American history at all levels of American education needs to be insti­tuted.

The success of the Project during its “Pilot” phase prompted FIPSE to pro­vide full funding for a two-year period, allowing the Project to take on a full-time staff and to extend its operation from a largely Midwestern focus to a national scope. As the Project moved into this Second Phase in September 1985, there was a change in personnel. Professor Berkhofer and Dr. Bobilya and several members of the Pilot Team left the Project for other activities and commitments.

When I became Project Director on November 1, my initial task was to orga­nize a National Board of Advisors. This Board held its first meeting in India­napolis, January 30-31, with Professor Michael Hogan as chair. At the same time we have translated the Pilot Team’s experience into a set of written guide­lines that will facilitate our expanded activities. Our eventual goal is to devel­op a planning guide that will assist his­ tory departments in improving their planning procedures and self-evalua­tion exercises.

While the basic structure of the Pro­ject will remain unchanged, both the team visitations and workshops will be more self-consciously oriented towards the future—planning for the twenty-­first century. In addition to our previous stress on career options for graduates, we shall also be emphasizing the need for greater cooperation between history departments and history teach­ing at the secondary level. Along with historians, we hope to include experts in school-university relations as well as in career guidance on the panels we take to regional workshops.

Another aim is to involve the partici­pating departments more actively in preparation for and follow-through to the team visitations. We want the team to act as a catalyst for innovative plan­ning. Therefore, although the team visi­tation is offered without charge to a department, there is some departmental effort involved, intellectual as well as clerical, in preparing for a visit.

During the visit, the team members conduct interviews with the department head and graduate program director, faculty, graduate students, and universi­ty administrators. We do not stop at the edge of campus, however. We also inter­view local leaders in business, industry, and government (what Professor Berk­hofer liked to refer to as “B.I.G.”). We are not only interested in sounding out attitudes toward employing history ma­jors and graduates. We also try to create openings for extramural cooperation between the department and the broad­er community. The visit concludes with an informal session involving the team, the department, and representatives of other groups the team has interviewed.

After the visit the team submits a written report to the department sum­marizing the department’s problems and possibilities and outlining the op­tions that it might pursue. We ask the department to respond in writing to this report. Within six to nine months, a follow-up visit is made to the depart­ment to help it chart its progress and to offer assistance in implementing its plans.

Any department interested in acting as a host for a regional workshop or in receiving a visit from one of the Pro­ject’s consulting teams should contact the Project’s office as soon as possible. Also, any faculty member or graduate student interested in receiving the Pro­ject’s forthcoming newsletter should contact us to have his/her name added to our mailing list. Write the Organiza­tion of American Historians, OAH/ FIPSE Project, 112 North Bryan, Bloomington, IN 47401.