One week ago, the history department at Iowa State announced to the history majors that they are eliminating the secondary education program in social studies. The biggest reason that they give is the lack of money to run it.

But there is more to it than that. After corresponding a couple of times with the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, not only does he tell me that social studies is not a priority of the department of history and that there are budgetary reasons, but also they made their decision based on that there are similar programs at Iowa and at the University of Northern Iowa.

Well, for us in the program, we know differently. We have a unique program in which we have our methods class in cooperation with Ames High School, which the other programs don’t have.

It gives us real-life experience dealing with high school students in which we are able to present lessons to them.

What I get out of my communications is that the history department is failing because they are denying students their dreams of becoming teachers.

It is apparent that there needs to be a change in leadership within the Department of History and in the office of the dean of the college. What I don’t understand is that there are other areas that are duplicated at the other schools such as the science, math and English programs. Iowa also has a business school and a school of journalism. I don’t see these programs being eliminated because of redundancy at the other schools.

This institution takes the attitude that its easier to eliminate a program instead of trying to save it. I understand that there are budgetary matters, but why do I see this institution spending money left and right for the football program, new buildings and refurbishing of old buildings? I understand that there is a bit of private money involved, but then why does the school not go after private money to be spent on academic programs?

What I believe needs to happen is that again there is a need of a change of leadership. Since the dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences has an “I don’t care” attitude, he needs to be replaced, as does the head of the history department. And since there is no reaction from the office of the president, I would want a replacement for him also.

Joe Cimijotti

Senior

History and Secondary Education