History Degrees Online

B.A. degree program for History majors. Minors in History and Music History offered
Primary and secondary school teaching certification in Social Studies also available
History majors can simultaneously earn a J.D. from Duquesne University through a dual-degree program.
Features a broad curriculum of more than 50 courses and a historic physical environment conducive to studying history.
Graduation requirements include a major senior research paper.
Unique Benedictine influence takes learning to a higher level. (Visit and see for yourself!)

Broadens your understanding of the way things were and why they are.
Fosters your ability to view people, problems and ideas in perspective.
Offers study abroad opportunities, including an annual spring three-week East Asia Study Tour in cooperation with Fu Jen University in Taipei.
Jump-starts your career through membership in Phi Alpha Theta, an accredited honor society for History majors and minors. Publish your research, network at academic conferences and compete for scholarships via our chapter!

Prepares you to immediately enter the workforce or attend graduate or law school. Acceptance rates of Saint Vincent College graduates are high!
Provides practical work experience through internships that we help you secure.
Students have interned at the Smithsonian Institution, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Bushy Run Battlefield and Old Economy Village, to name a few sites.
Gets you ready for a full life, personally and professionally, by nurturing your spirit as well as your intellect

History Department Learning Goals

Awareness of forces — including political, economic, scientific, philosophic, military, religious and cultural — that shape societies and institutions in order to better understand a particular institution’s or idea’s rise or fall.
“Identify the particular forces most relevant to the development of an idea or institution, and trace the interactions of those forces through inception, development, transformation and decline”
“relate historical forces to one’s own growth” and
“understand a work of literature in relation to literary and cultural history.”

Develop students’ “intellectual understanding of both the facts of historical events and their broader significance;”
“nurturing (students’) skills in critical thinking” and
“effective oral communication”
“effective written communication”
“Students can more fully appreciate the complexity of human experience.”

Develop the “ability to weigh evidence and arguments that are essential for those who live in a rapidly changing world.”

By the time of graduation, a history major will be prepared to enter a graduate or professional program, or pursue a career broadly construed as being related to history.

If the past, as is often said, is a foreign country, the modern traveler needs to know something of its language, geography, and customs. Everyone and everything has a past, and close, systematic study of these pasts can yield important insights about the present and, sometimes, clues about the future. As members of La Salle’s History department, we therefore see our discipline as the one that provides the contextual glue for the other liberal arts and sciences. For this reason it is an important foundation of La Salle’s core curriculum.

While intended as a general guide for History majors and minors, we hope that this website will also help those interested in the past, regardless of academic discipline. Thus, in addition to course descriptions, faculty biographies, publications, and contact information, we consider it vital to mention the many activities of our students and their organizations.

Our Historical Society, chartered in 1936, is one of the oldest and most active student organizations on campus. In addition to running trips, films, and other activities with historical themes, it publishes an award-winning student academic journal, The Histories, twice a year. The Society also sponsors an annual fall symposium featuring top scholars such as James McPherson on topics ranging from American foreign policy during the Civil War to the question of German responsibility for the outbreak of World War I.

The Department hosts the Nu Psi chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society. Nu Psi had the distinction of winning a national honorable mention for its work during the fortieth anniversary of the Marshall Plan.

More recently, with the help of a generous grant from alumnus John McHale, the Department has sponsored an annual competition for the Leo Award, which highlights the best student essays on the history of Philadelphia. Winners receive generous cash awards for their efforts.