Why Wooster?

› At The College of Wooster, we believe that the best way to understand history is to do history. We encourage our students to pose the kinds of questions that historians pose and to explore those questions and historical sources with their own skills of critical reasoning and interpretation. Wooster students often present their work at regional or national academic conferences.

› Wooster students who major in history have the opportunity to study many other fields as a minor or even a double major, from Chinese, to religious studies, to music, to philosophy, to name only a few. The small-college atmosphere provides a chance for students to work closely with faculty members in this department and others, as well as with fellow students.

› The College of Wooster has a strong program of overseas study. Students can spend from a month to a semester studying and living in a foreign country. Wooster history students of the past decade have traveled to places such as Germany, Ireland, France, and Latin America.

Life After Wooster

The experience of I.S. opens doors for Wooster history graduates in areas such as business, public service, education, or information science, for example. A high percentage of Wooster history majors go on to graduate school, well prepared by their I.S. experiences for any field of study.Wooster graduates who have become historians teach at the Universities of Wisconsin, Indiana, California, Michigan, and North Carolina, Emory and Princeton Universities, and several other schools and colleges. The department claims several published authors among its graduates, including Ron Takaki ’61, who has published several works on the history of race relations.

Some Wooster history department alums find the process and accomplishment of I.S. directly related to their careers in a wide range of fields. For example, Stephen Palmer ’92 studied the legal reforms of medieval kings for I.S., went on to law school, and now works as an attorney. In her I.S., Anne Bryant Mettee ’93 explored the history of relationships among government agencies, corporations, and grass-roots environmental groups. After graduation she found employment in environmental consulting. Other graduates, working in positions not as directly related to their senior projects, find that the analytical and research skills gained through I.S. impress prospective employers as well as graduate schools.