Reconnecting a Profession: Building Ties with Two-Year Faculty

Juli Jones

At the inaugural OAH regional workshop series for two-year faculty on the campus of El Camino College, in Torrance, California, community college historians, including forty-six-year OAH member Abraham Hoffman (center), discuss their work on internationalizing the U.S. survey at a session with USC’s Carole Shammas.

"I feel a desperate need to get updated on scholarly trends...to reconnect with my profession...to learn from colleagues who teach my field." These pleas from community college historians are at the heart of a new initiative developed by the Organization of American Historians to offer an ongoing regional workshop series for two-year faculty. The first workshop was held June 21-23, 2007 at El Camino College, Torrance, California, and received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Through its Second Century initiative, the OAH has raised funds from historians and history friends throughout the U.S. to enhance the teaching of American history and support historians at two-year institutions. The challenge for the project is to reconnect two-year faculty with their profession; and to overcome the barriers for many faculty who have felt cut off from the larger historical community, lack institutional support for professional development, and work in isolation from four-year colleagues and each other.

The traditional division between four-year faculty engaged in research, publishing, and graduate teaching and their two-year counterparts is one that the OAH has worked hard to overcome over the last two decades. Community college historians are represented by a standing OAH committee and participate in much of the governance and activities of the organization that were previously closed to them. Despite outreach efforts, however, community college membership in the scholarly organizations remains disproportionately small. While community college historians teach the great majority of U.S. history survey courses taken by American college students, they have little connection to the larger profession. Many continue to see their university counterparts and their organizations as elitist, exclusionary, uninformed, and even hostile to two-year faculty, their work, and their problems. Although many historians at community colleges have good graduate training, including many with post-M.A. work and degrees, and contribute to history education through writing, public history programming, and educational service, the perception remains that they are second-class citizens in a profession that criticizes their lack of academic development while ignoring their need for professional growth opportunities.

Don Hata joined the workshop, held in memory of Nadine Ishitani Hata, former El Camino Vice President of Instruction and OAH Executive Board member.

While two-year faculty lack opportunities to engage with four-year colleagues, they also work in isolation from each other. Attendees at the El Camino workshop last month were eager to meet with each other, to learn from others with similar experiences, and to develop a network to support them in the future. They felt a need to work with others to respond to challenges from community college administrators regarding online education, accountability, and assessment. Their most important concern was to meet the needs of underprepared students and new Americans while maintaining collegiate standards for U.S. history courses. They want to engage with four-year colleagues, to keep current in their field, and to share their ideas and expertise in maintaining the integrity of the foundation U.S. survey course.

To help meet these needs, OAH pulled together a task force of community college historians from around the country to help devise the workshop series that was piloted last month in California. Fifty community college historians attended a series of core sessions (to be repeated in future workshops in other parts of the country) as well as panels specifically related to regional issues and interests. These included state of the field sessions on immigration, featuring David M. Kennedy, and women and Latino/a history presented by Vicki Ruiz. Other sessions focused on California oral history projects, working with underprepared students and new Americans, using online primary source documents, U.S. history in a global context, interpreting history with museums and materials, online survey courses, teaching late twentieth-century and recent history, incorporating geography and online maps, and finding financial and other resources to build local partnerships, programs, and networks.

Historians, including longtime OAH members Lesley Kawaguchi and Julian DelGaudio, share ideas on immigration following David Kennedy’s State of the Field presentation.

The workshop sessions brought together four- and two-year faculty as partners; presenters included faculty from research institutions and community colleges, as well as public historians. The workshop encouraged the use of public history resources in local areas through site visits and the use of curriculum materials. The sessions were videotaped and will be placed with workshop materials and handouts on the OAH web site for use by historians nationwide. To assist faculty to attend the workshop, small stipends ($200) were provided through the OAH Second Century Campaign. Currently the OAH has dedicated funds raised to cover the program for three years. Executive Director Lee Formwalt explained how roughly fifty historians and OAH supporters pledged nearly $300,000 to the OAH Second Century Community College Workshop project. The gifts ranged from less than a hundred dollars to several at $25,000 and $50,000. Many of the pledges for the project were at the $5,000 level. Many of the community college historians were impressed by the fact that most of the donors were university or public historians.

Scheduling the workshops in the summer allows faculty to attend without missing classes during the regular academic year. Last month’s workshop offered a twilight historical tour of the RMS Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach, California, followed by dinner onboard. The evening was sponsored by The History Channel, which provided additional educational materials for workshop participants. The workshop also attracted the support of textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin.

In developing the workshop series, the OAH community college task force realized that outreach was essential. With my background as a community college historian active in OAH with experience in workshop production, I was hired by OAH to coordinate the preparation and execution of the pilot workshop at El Camino. Understanding the challenges of other programs in reaching community college faculty, I sought to identify all the community colleges in the southern California region and all full-time and adjunct historians at each college and to make individual contacts with everyone possible. I also contacted department chairs, coordinators, or other leaders to let them know about the program. One of the greatest challenges in outreach is that there is often no central location for community college information, no consistent division within which history is found, and no consistent department chair or other leadership. Each college is different, and each requires a different approach. In calling and identifying myself as the community college coordinator from OAH, I found faculty astounded to be receiving a personal phone call from their professional organization. This created much goodwill and interest and appreciation for OAH, and renewed faculty interest in professional involvement.

Mary Jo Wainwright (right) explains points from her Online Survey Course presentation.

Although the workshop was targeted for the Los Angeles area, community college historians registered from the hinterlands and deserts of southern California, northern California, and Nevada, driving long distances, and even flying in from Oregon, Washington, Indiana, and New York. Faculty response was overwhelming—they were enthusiastic about the session topics, presenters, state of the field sessions, and the opportunity for funded professional development. The workshop and outreach has provoked an emotional response from community college historians, an intense gratitude that OAH is interested in them and cares about the issues they struggle with. We saw firsthand at El Camino the accomplishment of our dream—to have a successful outreach effort in local areas, to make the OAH real and personally invite two-year faculty to become involved, to make OAH a real resource for historians who feel alone and detached from their colleagues, and to bring two- and four-year colleagues together to enhance our efforts with the survey in practical ways.

Workshop participants were universally enthusiastic in their evaluations of the first workshop at El Camino College. One commented that “I have attended a number of workshops and conferences, but this is far and away the best one in which I was able to really participate.” Many said that they gained practical information to incorporate into their classroom, were reenergized, appreciated the balance between scholarship and teaching sessions, the opportunity to discuss issues with four-year college historians, and most of all the chance to network and learn from other community college colleagues. Others noted that the workshop was a great incentive to join the OAH; a number renewed lapsed memberships and others joined for the first time. Others were inspired to volunteer for service. Presenters, too, mentioned the dedication and enthusiasm of these historians, their knowledge of history and of teaching, and their perceptive and provocative questions on wide-ranging issues. Overall, participants came away with new colleagues, renewed commitment to teaching and the historical profession, and interest in future community college programs. They also offered valuable suggestions for future workshops. As one wrote, “I hope the OAH is able to continue the program, as well as increase the participation of community college historians. I will encourage other faculty to take advantage of this opportunity.”

Appropriately, the OAH workshop at El Camino College honored the late Nadine Ishitani Hata, historian and former vice president of instruction, and a pioneering leader in establishing community college historians as recognized members of the profession and valued contributors to the OAH. In the wake of the first overwhelmingly successful workshop, OAH looks ahead to the future and to reconnecting with community college historians in other areas. Next year’s workshops are planned for Texas and Indiana, with workshops to be held on the East Coast in 2009.

We came away from our experience at El Camino with a renewed commitment to the idea that all practitioners have something important to contribute to the profession. We hope our workshop series can serve as a useful model for other efforts to strengthen our diverse educational community. For historians, creating inclusive partnerships for professional development and to enhance our teaching of U.S. history benefits us all. Our investment in community college history education and historians is an investment in our profession and in the U.S. survey course as the foundation for an informed American citizenry.