From Dr. Paul Townend, The Undergraduate Coordinator

            The undergraduate history program at UNCW is an outgrowth of the institutional and departmental commitment to provide our students with the very best we have to offer as teachers.  The faculty are committed to the education of undergraduates.  The vast majority of our courses are taught personally to small numbers of students by our regular, tenure-track faculty.  We see history to be a central component of the liberal arts tradition; a discipline ideally suited to train both critical and imaginative thinkers even while it conveys vital information about how and why the world changes.  Our program is designed to offer students a broad exposure to American and international history.  The department contains experts in many areas and eras of study, ranging from public history to African-American history; from Wilmington to Beijing; from the American Civil War to the Great Irish Famine.  We invite you to explore our diverse interests on the faculty page, and we hope to have the opportunity to share them with you.

            Our undergraduate majors must complete 42 credit hours of study across a broad range of times and places.  At the heart of our program are the intensive reading and writing courses that form our students as scholars.  History 290 (The Practice of History) serves as a gateway to advanced courses in the department and offers all of our students a thorough training in historical argumentation, research, and writing.  Majors must also complete two research seminars, which involve original research and writing on a topic of interest to the student.  We are proud of the rigor of our program and the work ethic of our students.  Our most recent survey of our graduates makes it clear that they appreciate the training they receive and the faculty who work so closely with them.  As one student notes, "the department provides students the opportunity to follow their own interests and passions in history," while another observes that the "strongest feature of the history major is the strength of the faculty".

            If you have any questions about our program, please don't hesitate to contact our undergraduate coordinator, Paul Townend.