We, at VVWU, believe that History is a discipline which educates students on how to read and pro- cess data on people, societies, cultures, events and places that are far removed in time and space from our own experience. Knowledge of this past is critical in understanding the ways in which our world is connected and responds to its history in sometimes overt and at other times more complex ways that is missed by most people. At a general level, our courses are structured with the objective of giving requisite information about different aspects of the past to students, to teach them how to analyze this information, instruct them on how historians research, frame an argument and debate details that have signifi- cance to how we understand the past and the present.
The outcome is to provide students with a sense of how interconnected our present is with the past, how learning about the past provides them with the skills to understand the present. To facilitate this understanding, our courses, class room instruction and assignments give students the ability to think and reach their own conclusions.
Our practical-oriented discussions, experiential learning, written assignments, classroom presenta- tions, fests, theatre activities, field-work projects, viva-voce consolidate their ability to analyze, research and process information.