Tag: academy

Benchmarking

I am just starting the second week of HIST 701 Historical Professions, and I am already finding the class interesting and challenging. One of this week’s assignments is a benchmarking assignment. I opted to look at graduate history programs here in Oregon, offered by institutions that report having graduate programs in history. Below is the paper submitted.

By: Jonathan Wanzer ORCiD 0009-0004-9275-7410
Submitted on: March 23, 2025
Submitted to: Dr. Schultz – Liberty University
Course: HIST 701 Historical Professions
Chicago Citation:
Wanzer, Jonathan. “Benchmarking Programs: History Programs at Universities in Oregon That Offer Graduate Degrees.” Historical Interpretations (blog). December 2, 2024. http://wanzer.org/2025/03/benchmarking/.

Benchmarking Programs: History Programs at Universities in Oregon That Offer Graduate Degrees

by Jonathan Wanzer
March 23, 2025
ORCID.org/0009-0004-9275-7410

This analysis focuses on degrees offered by colleges and universities with graduate programs in history in Oregon, the number of history degrees awarded in the 2022-2023 program year, and the percentage history degrees represent in the institution’s total degrees awarded. Data was collected from the National Center for Education Statistics, College Navigator website using the search parameters: Oregon, advanced degrees with the following Programs/Majors selected American History, General History, Public/Applied History.[1] The search results indicate that four Oregon universities offer advanced degrees in history. The Institutions indicated are; Oregon State University[2], Portland State University[3], University of Oregon[4], and Western Oregon University[5].

Oregon State University offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in history. In the program year, OSU awarded a total of 7,389 degrees, 5,829 bachelor’s, 1,140 master’s, and 420 doctorates. Of these, OSU awarded 59 bachelor’s and 4 master’s degrees in history, slightly over 1% and 0.35% respectively. A doctoral program in history is not available at OSU.

Portland State University offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in history. In the program year, PSU awarded a total of 5,621 degrees, 3,839 bachelor’s, 1,717 master’s, and 65 doctorates. Of these, PSU awarded 46 bachelor’s, and 4 master’s degrees in history, just under 1.2% and 0.23% respectively. A doctoral program is not available in history at PSU.

University of Oregon offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in history. In the program year, UO awarded a total of 5,441 degrees, 4,089 bachelor’s, 968 master’s, and 65 doctorates. Of these, UO awarded 59 bachelor’s, 1 master’s, and 1 doctorate in history, just over 1.4%, 0.10%, and 0.26%, respectively. UO is the only institution offering a doctorate in history in Oregon.

Western Oregon University only offers a bachelor’s degree program in history. In the program year, WOU awarded a total of 1,031 degrees, 855 bachelor’s and 176 master’s degrees. WOU does not offer doctorates in any field. Of the degrees WOU awarded, only 8 bachelor’s degrees were awarded in history, slightly over 0.93% of bachelor’s degrees.

The cumulative total of degrees awarded, bachelor and above, awarded in Oregon by institutions offering advanced degrees in the program year was 19,482 of those, 182 were in history, 172 bachelor’s degrees, 9 master’s degrees, and 1 doctorate, less than 0.01% of degrees awarded by Oregon institutions that offer advanced degrees. Just 10 of the 19,482 degrees were graduate or doctoral degrees.[6]

Oregon universities offer many graduate programs in business, medicine, and physical sciences, both residential and online. When it comes to the history or public history fields for history majors, particularly graduate degree programs the state’s universities do not provide much of an offering. Furthermore, all the programs in this study are residential, there are no graduate-level programs in history available online from Oregon’s universities. This is surprising in one sense considering the state’s many active historical societies and important museums. While this is disappointing for anyone seeking a graduate degree in Oregon, it is not that surprising. Anecdotally, a prior nationwide search for online graduate programs in history provided limited results, and only one online doctoral program was located in the United States, Liberty University’s online doctorate.[7]

APPENDIX

History Program Completions & Program Percentage of Institutional Total Awards[8]

UniversityDegree Level Degrees AwardedHistory % of Total
Oregon State UniversityUndergradHistory591.0122%
Univ. Total5829 
GraduateHistory40.3509%
Univ. Total1140 
DoctoralHistory *00.0000%
Univ. Total420 
 
Portland State UniversityUndergradHistory461.1982%
Univ. Total3839 
GraduateHistory40.2330%
Univ. Total1717 
DoctoralHistory *00.0000%
Univ. Total65 
 
University of OregonUndergradHistory591.4429%
Univ. Total4089 
GraduateHistory10.1033%
Univ. Total968 
DoctoralHistory10.2604%
Univ. Total384 
 
Western Oregon UniversityUndergraduateHistory80.9357%
Univ. Total855 
GraduateHistory *00.0000%
Univ. Total176 
Doctoral †History00.0000%
Univ. Total0 

Table 1. Data from College Navigator

* No history degree is offered at this level
† No doctoral programs available

[1] “College Navigator,” accessed March 23, 2025,  https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?s=OR&p=54.0102+54.0105+54.0101&l=94.

[2] “Oregon State University,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://oregonstate.edu/.

[3] “Portland State University,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://www.pdx.edu/.

[4] “University of Oregon,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://www.uoregon.edu/.

[5] “Western Oregon University,” accessed March 23, 2025, https://wou.edu/

[6] See Table 1 in the appendix

[7] Author conducted a search of U.S. colleges and universities in the summer of 2024 looking for online doctoral history programs.

[8] “College Navigator”

Spring B-Term 2025 Update

It’s been a while since the last post, the fall term ended, we had a lovely winter break, and I’m at the mid-point of the Spring B-sub-term. This term’s class is Teaching History, and the project is developing a class in two forms: an 8-week online course and a 16-week residential course. I chose to design the class The Industrial Revolution in America 1790-1860. It is an undergraduate survey of the period, beginning with a brief history of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain for background, followed by Samual Slater’s immigration to America, covering the progression of the social, economic, and technological developments of the period, and ending with a look at how the effects of the Industrial Revolution contributed to slavery leading into the Civil War. This is an overview of one of the most important periods of American history.

The Spring D-sub-term’s class, Historical Professions, starts March 17th. It is “an overview of the discipline of history, patterns of historical research, history instruction, historical organizations and careers in history.”1

The site is progressing slowely as things develop. I am looking forward to posting articles in the near future to help build the content of the site. For now the blog is more of a reflections of the academic journey as move slowly closer to a doctorate.

  1. From the course description in the Liberty Catalog. https://www.liberty.edu/online/courses/hist701/ ↩︎

Timelines

As of this posting, this Timeline project is still in development. I wanted to post it to the site early and see how it goes. I am using TimelineJS which is a nice tool. I tried embedding it to the post but the post space is too narrow and it didn’t look right, not to mention you had to scroll up and down just to see the entire height of the timeline. The project link is here.

Timelines offer so many valuable visual possibilities for digital humanities and public history, there are two block plugins for WordPress which I will try to check out soon and see how they go, but for now, I’ll just post links to my TimelineJS timelines.

Expect an ETA on this post in the next few days.
~Jon

Bibliography

My last class for the M.A. in public history starts next week and runs for the 8-week D subterm. The course is HIST 706 Digital History which as you will see is somewhat ironic. I have been working with the topic for some time doing digitization projects, digital archiving, database development, and working with metadata structures to make digital objects findable, and accessible. I have burned more than a few cycles on the elements of digital archives like accessioning, cataloging, and preservation of the digital media as well as the metadata to keep it useful and locatable. This was much of what I did for my independent research over the summer preparing for this term.

HIST 706 became available to access yesterday. My usual ritual the week before a term is to prep my OneNote file for the class with all of the readings and assignments with as much of the course info available as possible and start getting resources ready. I usually have all of the textbooks well before this period, and after reading the syllabus and assignments I usually have a list of additional textbooks to order. Yesterday was no exception, OneNote was prepped and the five books specifically mentioned in the syllabus that were not on the book list were ordered. Surprisingly, all of the books ordered should arrive before the end of the first week. The day after the course posts I start watching course videos, synthesizing assignment instructions, and reviewing rubrics. The week four video caught me off guard.

The video for week four is a lecture by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum The Transformissions of the Archive. The lecture is interesting in and of itself, but it impacted me in a personal and unexpected way. I have been struggling with narrowing my field for my doctorate. Not surprising considering how broad my interests usually are and my proclivity for diving head first down deep rabbit holes. This video managed to focus my attention on synthesizing a concept I am well aware of with a genre of research interests. The concept of metadata, and my interests in books and documents, paper, ink, graphology, paleography, codicology, printmaking, bookbinding, and paper conservation. In a word… bibliography.

A couple of hours online have revealed very little on the practice of bibliography, lots on the writing of bibliographies, but sparse on the former. I located several books that look like they may be useful on Amazon and saved them in a list, 15 to be precise, and ordered 3 others. It will take some research on the field to determine what studies I will need to look further into. As for education, the closest I can find are MLA programs with an available focus on special collections and preservation. While I would like to add an MLA to my education profile, I don’t have the time right now but it could be added at some point in the future along with a master’s in conservation. For now, I’ll take on the research on the practice of bibliography and see where it takes me.

Until next time,
~Jon Wanzer

New Projects

An upcoming school project is providing the impetus to begin another, bigger, long-term project, the archive. My last post expounded on the great expanse of cataloging and what all is involved in the data management and location side of establishing an accessible archive. I already have an archive per se, a collection of photos, documents, papers, letters, and a handful of artifacts, the issue is it is little more than boxes of stuff, not the searchable and accessible collection it should be. As the previous post indicated the metadata captured and the form it takes provides the searchable elements of the catalog. This is where the old computer axium, garbage in – garbage out, stands very true. Bad use of, or poor, non-standard quality metadata is worse than none at all.

There will be more on the school project in future posts, suffice it to say at this point it is a pilot project to define the standards for a permanent digital media archive comprised of digitised magnetic analog media. The goal is to establish the background policies and procedures for an entity to build a media archive from old magnetic media before it degrades to the point it can no longer be accessed and to make the created digital media searchable and accessible. Searchable and accessible being the key operators, hence the need for a thorough look at what metadata will be useful, and to what level should the metadata be standardized to easily integrate with other institutions in a shared environment.

While my own archive has been nagging at the back of my mind for years, having a project along similar lines for a graduate project helps breaks the rust of apathy and stagnation. The project is under the auspices of an internship that will span two sub-terms, from mid-August to mid-December, and will be a pilot project that is primarily an investigation of what would be required to establish an archive. While I will be digitizing some media for the project, the primary objective is to gather data for a thorough report that will outline the policies and procedures for starting and maintaining a permanent archive along with the projected cost of maintaining it. I am hopeful that the my report from the pilot project will result in a decision by the organization to take on the full archive, but even if they chose not to, I will have set out to build a working archive and have the pilot project to show for it as well as the skills to continue with my own archive.

One of my biggest questions was were to build the archive website. I am running a testbed on and internet accessible server to learn the platform I have chosen to build the archive on, but I wanted to build the pilot project on an internal machine, something not hosted by a provider to allow for complete control and an opportunity to try and break it. I decided to run the pilot on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB of memory and a 1TB SSD. I am familiar with running servers on the Pi platform and keeping them secure in a production environment which will help reduce IT needs. I have an isolated sandbox and can tunnel into the server which reduces the organizational expense to all but naut. I am used to taking on the IT/IS responsibilities for projects of this scale so this was a no brainer. In the runup to the project’s start date I am working on familiarizing myself with the inner workings of the Omeka platform and how it handles the metadata and customization.

That’s all for now,
~Jon

April Flowers

Not a good start but consistant, it’s been less than 6 months since my last post. At some point I do want to stick to a consistant frequency in blog posts, I’m not sure what that frequency will be, but the desire is there. I have been busy of course with gradschool and considering life’s progress. All things considered, I am in a relativly good place and making progress in the contemplation of which of many possible paths to follow. Since removing myself from volunteer obligations, I hanen’t realy been involved in anything outside of school and home. The academy has been my world since August 2023. So, lets dig into some details.

My B.S. in Religion took longer than it should have, 2018-2021. I stepped up my game for the M.A. in History and completed it in four terms, 2021-2023 amidst some distractions early on. The M.A. in Public History started in the spring 2024 term and will be completed in the fall of 2024. I am almost half way through the second master’s now, just three more weeks to go. Off loading the mass of volunteer work helped tremendously in finishing the first M.A. and diving right into the second. With three more classes to go, I am raring to get these knocked out by the end of the year. An Internship, a Local Historical Research class, and a Digital History class are what is left to complete.

As I plan for the next phase, I need to start narrowing my interests in the field, at least for the dissertation phase of the doctoral path. Yes, the decision to pursue a terminal degree in history has been made, more or less… ??? Yes, I know, is it a yes or is it a no, the variable is employment. I am activly looking for a remote adjunct in history position at the undergraduate level. If I can find one that requires less than 20 hours a week I should be able to take that on and work on the Ph.D.. In broad terms, Industrial Revolution (IR) technologies is a vast span of material to cover, far too broad for a dissertation. Trying to narrow the scope has been dificult since I haven’t had the time do any in depth reading or research to narrow things down to a tight topic. My other academic interests skirt history proper so they also play into the process. Political science, industrial archaeology, experimental archaeology, and experimental history all have a place in the field.

Along with the lack of time to attack the mountain of reading material to find a narrow topic for a dissertation, I also have some academic challenges. I am a slow reader. I read for context and understanding. I have a tendancy to wander on concepts in the reading, and when I come across a word I am not familiar with I look it up. When there is reference to a person, movement, or concept I am not familiar with, I need to divert my attention to understand the context. This can slow things to a frustratingly glacial pace.

As an example, I am currently indulging my political science and history interests on fascism in America and Europe toward the end of the IR. Klemperer’s The Language of the Third Reich1 is literally about the contextual language of the Reich, which is German. I don’t speek or read Greman. I can work out some of the pronunciations and word forms but I want to have at least a cursery understanding of the proper pronunciation, structure, and context so that when these words come up in research in various texts, and they do, frequently, I want to grasp the actual meaning. German words appear in English translations mainly because linguisticly German creates compound words that translate to sentenses in English, with meaning often beyond the litteral translation. This matter is compounded by the context of when the expanded word came into common use, when common meaning changed, or when it left common usage.

Volk [people]2 is the stating point for a plethera of other words, Volkswagen, is people’s car in a general context. In the context of 1930s Germany, volk means folk which has a nuanced context that might not be understand without a German language background as well as the period context of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [National Socialist German Workers’ Party]. Thus in a 1938 text with Volkswagen, the car of the folk takes on a different context and meaning. This is only one of many words in the volk family which were used to great effect in propaganda and the building of a fictional “historical” Nordic narrative.

I have a number of books on the shelf waiting to be read. Most can be placed into one of four main categories. Late-19th to mid-20th century fiction which is important for contextual interpretation, the civil rights movement and elements there of, facsism and democracies, and architecture. A broad swath of topics but they all relate to history and public history. There is also a backlog of more reading material on my wishlist. This is another of the reading issues, so many things to read but I have to keep my time reserved for academic works first. This will be even more critical in the second phase of the doctoral path, the comprehensives. Anything tangential will have to wait at least until the dissertation phase.

If I do manage to find the unicorn of employment over this summer or fall I will need to start considering a dissertation question and thesis, I will also need to start thinking about publish or parish. There are a number of forms to consider, journal articles, papers, reviews, books, and documentaries. These will also benefit from a narrowing of the field. As I get closer to a question and thesis, I should be able to take some of the impractical side topics uncovered in the dissertation research and pursue them for publication. Time to start looking at journal submission criteria.

Until next time,
~Jon Wanzer, M.A.

  1. Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Tird Reich, London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. ↩︎
  2. Klemperer, 30. ↩︎

Things to come

You may have noticed, there is not much content here. My attention has been directed elsewhere, mainly with postgraduate studies. There are 14 days left (December 15, 2023) in my last class for my M.A. in History program, however, it dosn’t end there. A second M.A. in Public History starts in January and thanks to some advanced planning, completion of the second master’s will be in December of 2024. It will be head down and full-steam ahead to get the public history degree completed on time. The month between the fall and spring semesters will be dedicated to planning what happens next. One of the top items to be concidered is whether or not to pursue a terminal degree, if so, what major concentration, and where. I will be looking for degree related work throughout 2024 and will revisit the terminal degree question over the summer.

Degree antics aside, this post is an opportunity to ask myself a few questions about this website that will be reviewed over the winter break; what is this site for, what are its intentions and voice? Will it be a historically focused personal blog or a research publication and portfolio site? There is also the question of research focus which is important if pursuit of a terminal degree is the path forward.

While my primary area of historical focus has remained constant, subsets and concentrations have been flexible. The chronological period has remained relativly fixed to the Industrial Revolution about 1830 to 1939, though the roots of the Industrial Revolution in the U.S. go back to 1790 and Samual Slater’s cotton mill (1790-1808)1 and the Pawtucket labor strike of 1824.2 In the U.K. the first sparks of the Industrial Revolution can be seen as early as the 1760s with James Hargreaves invention of the Spinning Jenny3 (pat. 1770) and James Watt’s improved steam engine4 (pat. 1769). Topically, my interests are centered around the technologies of power, communications, and transportation. Other period considerations include the social and political aspects that allowed industrialization to take root in the first place, topics like social class mobility, international commerce, dependant economies, monopolies, workers rights, and social justice were all developing during this period. Any investigation into the topics above will quickly show how interconnected they all are.

These are questions to explore during the December/January break.

Until then,
~Jon

  1. Gary Kulik, “Factory Discipline in the New Nation: Almy, Brown & Slater and the First Cotton-Mill Workers, 1790-1808,” The Massachusetts Review 28, no. 1 (1987): 164–84. ↩︎
  2. Gary Kulik, “Pawtucket Village and the Strike of 1824: The Origins of Class Conflict in Rhode Island,” Radical History Review 1978, no. 17 (May 1, 1978): 5–38. ↩︎
  3. Charlotte Moy, “Who Invented The Spinning Jenny?,” The Economic Historian, January 30, 2023, https://economic-historian.com/2022/07/spinning-jenny/ ↩︎
  4. “Industrial Revolution Timeline,” Britanica, accessed December 1, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/summary/Industrial-Revolution-Timeline ↩︎