Peter H. Shattuck Green & Gold Classroom

The Peter H. Shattuck Green and Gold Room at California State University, Sacramento is more than a classroom or meeting space. It is a gathering place dedicated to the study of history and to the intellectual community created when students and faculty come together to teach, learn, discuss, research, and exchange ideas. Located in the University Library, the room provides the Department of History with a distinctive academic home and reflects Sacramento State’s commitment to creating spaces in which scholarship and community can flourish. Formally dedicated in August 2025, the Green and Gold Room honors the legacy of Professor Emeritus Peter H. Shattuck while supporting the work of new generations of Sacramento State historians.

Why was the room Created?

The room was created as a dedicated space for the activities of the Department of History and the students it serves. It accommodates seminar classes, faculty meetings and retreats, research presentations, faculty-student lectures, student organizations, and other academic gatherings. The History Club and Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, can use the room for meetings and activities, while faculty and students associated with Clio, the department’s faculty-student journal, have a place to meet and collaborate. In this way, the Green and Gold Room supports both the formal and informal dimensions of university life. A graduate seminar held around a table, a faculty member presenting new research, a student organization planning an event, and students discussing their work with professors all become part of the intellectual life of the same shared space.

What makes the space significant?

The room is particularly significant because it gives Sacramento State’s History Department a physical center for its academic community. Before its creation, faculty and students often relied on borrowed meeting spaces and other available rooms on campus. The Green and Gold Room provides a place that belongs specifically to the History Department—a setting where undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars can gather around a shared interest in understanding the past. It serves students pursuing the Bachelor of Arts in History as well as graduate students in the Master of Arts in History and Master of Arts in Public History programs. The result is a space that can bring together people at different stages of their education and professional careers and encourage the exchange of perspectives that is essential to the discipline of history.

The design and purpose of the room also connect it directly to the historian for whom it is named. Its furnishings draw inspiration from early American history, the field to which Peter H. Shattuck devoted much of his academic career. Rather than functioning simply as decoration, this historical character reinforces the room’s identity as a place devoted to inquiry into the past. The setting invites students to recognize history as something that is investigated through conversation, evidence, research, writing, and debate. In that sense, the Green and Gold Room provides an environment well suited to seminar-style teaching, in which students are encouraged to participate actively rather than experience history only through lectures or textbooks.

About Peter H. Shattuck

Peter H. Shattuck was a distinguished Sacramento State historian, teacher, and university citizen whose career embodied the values the Green and Gold Room is intended to sustain. Shattuck joined Sacramento State in 1965 and taught early American history for 33 years, becoming Professor of History Emeritus upon his retirement in 1998. His commitment to teaching was recognized with Sacramento State’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 1994. His service to the University extended well beyond the classroom. He participated in both the Sacramento State Faculty Senate and the Academic Senate of the California State University, served as chair of the CSU Senate, chaired the History Department, worked as the campus Ombudsman and in the Academic Advising Center, and helped develop the University’s first AIDS policy. He also contributed to the wider Sacramento community through organizations including the Sacramento History Museum. Following his retirement, he continued to support Sacramento State through the Friends of the Library and the Sacramento State Retirees Association. Shattuck died in 2015, but his commitment to students, historical scholarship, and university service remains an important part of the institution’s legacy.

Central to Shattuck’s legacy was his belief in the importance of teaching history. For him, historical study was not simply the accumulation of names, dates, and events. The discipline asks students to evaluate evidence, place ideas and actions in context, consider differing interpretations, and develop arguments grounded in careful research. These habits help students become thoughtful scholars and informed participants in their communities. The Green and Gold Room carries this commitment forward by providing an environment in which students can engage closely with faculty members and with one another. Its emphasis on seminars, research talks, lectures, and collaborative activities reinforces an understanding of education as an active process built through questioning, discussion, investigation, and mentorship.

How did the room come to be?

The establishment of the room grew from a partnership among the Shattuck family, Sacramento State’s College of Arts and Letters, and the Department of History. Elizabeth Johnson Horr Shattuck, Peter Shattuck’s wife of 55 years, established an endowment in his memory to honor his devotion to teaching, his love of early American history, and his conviction that the study of history matters. That support has helped extend his influence beyond the years he spent in the classroom. The Shattuck legacy at Sacramento State now encompasses not only the Green and Gold Room but also support for teaching, scholarship, historical programming, and the Peter H. Shattuck Endowed Chair in Colonial American History. In December 2025, Elizabeth Shattuck also donated her husband’s library of more than 400 rare and contemporary books on colonial and Revolutionary America to Sacramento State’s Special Collections and University Archives, further preserving resources connected to his scholarly interests for future students and researchers.

Ultimately, the Peter H. Shattuck Green and Gold Room represents the relationship between place, memory, and education. It commemorates a professor whose career was devoted to Sacramento State while remaining focused on the students and faculty working at the University today. A room bearing the name of a historian is most meaningful when it is not treated simply as a memorial but remains active—with classes being taught, ideas being debated, research being presented, students meeting mentors, organizations gathering, and new scholarship taking shape.

That continuing activity makes the Green and Gold Room a fitting tribute to Peter H. Shattuck. His legacy is honored not only through his name on the room but through the teaching and learning that occur within it. As students and faculty gather there to investigate the past, exchange ideas, and build a stronger academic community, the room carries forward the values that defined Shattuck’s career: intellectual curiosity, rigorous historical inquiry, service to the University, and above all, a lasting commitment to the education of Sacramento State students.