At PHI we support undergraduate internships, public engagement programming, and efforts to enliven the teaching of history at the university and K-12 level.
Our HistoryCorps program places undergraduate history students in credit-earning internships in museums, schools, and cultural organizations in the Los Angeles region. The Department’s “Why History Matters” programs connect with audiences beyond the campus through lectures and faculty commentary on contemporary affairs. PHI community engagement projects range from a partnership with the School for History and Dramatic Arts (LA Unified School District) to collaborative research with local social justice organizations.
PHI builds on a long tradition of engaged scholarship by History Department faculty, students and staff, and especially the National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS). Under the leadership of Gary Nash, NCHS wrote the first national standards for teaching U.S. and World History, and published a large catalog of document-based lesson plans for schoolteachers. NCHS also developed popular resources for teaching World History including the free website World History for Us All and its companion volumes World History: The Big Eras, and A Compact History of Humankind: The History of the World in Big Eras.
