Mission Statement

The Department of History at CSULB is a researching and teaching community that nurtures the intellectual curiosity and career aspirations of its students. The History Department has a distinguished national reputation in history education at both the university level and in the preparation of teachers in the public schools. Consonant with the above the Department of History’s mission is focused on:

• introducing students to a comparative study of past and contemporary societies and cultures
• broadening students’ knowledge of, and empathy with, past societies
• providing students with a rich curriculum that raises their cultural awareness and sensitivity of diverse human communities
• assisting students in understanding, and being able to account for, the significance of cause and consequence and continuity and change over time over both the natural and built environments
• familiarizing students with the methodology of the disciplines and the theories at the heart of historical analysis
• engaging students’ analytical and communicative capabilities in evaluating sources (both primary and secondary), drawing conclusions from evidence, and presenting their findings in both oral and written forms
• preparing pre-service History/Social Science teachers for public secondary schools who are culturally adaptive and conversant in both historical content knowledge and history-specific pedagogical practices
• promoting lifelong learning
• developing students as informed, committed, and thoughtful citizens
• preparing students with skills transferable to whatever professional or occupational field they chose to enter
• encouraging and supporting faculty research to enable departmental historians to create and communicate scholarly knowledge that informs their teaching and promotes student understanding of the means by which historical knowledge is constructed, contested, and situated in public and educational settings.