The Department of History is one of the university’s oldest academic units. Organized in 1959, during the university’s second year, it has long been recognized as one of the university’s most outstanding departments. From its inception, the history department has attracted a diverse faculty from some of the nation’s most prestigious universities. Over its almost fifty-year existence, the department has successfully attracted a cross-section of scholars. This was the first UNO department to hire African-American faculty. While others demurred, it led the way to include men and women from different ethnic, cultural and racial backgrounds.
The department’s commitment to academic excellence mirrored the university’s initial goal. Bolstered by a graduate program added in 1965, this department has produced both undergraduate and graduate students who now serve with distinction in academia, business, government, and the arts across the nation as well as in foreign countries. Its multi-faceted support for rigorous research and scholarship, effective teaching with open access to its students, majors and non majors alike, along with prodigious service to the community, have set it apart from other departments. The strength of the department begins with the faculty.
Since 1959, the department of history has been home to more than 40 full-time faculty members. Most have been outstanding teachers as evidenced by the large number of teaching awards presented to its members;
some have received several. To date, the faculty have published more than five dozen books, hundreds of articles, reviews, and chapters, and received national awards for their excellence in research and scholarship. Further attesting to the quality of their work, individual members have been awarded distinguished scholarships and fellowships from internationally recognized foundations such as Fulbright, Danforth, Ford, Gould, Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Defense Foundation. Stephen E. Ambrose’s numerous and varied publications earned him one of the university’s first Boyd Professorships, the highest academic honor in the LSU system. Ambrose was also one of the first recipients of the Alumni Distinguished Professorship.
The long and continuing service of department members, both to the campus and the metropolitan New Orleans community, has been extraordinary. The National World War II Museum, Centre Austria, the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies, the Eisenhower Center for American Studies — all were first imagined within the UNO history department faculty.
UNO students from every major and discipline have benefited from their involvement and interaction with such a diverse and distinguished group of men and women. Consequently, they have achieved success in many places. While history graduates now serve us as attorneys and judges, legislators, and public officials, in history departments at some of the top colleges and universities in the country, including UNO, the lives of many non-majors who took courses from this department have been positively affected as well.
As the history department educates the students of the 21st century, the faculty has reshaped itself to respond to the needs of today’s students by offering courses that project a global view while continuing to emphasize research on the locality in which we are situated.
