Vision:

The Department of History will be nationally and internationally recognized for educating undergraduate history majors about the importance of understanding the past in any society, and for teaching them critical, analytical and research skills applicable to numerous potential career paths.  The Department will also be nationally and internationally recognized for training graduate students and producing Masters and Ph.D.s in History who, along with the faculty in the Department, will produce new, innovative, and meaningful historical knowledge that contributes to the popular and scholarly understanding of the past, especially as it pertains to the U.S. – Mexico border.

Missions:

The Missions of the Department of History are to offer excellent B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. programs.  The B.A. program will prepare students for careers that involve research, synthesis, and analysis; as teachers and archivists; and for admission to graduate or professional school.  The Masters program will prepare students to teach, to work as public historians, or to advance their graduate education.  The doctoral program will prepare students to teach at universities and colleges across the country and the globe, and to research and publish nationally and internationally recognized work on the study of borders, especially but not exclusively the U.S. – Mexico border.  The Department will be recognized nationally and internationally for its research and publications, again especially but not exclusively related to the U.S. – Mexico border.  The Department is dedicated to providing a quality education to the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez community at large, and specifically to the historically underserved Mexican American population, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.   

History Department Research

The department, which offers a Ph.D. in Border History, M.A.s in History and in Border History, and a B.A. in History, has several research priorities:

1] Border studies, to facilitate greater understanding of: the U.S.-Mexico border; the border as a geographical space [rather than as two distinct national histories and cultures laying side-by-side]; the border in conceptual terms, separating and conjoining aspects of identity, culture, and space; the border in global and transnational terms.

2] Interdisciplinarity, to unite our efforts to understand the border and borders—and history in general—across and between disciplines; to understand the border and borders—and history in general—in empirical and theoretical terms.

3] Public History, to produce and present history that reflects and incorporates the community in which UTEP is located; that breaks down walls between "professionals" and people, between the university and the community surrounding it.

4] Race and Racial Identity, to understand the ways in which constructions of race and racial identity have evolved and changed historically, and the implications of that evolution and change

5] Gender and Sexuality, to understand the ways in which constructions of gender and sexuality have evolved and changed historically, and the implications of that evolution and change

6] Public Education, to examine and, when necessary, revise our notions of how best to prepare future area public school teachers of social studies