History Can Help Deliver the Corps of the Future
By Katherine Rohrer
Katherine Rohrer is Associate Professor of History.
Several years ago, I was sitting at a nondescript Mexican restaurant in Gainesville with my now-husband and research partner, Matthew Smith. Matt—currently a lecturer in higher education leadership at Valdosta State University—is, like me, both a teacher and a researcher. Naturally, we talk a lot about teaching: pedagogy, strategy, purpose—all of it.
Over a plate of carnitas, I shared some observations about cadets enrolled in my history courses, which included introductory, survey-level American history classes. I noticed that my cadets, compared to their non-cadet peers, tended to be more invested and engaged. They were slightly more conscientious and mature, and more confident about speaking up during class-wide discussions. This is not to say that greatness only comes from cadets—it certainly does not—but as a group, cadets routinely performed just a touch better.
Matt’s face brightened. He immediately suggested that my observations could serve as the foundation for a research project. I was admittedly a bit skeptical, but, in time, Matt convinced me that such a project was feasible—perhaps even fulfilling and fun. At first, I simply wanted to understand why cadets tended to perform better in my history classes. What ultimately evolved, however, was a research project that underscores the value of history education in the development of cadets, who are future officers of the U.S. military. To explore this, we conducted lengthy interviews with cadets who, at the time, were declared history majors. These interviews became the heart of the study.
At the time, I had no formal training in education research. I barely knew what the IRB (Institutional Review Board) was, had never conducted interviews (as a historian, I was accustomed to clawing through dead people’s written sources), and felt uneasy with the rigid structure of social science research. Matt kindly offered to serve as my education mentor—more like my “boot camp professor of education”—and as a research partner. I figured I had nothing to lose.
Matt taught me how to conceptualize a study in education research. He walked me through the IRB process, stood by me as I learned to code interview transcripts, and introduced me to practices like member checking. Slowly, unfamiliar terrain became navigable.
Fast forward a couple of years into the future! In December 2025, our article, “Classwork and the Corps: The Symbiotic Relationship Between Curricular and Co-Curricular Learning for Military Cadets Majoring in History,” was published in Teaching and Learning Inquiry, an international journal devoted to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The article examines how academic coursework and participation in UNG’s Corps of Cadets jointly shape students’ leadership development. Rather than treating military training and classroom learning as separate or competing spheres, we argue that cadets actively integrate lessons from both contexts, drawing on historical thinking, critical analysis, and ethical reflection alongside military discipline and hierarchical leadership training.
This latter point matters deeply to me. History and the humanities are under attack in contemporary society. Over the past generation, higher education has increasingly been framed through a market logic in which degrees are expected to deliver immediate “returns on investment,” typically measured through job placement, salaries, and workforce readiness. History and the humanities excel at long-term, diffuse outcomes—critical thinking, ethical reasoning, civic literacy, and interpretive skill—but these benefits are harder to quantify and monetize. Our study takes us one step closer to demonstrating the tangible benefits that exposure to history provides. Specific to UNG, we are confident that the skills cadets develop in history courses directly support the university’s goal of “delivering the Corps of the Future.”
I do not reject the necessity of STEM education—far from it. STEM is fundamental. But its merits are amplified when coupled with humanities education. After all, Sylvanus Thayer, the pioneering nineteenth-century superintendent of the United States Military Academy, envisioned an institution in which character development—something we can provide in history and humanities classes—and engineering education existed in symbiotic relationship. May UNG follow the trajectory envisioned by Thayer.