Phi Alpha Theta, APSU’s history honor society, attended the society’s regional conference at Tennessee Technical University from Thursday, Jan. 2, to Sunday, Jan. 5.
APSU hosts the Theta Delta chapter, which was established in 1961, making it the third-oldest chapter in the state of Tennessee.
Four members presented at the 2014 conference: Patrick Toth, Amanda Lawson, Jennifer Kaiser and Michael Farrell.
• Toth presented, “Vitis vinifera and Rome: How Wine Helped Forge a Civilization.”
• Lawson presented, “The Good, The Bad and the Crazy: A Look into Women in the Athenian Tragedy.”
• Kaiser presented, “Starving for Glory: Food Shortages in the American Civil War.”
• Farrell presented, “A Poet’s War: The Events and People that Shaped Siegfried Sassoon’s Post during WWI.”
More than 100 history students and faculty attended the 2014 conference.
Members of the APSU chapter are not required to be history majors to join.
History professor Minoa Uffelman is the Theta Delta Chapter faculty advisor. Uffelman’s specialties in history are American, Southern, and gender. Uffelman was honored with the Socrates Award in 2009. The award recognizes exceptional teachers at APSU annually.
“Students benefit in several ways by presenting at a conference,” Uffelman said. Uffelman said experience in “researching, writing and revising,” is vital to the regional conference.
Students’ papers can also be edited for publication in the APSU student journal Theta-Delta.
Uffelman said experience gained at the conference will benefit students “when they apply for jobs or graduate school.”
John Steinberg, department chair of History and Philosophy, spoke positively about the conference.
“It was well organized,” Steinberg said. According to Steinberg, this encouraged “participation among students.”
APSU will be hosting the conference in 2015.
Last September, APSU’s PAT chapter won “Best Chapter of the Year” of 2013 for the fifth consecutive year.
Uffelman said she was “thrilled” to be the leader of the successful organization.
The honors society was given a $250 check for the award, which was used to buy books for the Felix G. Woodward Library. During the last five years, the organization has donated $1,250 to the library to purchase new books.
PAT offers a variety of opportunities to students, such as national and regional meetings, eight national scholarships and a quarterly journal, The Historian.
PAT has more than 350,000 members nationally with an estimated 9,500 new members each year. PAT includes 860 local chapters in the US.
Nels Cleven of the University of Arkansas established the organization on March 17, 1921.
PAT’s mission is “to promote the study of history through the encouragement of research, good teaching, publication and the exchange of learning and ideas among historians.”
The national headquarters is in the University of South Florida.TAS
