The following piece is an excerpt taken from a summer 2014 Perspectives on History article of the same title, written by Elaine Carey, Sara Haviland, Eric Platt, Sarah Shurts, and Emily Tai.

On May 20, 130 historians, administrators, and public historians gathered at St. Francis College in Brooklyn for a one-day conference—Teaching History to Undergraduates: A Regional Conversation. As participants in the AHA’s Tuning project who are based at institutions in the New York-New Jersey area, we organized this event as a regional discussion of current issues in college history education. It was an occasion for a broad group of faculty historians and their allies to reflect on the state of undergraduate history at their institutions. Attendees came from as far away as Massachusetts and Delaware to share ideas on how to improve student learning in history and how to advocate for each other and for the history discipline.

The conference began as an idea among the organizers, who had gotten to know one another through the Tuning project. We thought that a regional conference would introduce the project to historians in the Northeast and allow us talk about the issues facing history education. The goal of the conference was to start a conversation about what history students should know and be able to do upon completion of introductory classes at a community college or completion of a BA degree….

Read the rest in the Perspectives on History summer online edition.

Read more about the conference at the St. Francis College website.

Watch the video:

AHA Executive Director James Grossman’s morning address, “Why Tuning?”

Dan McInerney (Tuning USA Advisory Board, Lumina Foundation for Education Advisor, and AHA Tuning Project) provides “A Beginner’s Guide to Tuning.”

This post first appeared on AHA Today.