History Education
Graduate Certificate
About this program
The Graduate Certificate in History Education is designed for current and future secondary school teachers who want to strengthen their knowledge of history and classroom practice. You’ll study historical content and research methods while creating teaching materials you can use with students. This program supports your professional growth, helps with career advancement, and offers a smooth pathway into the Master of Arts in History for further study.
Program Curriculum and Requirements
Program Scope
The 15-unit Graduate Certificate in History Education is a program designed for current and aspiring secondary school teachers who wish to expand and deepen their historical knowledge and skills and to accrue salary steps in their respective salary schedules. In many districts, additional units will also increase your current and future earnings.
If you do not already have a Teaching Credential, and are interested in earning one, you should contact the Graduate College of Education.
Enrolled certificate students will take four history seminars and complete a capstone history curriculum project at the end of their coursework. The majority of their coursework will be in conjunction with the M.A. program in history, which offers a broad range of courses organized around diverse regions, periods and themes. Our engaged and dedicated faculty provide individual attention and mentorship of certificate students and offer abroad range of courses organized around diverse regions, periods and themes.
Certificate students who may decide to continue on to the M.A. program can, if accepted, transfer their coursework (excluding the capstone curriculum project), entering the M.A. program with 12 (out of 30) completed units.
Fall 2026 admission: May 1
Spring 2027 admission: November 1
Program Learning Outcomes
- Students will demonstrate mastery of historical knowledge and understanding in content areas related to their teaching.
- Students will be able to research and write historical papers based on primary sources that demonstrate content mastery as well as a familiarity with primary research, historical methodologies, and bibliographical tools as models for student learning.
- Students will think like historians, which includes, among other attributes, "historical habits of mind" and "historiographic sensibilities," i.e., a critical and self-conscious approach to the constructed nature of historical knowledge.
- Students will be able to transfer their historical knowledge to the classroom through the design of an appropriate teaching unit.