About the Department

Who We Are

The History Department at Cal Poly Pomona offers both a B.A. and an M.A. degree in history as well as courses that meet campus general education requirements.  It also offers a minor in history. The Department offers a global history emphasis that, in line with the mission of the university, allows students to deepen their understanding of the past and its meaning on both a particular and a global scale.  The department also provides a solid training for students in historical methods, including training in the latest internet-based research and teaching techniques, historiography, and historical research in the form of senior thesis.

The faculty members in the department include experts in the history of the United States (including California), the ancient and modern Mediterranean and Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa , continental Europe, Russia, and Britain. Faculty members include recipients of prestigious scholarships and awards from the following institutions: Fulbright, Guggenheim, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities. Our curriculum includes a wide range of courses organized both geographically and thematically; it includes several courses in the history of science and technology, which is an area of expertise for several of the professors, as well as classes on the history of labor, foodways, sports, film, etc.

History majors take a wide range of courses at CPP to sharpen their writing and analytical skills and to develop their content knowledge. Our majors have won prestigious internships and fellowships across the country, and go on to careers in secondary teaching, museum studies and archives, law, government, business and many other fields!

Click here to read more about the history of History at CPP!

Mission and Vision

The mission of the History department is to offer its undergraduate and graduate students and students in the university in general a broad, liberal education that informs them about the particular and the global past and the relevance of the past in today’s world. The department trains its majors in the discipline and practice of history, and prepares its graduates for careers in education, history, law, business, library, or the public sector as well as for graduate studies in these fields.  The department aims to educate its majors for a life of learning and achievement built upon an awareness and appreciation of the past and its relationship with the present.