4 What evidence exists of the internal and external demands for the program:

The History Program serves a vital role in in meeting internal demands for general education, as evidenced by strong enrollments in GEM history courses. The History Program is part of the college’s ability to meet regional demands for dual-credit offerings and for general education courses for students on the main NIC campus, the outreach center in Sandpoint and via online classes, helping to reach the five counties NIC serves. History at NIC helps prepare students for transfer to area baccalaureate institutions who major in the field or related areas and for meeting broad lifelong learning goals that are part of NIC’s mission.

Currently there are no federal or state external mandates for the history department.  In the past, however, the State of Idaho, like a majority of states, required students to successfully complete at least one history course to fulfill core requirements.  That, however, is no longer the case.  The college’s accrediting body, NWCCU, does require that all transfer associate degree programs include a recognizable core of general education courses that represents an integration of basic knowledge and methodology of the humanities and fine arts, mathematical and natural sciences, and social sciences, along with health and wellness.  The history courses offered at North Idaho College are widely accepted core social science courses that transfer to most four-year programs across the United States.  NIC’s history GEM courses meet the needs of all Idaho transfer institutions and beyond in fulfillment of the general education core.  For history, this means that both sections of the World History and American History surveys are accepted as general education core option at most 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges and universities in the United States.

Though demand for history courses is fluid between semesters, that total number of students from F18 to F22 shows only a slight decline in Full Time Equivalent (from 72.4 to 70), with a minor increase in S19 to S23 (63 to 64).  However, the five-year data does not break down enrollments to show the ratio of students taught on high school campuses by dual enrollment faculty vs. students taught on the NIC campus or online by fulltime and adjunct NIC faculty.  Manually reviewing the data for 2023 shows the following ratios:

• SP23:  dual credit taught on HS campus: 130/taught by NIC faculty 183
• FA23: dual credit taught on HS campus: 179/taught by NIC faculty 148

We anticipate this trend of more history students being taught by DC faculty on high school campuses to continue.