Big Names
This flexibility is not the field's only claim to distinction nor its main one. The department is loaded with big names--and a surprisingly large number of them are excellent lecturers. Taylor, Brinton, Schlesinger, Merk, Owen, Langer, Morison, Gilmore, McKay, Handlin, and Schlesinger, Jr., are names which command respect in academic circles throughout the nation. In recent years, however, the department has suffered some serious depletions through voluntary and involuntary resignations. An associate professor, Franklin Ford, will be added to the staff next year. Coming from Bennington, he sports an enviable reputation in his field of European history; he will give two half courses next year, one in modern Germany and the other on France and Europe from 1500 to 1715. But there is some bolstering needed in the American history division, especially with full professors Frederick Merk and Samuel Eliot Morison due for retirement within the next two years.
Group Tutorial
Once in the field, the sophomore will find himself, confronted with regular group tutorial sessions which will probably meet in his House and will be composed of other sophomores from his House. Sophomore tutorial is alike for both honors and non-honors candidates, it consist mainly in readings from the great historians of the past, with occasional papers to let the tutor know how much has taken root.
Next year, however, honors and non-honors juniors may be travelling widely divergent paths. Under a plan now being considered by the department, non-honors men will henceforth take their big comprehensive examination at the end of the junior year instead of the senior year, as is the present system. Under this plan, non-honors students would have no departmental exams in their senior year--except if they failed the exam the year before, in which case they will be re-tested.
The plan, which has already been approved by the department's tutorial staff, will have as its main advantage the emphasizing of junior non-honors tutorial. Faced with his make-or-break comprehensive examination at the end of the year, the non-honors junior will take a much sharper interest in his tutorial assignments. At present non-honors men tend to loaf through junior tutorial, since departmental exams are not impending for another year. Then, by the time comprehensive do roll around, the non-honors senior no longer has tutorial to give him the wide knowledge of history in general required for the exam.
No change is planned for honors candidates. As juniors they will discuss specific problems in history in group tutorial, and as seniors they will prepare for their thesis through individual tutorial sessions. They will continue to take general examinations as juniors and specials as seniors.
"Specials" refer to the student's special field--History is divided into a flock of subdivisions, specialties inside a specialty, such as Greek history, Latin American history, and American History since 1789 (by far the largest special field). The concentrator can take as many courses as he wants in his special field, but also has to take two courses in different areas.
For those who stick with the field the rewards often turn out to be tangible ones. Although no summas were earned by the class of '52, fully one-third of the honors seniors received magnas, while all the rest graduated with cums.