The following announcement makes my heart sing!

Two of our honor societies team up each year to host a seminar to prepare students for entering graduate studies. Some students just need to be inspired to think about further scholarship at a higher level. Some, perhaps all, could use a little guidance on how to prepare to apply and what to expect when they enter a graduate program.

Our history program many years ago adopted as part of its purpose and mission to regularly send students into master’s and doctoral programs, and we have been successful in doing so, as have a number of other majors on campus (Biblical studies, psychology, social work, the sciences and math, as examples).

Many years at our history department dinner one of our topics of discussion has been how to survive graduate studies, how to approach it, how to handle dissertation advisors, and humorous anecdotes and horror stories of qualifying exams, dissertation defenses, seminar presentation gone awry. This, on second thought, may not have been the best way to approach it, but it always ended up with laughter and prepared our students for the future.

Our history graduates have gone on to master’s and doctoral programs at a number of UC campuses, of course, and at Yale, Princeton, Notre Dame, Fuller, Duke, Emory, the University of Arizona, Brandeis, Marquette, Fordham and a number of law schools like Santa Clara, Notre Dame, McGeorge, Berkeley Law (formerly Boalt Hall) and the San Joaquin College of Law—not a bad list! I can’t speak as readily to other departments, but they have similar stories. Maybe they will add something in the comment section below.

On the announcement following my words you will see the group of dedicated professors who take the extra effort to put the seminar together. Dr. Fay Nielsen is our Associate Dean for Student Success and an instructor in Kinesiology. Fay knows that part of student success is having goals, and being exposed to the professional opportunities that are available. She makes sure these kinds of events happen. She is the President for Region VII of Alpha Chi, and each year takes students to the national conference to present papers. Other Alpha Chi schools in our region are Pepperdine University, Azusa Pacific, Cal Baptist, George Fox University, Dominican University and the University of Laverne. One of our students, Dan Crosby, won a graduate fellowship last year from Alpha Chi. His paper at the convention was “Einhard: A Renaissance of Literature in the 9^th Century” (a medieval topic, of course).

Professor Peng Wen teaches finance and economics in our traditional undergraduate business program and directs the Global MBA. He is an economic advisor to the Government of Taiwan. He brings a bit of experience to his teaching. Dr. Ruth Dahlquist is an Assistant Professor in Biology and an active entomology researcher. Drs. Pam and Marshall Johnston are both Assistant Professors in History and Classics. Marshall chairs the program, and Pam just published a book on the Roman “consilium” in the Republican period—I read it this summer and recommend it for those who want taste of careful scholarship and insights into Roman leadership. They all know what they are talking about when it comes to graduate study.

These are the kinds of events that give students a vision for their future.