History
If you're fascinated by the past, Mercyhurst’s Thomas B. Hagen Department of History can help prepare you for a successful and rewarding future with studies in traditional history, public history and museum studies, or preparing to teach history at the secondary level. A wide-ranging curriculum, coupled with an outstanding faculty, equips students with skills sought by employers in virtually any field: to research, analyze, and evaluate information; and to produce sound, convincing arguments orally and in writing. Our History department is committed to promoting a constant search for answers and a holistic approach to learning. Students research movements and events from the past as they analyze how different social, political, and cultural trends affect our society today.
Our graduates pursue a wide range of career paths including teaching, research, journalism, law, public service, museums, and historic sites. Whatever career you pursue following graduation, a Mercyhurst History degree will prepare you for today’s rapidly changing job market. Students without a concrete career goal in mind are guided to pursue their passions through interactions with dedicated faculty, internships, service opportunities and the senior capstone experience.
Fast Facts
- Our History graduates who pursue Secondary Education certifications enjoy an exceedingly high (over 90%) placement rate. Recent graduates have secured high school teaching positions with schools in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, and Virginia.
- We help facilitate student internships all over the United States and abroad. Our students have interned at such prestigious sites as the Gettysburg National Battlefield, Historic Mount Vernon Gardens and Estate, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Petrie Museum of Egyptology in London.
- History will take you places! Students and faculty explore historical sites at home and abroad — from the industrial heritage of Pittsburgh to Rome’s ancient ruins, and countless places in between.
- Our students become adept at critical thinking, research analysis, communication, and problem solving. As a result, our graduates find themselves prepared for fulfilling employment in a variety of diverse fields.
- Students frequently collaborate on significant community and regional history initiatives, such as "You Are Here - We Are Here," a multi-faceted project to document and celebrate the multicultural history of Erie’s east side.
Learning Outcomes
- Critical Thinking: Demonstrate an ability to consider critically and determine a well-informed position on an historical problem, evaluating and analyzing appropriate supporting evidence and using it effectively in arguing a reasoned conclusion
- Historical and Cultural Knowledge and Understanding: Demonstrate a broad understanding of historiography, major periods of United States and world history, and the complexity of economic systems, social and cultural authority, and patterns of political power
- Information Literacy: Demonstrate proficiency with the methods of historical research, analysis, and proper documentation of primary and secondary sources of information in advancing a historical argument
- Public History Theory, Methods, Ethics, and Technical Practice (Public History and Museum studies only): Students will demonstrate a mature competency of select sub-disciplines of public history, museum studies, and digital history
Benjamin Scharff, Ph.D.
Chair, Thomas B. Hagen Department of History
Office: Preston 118
Meet the Faculty
Bryan Colvin
University Archivist; Thomas J. & Michelle Ridge Archivist; Lecturer; Co-Director of iMU First Year Experience
