SRS 200-05

Union College was among the wave of college foundings after the Revolution. For much of the antebellum period, Union was ranked among the foremost colleges in the United States, along with Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, the College of New Jersey (Princeton), and King's College (Columbia). During this time, higher education in America moved from an exclusive, classical emphasis to a much more democratic and practical orientation (along with the rise of the research university). According to one historian, American colleges, "perhaps more than any other institutions in the 19th century, were dynamic caldrons where the democratic ideals of a new nation were worked out in practice to address the growing needs of a population that was only beginning to understand and give voice to its many constituencies." This Sophomore Research Seminar will trace the history of Union College within this context, along with the development of higher education in general as a reflection of American culture, using the important primary resource collections of the Union College Special Collections Department. The course will focus on the discovery, interpretation, and evaluation of a variety of kinds of historical evidence-and on reporting the results in written papers and projects.