ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the nature of the Symposium. It aims to appraise the state of the field, noting that undertaking such tasks is a difficult career decision for a historian, but recent work in this genre shows movement toward realizing its analytical potential. The chapter summarizes the comments of panelists and audience, which focused particular attention on the challenges of chronicling the history of non-elite, regional campuses. Comprehensive histories of individual colleges and universities continue to be a much-maligned genre among historians of higher education and within the historical profession. The history of a college or university, if informed by contextual awareness of contemporary developments at comparable institutions, yields insights similar to those found in the more highly regarded monographic studies limited to four or five decades in the life of a single institution or a group of them. Institutional history is heavy lifting not only for authors, but also for colleges and universities who plan and support history projects.
