By the time you read this, fall term will have ended. I will spend some time in December reviewing applications for Phi Alpha Theta membership, so if you think you qualify, please go to our department website (www.csub.edu/history), and click on P.A.T for the online application, which you can submit electronically.

Membership in Phi Alpha Theta, the national history honor society, can help distinguish your résumé.  If you have a 3.1 GPA or higher in all your CSUB history courses (minimum four)—and an overall GPA of at least a 2.0—then you qualify.

2009 marks our 15th Annual Paper Competition and J.R. Wonderly Memorial Prize. In January we’ll be soliciting submissions by members of research papers they have written during 2008.  Applications for our annual chapter paper competition will be mailed out soon.  If you wrote a research paper over the last calendar year (winter, spring, or fall), and earned an A on it, please consider submitting it for the competition. (Papers in Historical Writing and Senior Seminar usually work well for this, as do research papers in some other upper-division courses.)  We’ll be awarding cash prizes, thanks to the J.R. Wonderly Memorial Award provided by alumnus Peter Wonderly. The deadline for submissions is Friday, January 30, 2009. Please read carefully the instructions for submitting your paper. Blue applications will also be available in the rack outside my office door.

A date and location for the Annual Southern California Regional Phi Alpha Theta Student Paper Conference has yet to be determined for 2009, but I hope that some of you will consider participating. Submitting a research paper to our chapter competition in January is an excellent first step toward participating in the regional conference.  If you think you might like to submit a paper to the spring regional conference, please let me know.  I should have more information next quarter about when and where this annual event will be held.

If you have any questions about Phi Alpha Theta, you might ask one of our new officers for 2008-09: President: Daniel Sexton; Vice-President: Fernando Jara; Secretary: Jennifer Williams; Treasurer Ken Cook; Historian: Patrick O’Neill; Paper Award: Peter Wonderly; Banquet: Daniel Tierney.