McMurry students sign the sections they authored of the new book Abilene Landmarks, A Photographic Tour, at the 2008 McMurry Homecoming.  The students wrote descriptions of historic or distinctive Abilene buildings for class and saw them published in this handsome book from State House Press. Nor is this the only occasion that McMurry history students have won distinction beyond the classroom.  A total of four McMurry students also  participated in a recent Phi Alpha Theta history honors conference, presenting the fruits of their research. McMurry history classes have included special trips to the Boston area to study the American Revolution and the early whaling industry.  And in the fall of 2006, Dr. Don Frazier took his upper division Civil War class on a week-long tour of Civil War battlefields, from Vicksburg on the Mississippi River to Shiloh, Tennesse.

It has been said that good teaching comes down to this simple proposition: To know your subject well, and to be turned on by it. There are hundreds of schools in the country with history programs; why should you come to McMurry? A lot of the answer to that question is the faculty you’ll encounter here. When you take history classes at McMurry, you’ll be taking classes from teachers who are passionate about what they do. All have doctoral degrees from recognized graduate programs and have published original research. They have all received teaching awards of one sort or another. For them, history is not just lists of dry facts about people who are dead, but a vital key to understanding the world we live in today and tomorrow.

“Prisoners among Prisoners: Conflicts at Camp Barkley, Texas” by Ruth Ann Shirley was recently named the 2009 winner of the West Texas Historical Association’s Best Student Essay Award.  Shirley presented her paper at the Association’s 2009 annual meeting in Lubbock, Texas, April 2-4.  The paper will be published in the 2009 West Texas Historical Yearbook.  The award comes with a $400 honorarium. Shirley’s paper was written last spring for History 3377: Historiography and Methods, the intensive writing seminar required of all history majors. Shirley herself plans to teach social studies in the public schools after she graduates.

In addition to its faculty, the McMurry History Department also offers students the benefits of its association with the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to history education. The Foundation specializes in the history of the Old South, Civil War, and Texas. It maintains an extensive collection of books and documents in those fields housed in the McMurry University library. The foundation also manages the Texas Frontier Heritage and Cultural Center in Buffalo Gap, a short distance south of Abilene. The center’s most prominent feature is the Buffalo Gap Historic Village, a unique site of historic buildings and artifacts and the home of the Buffalo Gap Chips, a vintage 1880’s base ball (not “baseball”) team. But it also manages State House Press and the McWhiney Press, which publish several outstanding titles in American history every year. These resources together make possible McMurry’s new concentration in Heritage and Cultural Tourism from the School of Business, which is also available as a minor for other majors, including history.

What does this all mean for you? It means lots of opportunities for your personal and professional growth, whether you ultimately envisage history as a vehicle for getting a public school teaching certificate, for graduate study, for going to law school, or because you just want to know more about the world around you.