About Phi Alpha Theta
Phi Alpha Theta is a national history honor society open to undergraduate and graduate students who have done exceptional work in a required number of history classes and posted a solid record of academic achievement in their coursework generally. The society also encourages membership among professors of history.
Phi Alpha Theta was created in March 1921 at the University of Arkansas by Dr. Nels Cleven, an assistant professor of history at the time. The event is marked today by a bronze plaque located outside Old Main on the university's Fayetteville campus. Since its start, the society has grown to 970 chapters, and inducted more than 400,000 people as members. Approximately 8,500 new members are initiated into the organization each academic year.
The mission of Phi Alpha Theta is "to promote the study of history through the encouragement of research, good teaching, publication and the exchange of learning and ideas among historians. We seek to bring students, teachers, and writers of history together for intellectual and social exchanges, which promote and assist historical research and publication by our members in a variety of ways."
One of the major ways that Phi Alpha Theta fulfills its mission is by sponsoring a biennial convention where students, both undergraduate and graduate, can present history papers on a national level in a supportive environment. Professors also put together sessions where they present papers at Phi Alpha Theta conventions. The sites of recent Phi Alpha Theta conventions include New Orleans (2004 and 2018), Philadelphia (2006), Albuquerque (2008 and 2014), San Diego (2010), Orlando (2012 and 2016), and San Antonio (2020).
Phi Alpha Theta also: helps coordinate regional conferences across the country; provides undergraduate and graduate school scholarships; sponsors history paper competitions; offers Best Chapter Awards; sponsors the professional journal The Historian; has an official Instagram site; publishes society news regularly in its The News Letter; and encourages interaction among students of history through its Facebook page.
PAT Executive Board
Dr. Jacob M. Blosser, Professor of History at Texas Woman's University, is president of Phi Alpha Theta. He teaches courses in American and early modern European history, with a special interest in religious history and popular culture. He has had articles published in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2010), Church History (2008), and The South Carolina Historical Magazine (2005). In 2019, the Texas Commissioner of Higher Education appointed him to the Texas Undergraduate Education Advisory Committee, a major forum for generating new ideas to improve undergraduate education. He serves as the faculty advisor to his university's Eta-Nu chapter.
Dr. Debra A. Mulligan, Associate Professor of History at Roger Williams University (RWU), is vice president of Phi Alpha Theta. As a member of the RWU faculty, she has taught courses on East Asian, American, and European history. She has written a book titled Democratic Repairman: The Political Life of J. Howard McGrath and had articles published in the Massachusetts Journal of History and the New England Journal of History. She has served as the faculty advisor to RWU's Alpha-Eta-Kappa chapter of Phi Alpha Theta since her arrival on campus in 2001.
Phi Alpha Theta's advisory board chair is Dr. Clayton Drees. He is Professor of History at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk. He has taught courses on European and African history at VWC since 1992. He has authored or edited three books, including: Bishop Richard Fox of Winchester: Architect of the Tudor Age (2014); The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300-1500: A Biographical Dictionary (2000); and Authority and Dissent in the English Church (1997). In 1998 and 2015, he won his college's Samuel Nelson Gray Distinguished Teaching Award. He is the faculty advisor for Phi Alpha Theta's Omega-Pi chapter at VWC.