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One for the Books
Rare Public History Doctoral Program Breaks New Ground

by Christina Salerno-


Sac State earned a reputation through its established master’s program in public history for giving students hands-on training, mostly through internships at places such as the Railroad Museum or Caltrans in Sacramento. UC Santa Barbara is among the most prestigious schools in the nation for academic and theoretical coursework in public history—it’s considered the “Yale of public history,” said public history student Paul Sandul. Students in the joint program spend a year at each campus.

“The UC Santa Barbara program had some strengths that we lacked, and we had strengths that they lacked,” said Ken Owens, professor emeritus at Sac State, who worked to create the joint degree program in the late 1990s. “Sac State was widely recognized as having the best master’s program in the West. It took about five years of going through hoops to reach agreement on both campuses, but from the beginning everyone we approached about the proposal was extremely enthusiastic.”

Many of the UC Santa Barbara students were working side-byside with Sac State graduates in state and federal offices as consultants, Owens said. So there was a “natural matching of interests and strengths” already at work when the joint degree program was finally launched, he said.

Sacramento has a large concentration of research sources through the state library and state archives, as well as two large university libraries, Owens said. “For a project that might involve a historical environmental impact study for a new highway proposal, Caltrans is the place to do much of your work,” he said. “Being here, we have quick and easy access. It is not like living in Washington, D.C., or New York, where you can have problems getting access to materials.”

Public history encompasses a wide range of work. Graduates frequently become curators of museums, work in archival management or find private sector jobs writing histories of large corporations. Many historians serve as consultants on public projects that require extensive historical research, such as proposals to build a highway or strategic planning. Oral history and the field of historical memory are also becoming increasingly popular. Historical memory examines the way that people remember events because that can have a profound influence on the concept of the past. Lastly, a number of graduates go on to become teachers at universities.

Graduates of the master’s program in public history at Sac State have found jobs at notable places, including the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the New York state archives and the history office of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. Many others have ended up at the state or federal offices where they interned in Sacramento.

Faculty say the options for students in the joint doctorate degree program are limitless. “Our program is very internship-driven and focused on getting students jobs. Also, the Ph.D. is a degree that someone could use for a teaching position at a university,” said Christopher Castaneda, chair of the history department at Sac State. “A doctorate in public history will give someone a competitive edge when they apply for a supervisorial position in a state agency or museum. It does give students opportunity.”

Students typically enter the joint degree program with a master’s degree. They complete three years of coursework and exams, then spend the remaining one to three years writing a dissertation. It is the only joint doctorate degree offered at Sac State, which offers an independent doctorate in educational leadership. The public history students who are nearing graduation will have a “big impact in the field,” said Lee Simpson, the director of the public history program at Sac State. “They are going to go on to write great books, become excellent teachers and have a great impact.”

Sandul hopes to be one of those graduates. The San Jose native moved to Sacramento as an undergraduate at Sac State, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in history. He was drawn to the joint doctorate degree for a number of reasons. “First and foremost, you can’t overlook the connection to UC Santa Barbara,” he said. “The school is the founding academic institution for public history. What made it even more appealing was Sac State’s location, location, location. There are a lot of great internships available in Sacramento.”

The dual campuses offer another benefit: shared resources. “Not only is a joint program between two universities, but it is between two departments. That includes faculty,” Sandul said. “I literally doubled the pool of great minds to expose myself to.”

Sandul interned with Caltrans, where he worked in the community and cultural studies office. He serves as a part-time lecturer in the history department at Sac State and has completed research on a number of public history projects, including co-publishing two books. He is working on a dissertation on the suburbanization of agricultural areas. It focuses on three areas—Fair Oaks in Northern California, and Orange and Ontario in Southern California. He is examining the history of the regions to determine the consequences of suburbanization.

After graduation, Sandul likely will become a leader in his field. “I want to teach theory of public history at a university and continue to train the next generation of public historians,” he said. “At the same time, I want to come out of the ‘ivory tower’ to work in the field practicing history outside of academia in museums or historical societies.”

Under the Master Plan for Higher Education in California created in 1960, California State Universities have not been allowed to offer doctorate degrees unless it was in cooperation with a University of California. The rules slightly changed recently when the state Legislature allowed independent doctorates in education without a joint program, Castaneda said. He supports the development of more joint degree programs similar to the agreement between Sac State and UC Santa Barbara because it offers students access to faculty and resources at more than one campus. Castaneda predicts that joint doctoral degrees will become “the way of the future.”