<p>I was recently accepted (huzzah) and am seriously considering attending Smith. I'm extremely undecided as to my major, but I'm a devoted history nerd and definitely want to take some excellent classes in that area in college, if not pursue that field as a major. </p>
<p>However, I remember hearing some rumors on CC once (very exact, I know) that said that the Smith history department was a little underwhelming. I browsed the course catalog, and I'm not sure what to think. Does anyone have experience in that department? What did you think of the professors and the classes? </p>
<p>Phanatic, I know you’re waiting patiently for someone to give you some useful information, but I don’t have any relevant to the history department yet, but I will ask my daughter. Since she’d already taken a bunch of history classes in high school, she wanted to try something a little different as a first-year. She took the intro to anthropology course last semester and really enjoyed it and she’s currently taking a women’s studies class now, so close but no cigar. I’ll ask her. I’m sure someone will step up with some appropriate information soon! :)</p>
<p>Run away from Smith’s history department as fast as you can. Seriously. I was at Smith for my first year. When I told my history adviser that I was thinking of transferring and wanted to be a history major, she actually told me to leave Smith and would be more than happy to support my transfer applications. I’m really glad that she looked out for me.</p>
<p>Fast forward to 6 years later, I spoke with a Smith alum who is now working on her PhD (in a related subject) and she was a history minor. She told me that the department atmosphere is quite poisonous and has done further downhill since I left. She won’t even interview for a position should one open up until the department’s purged.</p>
<p>I’m really sorry to disappoint you like this but you need a heads up on this if you’re serious about history. I would pick another school, or go to Smith and figure out another major like IR, any of the language departments, or religion that would utilize some history.</p>
<p>Whoa. I wouldn’t say it’s as bad as you say. I’ve had really amazing experiences with the Smith history department. THat’s where I discovered my love of a subject matter that eventually became my career. My major difficulty was just that at a history department in a small college, it’s hard to specialize (hence why I chose to be a government major, it’s a larger major with a wider variety of offerings in my area of interest). The classes I took in history were excellent, but in my specific area there were only a few of those courses within the department. I supplemented that by drawing on the five-college system and also going abroad for a semester to study at a highly specialized university where I had access to a lot of in depth courses on the area of my interest. </p>
<p>I think it depends a lot on what area of history you’re interested in. And also remember that there are lots of ways to study history that are not in the history department. If American history floats your boat, you’ll probably find American Studies highly enriching. If it’s European history, I learned a lot about that in my IR class that focused on the diplomatic history of the Great Powers. If African history, you’ll want to take some African studies courses, etc. If its classical history or medevial history, the medevial studies department is a well-kept secret at Smith worth exploring. And of course, the classics major is great. </p>
<p>So while I’m sorry tmp had some bad experiences in history, I definitely did not, and I would recommend it. But I’d also say that if you really want to study a particular aspect in depth, you’ll probably find yourself needing to reach outside of the “History” department.</p>
<p>S&P, you’ve nailed my last suggestion. Use history courses to supplement your actual major. One of the reasons why I left was because the geographical requirement seemed to be too much for the actual course offerings (half of your courses had to be in one geographical area).</p>
<p>And, are you actually aware that a BIOLOGY professor is the interim chair? My friend at Harvard and I were astonished and we knew it was because of the department politics.</p>
<p>I’m going to address the “politics” that apparently the History Department has. It’s really too bad. Both my in-laws were college professors and before their retirements, they’d periodically complain about the politics involved on the campus or in a department. They felt that unfortunately it comes with the territory. When you get people together who are passionate about what they do, you’re going to have a difference of opinion on all sorts of issues. Dynamics in a particular department can be better or worse, given the personalities involved. However, that doesn’t mean that the courses aren’t substantive and wonderful and the professors aren’t fabulous teachers. It just means that people are human and we don’t always get along, unfortunately! :(</p>
<p>Well, I am a college professor now, and I can say that although there are always departmental disagreements, some of these split departments and impact the education of the students and some don’t.</p>
<p>I have no knowledge of the situation at Smith, but I have seen departments destroyed by acrimonious rifts, and I have seen departments with disagreements function well. It’s not true that human nature is always represented in the same way.</p>
<p>For instance, the classic argument in my department is about teaching English Composition: which is more important, form or content? Of course, the answer is that both are, but folks line up along the battlements. Certain folks have been having the same argument for the 24 years I’ve been teaching at the school. However, it is not acrimonious.</p>
<p>If it were, one faction might gain control, dictate textbooks, etc. and force out new hires who did not toe the party line.</p>
<p>I think problems in a department do directly impact education. My S (obviously not at Smith) left one major because the department was not supportive. Maybe he wasn’t suited to that major, I’m not sure. He loved his school and didn’t want to transfer and is very happy in another department. I’m not sure what would have happened if he had known how it might go before he went.</p>
<p>Phanatic at least half of my D first year friends have completely changed direction from what they planned to study before they came to Smith - that’s not to say you shouldn’t take the issue seriously but if you are not determined to be a history major then think about picking the overall college that suits you be it Smith or somewhere else. If you are choosing a LA college then hopefully it’s so you can explore what you are interested in for a while before you have to commit.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion, as I’m a History major.</p>
<p>I have to say, the Smith History department didn’t look bad to me when I perused the course catalog; I saw quite a few Fall 2010 courses that I’d be interested in taking. Sure, the geographic distributions are a pain, but they didn’t look impossible. Of course, I’m coming from a university where the department is insanely fixated on American history (seriously, there were maybe two or three courses available this semester that weren’t American history), so it’s not too hard for the grass to look greener, so to speak. Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to get at is: What am I missing here?</p>
<p>Also, I notice on the department’s website that it says:
“Courses cross-listed in the History Department section of the catalogue count as History courses toward all requirements.”</p>
<p>Does this mean that any course listed under ‘Historical Studies’ for the curriculum distributions is fair game?</p>
<p>Hate to say it, that’s what I thought too, Citoyenne. </p>
<p>But when you go on Bannerweb and start looking at past terms, you might see a different picture on the long run of things, not just for one semester. When I was there, it was ALL American history, no European because half of the faculty was on sabbatical (and they all happened to be Europeanists). And I wanted to do European history.</p>
<p>Because of such small faculty, the Smith history department has been forced to make its requirements more flexible in order to attract majors. This includes accepting cross-listed and “historical studies” courses from other departments such as Religion where students can take a Buddhist course in order to study the history of India. Half of your coursework, I think, can be used in other departments. My friend told me that they just did away with a required ancient history course in order to write the honors thesis. You call that a history major when you aren’t working with history faculty for half of your courses?</p>
<p>And the other thing to look at is, how many honors theses are they producing? It’s my understanding that the more majors and thesis writers departments have, the more support they will get as a whole from the College.</p>
<p>Really. That’s just sad when that history department is producing 1-2 honors theses a year when other SLACs have more than that. Those “special studies” are independent projects, BTW.</p>
<p>Ticklemepink, it’s too bad that the Europeanists were all on sabbatical when you were there–poor timing. When you do an honors thesis in your major, wouldn’t you generally work with a professor from your major?</p>
<p>Well that part about Honors theses is sort of post hoc ergo procter hoc. Because each professor can only sponsor one thesis student and that student has to be doing a thesis in the specialty area of the professor, larger departments produce more honors theses (more profs=more possible theses). Those departments are generally larger because they are better funded, but that’s not neccessarily tied to how many theses they produce, since a department has to have the funding to higher more professors to increase the potential availability of thesis sponsors, before it can begin to produce more theses. If that makes sense? </p>
<p>And why should you have to take courses with history faculty in order to study history? The fact is that historical studies without attention to things like religion, sociology, politics, art and culture, etc is an impoverished study of history. And if you already have departments specializing in those skills, why not allow history majors to explore them? Many of Smith’s departments are interdepartmental in focus. American Studies is a good, heavily funded example. Afro-American studies is another. Even science departments are interdepartmental. Astronomy majors spend a lot of time with the geology and physics and chemistry faculty because there are only two straight astronomy professors and because they need the other departments to broaden their majors. It’s like that at all small schools, and sort of the purpose in liberal arts is to be well rounded rather than fixated on a single department, even when it comes to your major.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for your opinions! I had no idea this would generate so much discussion, and I’m taking all of this into account as I make my decision.</p>
<p>I sat in on a class this past Tuesday. It was a topic that interested me (British history) and the professor clearly knew her stuff. However, I was somewhat disappointed by the class. The professor would pose questions to the students, and there would be long moments of awkward silence before anyone answered, if anyone answered at all. Perhaps it was just an off day for everyone (it was just after lunch, so that might have made a difference), but it just wasn’t quite what I hoped. </p>
<p>I’m not set on a history major, but I am positive that I want to pursue the subject to some extent in college, and the quality of a college’s program will make a big difference.</p>
<p>Some classes have a lot of strong response, some of them don’t. Part of it has to do with the timing in the schedule of course, but a lot of it just has to do with the chemistry of the class. I’ve taken some courses at Smith where the whole thing just clicked, and others where it really dragged. </p>
<p>Frankly, I wonder how many of those students were actually history majors or intended majors and if that or if the time of year had something to do with it. From my experience, you can’t always get to all your homework, so you prioritize whatever is most important to you at the time, and that’s often your major class or whatever class you have a paper/test/exam coming up in. So sometimes you just don’t make time for the reading in the extra class and then you have less to contribute to the course. And if it’s mid-terms you can bet a lot of people in your class will be in that boat.</p>
<p>S&P may correct me, but from what I got from my D, in many classes people never shut up. Many discussions resembled nothing so much as a floating craps game.</p>
<p>I just came back from spending the afternoon and evening at Smith (we live 1-1/2 hours away) going to a couple of Bloomsbury lectures, museum show and Rare Book Collection archive display–very professionally and beautifully done!</p>
<p>Anyway, the lowdown from my daughter is that everyone is completely up to their eyebrows with work right now. She hardly had time to have dinner with us. Everyone is pushing to get done what has to be done and the other stuff will happen later. Late night hours all around. So that history class could have been quiet because everyone’s overloaded with work and sleep-deprived and ready for a nap or it’s just a class that doesn’t click. If you have a chance to take another class (or two) at Smith, do it. Whether it’s a history class, it’s up to you. I sat in on a number of my daughter’s classes during Family Weekend in the fall and, while the dynamics were different, the classes were all lively. </p>
<p>Also, you should know, since you’re interested in history, that Smith has an Archives concentration, as of January 2010. My daughter as a STRIDE scholar is working in the Sophia Smith Archives and, because she loves it so, has applied for the concentration. If you want to be an historian, learning how to work with archives could be very useful.</p>
<p>Speaking of historical archives, the Sophia Smith Archives of Smith College has one of the largest collection of women’s studies in the world. Check it out!</p>
<p>And if you’re still visiting Smith, and since you love British history, you should check out the the Mortimer Rare Book Collection room where they’re displaying the Bloomsbury exhibit (Bloomsbury was a unique British historical moment of creativity in Post-Impressionist art and literature–Virginia Woolf, anyone?).</p>
<p>Ah, yes…April. I shudder at the thought of how many times D must have been up until past 3am working on papers and such. That’s like one of those Cold War secrets…I’ve been told I really don’t want to know but snippets come out here and there. Smith academics are a marathon, not a sprint.</p>
<p>April and October. Those are definitely the worst months of the year. And sometimes March right before spring break. And November right before Thanksgiving… </p>
<p>That’s just sort of the Smith rythym. It’s okay, your cruising the first few weeks of every semester. Just reading, some short papers, occasional test, no big deal. Then WHAM you have papers due in every class, on the same day, a bunch of mid-terms, and all your events for your student orgs that you’ve been leisurely organzing suddenly have to be ready TOMORROW. Then, if you’re lucky, there will be a vacation so you get some time to relax.</p>
<p>That’s good to know about the Smith “rhythm.” I always like when I can get a sense of what the academic intensity cycle is at a school (easy, easy with a few stressful times, stressful with a few easy times, MIT-stressful… et cetera). </p>
<p>@CarolynB: I happened to run across that exhibit when I was wandering around at Smith (though I didn’t see your post before that) and found it fascinating. And the work your daughter is doing as a STRIDE sounds equally interesting–maybe, if I’m at Smith next year, I’ll be fortunate enough to have a similar opportunity. :)</p>
<p>Thanks again to everyone for all the advice and information. I daresay that the Smith forum is the friendliest on CC!</p>