Press Release
Contact: |
Arnita A. Jones, Executive Director, American Historical Association John Dichtl, Executive Director, National Council on Public History Katherine Finley, Executive Director, Organization of American Historians |
Date: |
June 22 , 2010 |
Subject: |
Historical Associations Issue Recommendations About Rewarding Public History Work for Promotion and Tenure |
For Immediate Release
WASHINGTON DC, June 22, 2010 —
“Tenure, Promotion, and the Publicly Engaged Academic Historian,” a report offering best practices for evaluating public history scholarship in history departments, was adopted by the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Executive Board on April 8, the National Council on Public History (NCPH) Board of Directors on June 3, and the American Historical Association (AHA) Council on June 5.
The report contends that public history work is generally overlooked in a “tenure process that emphasizes single-authored monographs and articles at the expense of other types of scholarly productions.” Despite increasing interest in public history, public scholarship, and other forms of civic engagement in colleges and universities, current standards for evaluating historical scholarship employed by history departments and dean’s offices “do not reflect the great variety of historical practice undertaken by faculty members.” Even departments that hire faculty specifically to teach public history often neglect to reward those historians for carrying out the range of public history activities required in their jobs.
The report provides clear advice for college and university administrators, department chairs, and faculty. It begins with an overview of existing promotion and tenure standards, analyzes the growing interest of college and university administrators in community engagement, and suggests how public history work should be evaluated as scholarship, teaching, and service. The committee that conducted this study hopes it will have ramifications beyond academia, perhaps in organizations, such as federal or state agencies, where the work of public historians is evaluated in promotion decisions.
The report is available on each of the organizations’ websites (www.historians.org, www.ncph.org, and www.oah.org ). A supporting white paper, also written by the committee, is available on the NCPH website.
The American Historical Association is the oldest and largest professional historical organization in the United States, bringing together nearly 5,000 institutions and more than 14,000 individuals, including college and university faculty, public historians, independent scholars, archivists, librarians, and secondary school teachers. The Association was organized in 1884 and chartered by the United States Congress in 1889; its establishment coincided with the professionalization of history as a discipline in the United States. Over the years, the Association has changed as the discipline and profession have changed, but its central mission has remained unaltered: the advancement of historical knowledge.
Founded in 1980, NCPH is a national nonprofit advancing the field of public history, promoting professionalism among history practitioners and encouraging their engagement with the public. It is a membership association of consultants, museum professionals, government historians, professors & students, archivists, teachers, cultural resource managers, curators, film & media producers, historical interpreters, policy advisors, and many others. Members confer at the annual meeting each spring and share their expertise in a scholarly journal, The Public Historian, in a quarterly newsletter, and in multiple online formats.
The Organization of American Historians (OAH) is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. Founded in 1907, the OAH promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history. The work of the organization is supported primarily through the contributions of its membership, income from an annual conference each spring, and the support of Indiana University, which houses the executive and editorial offices.
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http://www.historians.org
Last Updated: June 25, 2010
