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A NOVEL SENIOR COLLEGE, AND THE COUNTRY'S FIRST COLLEGE DEVOTED EXCLUSIVELY TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY, APPROVED BY THE NEW HAMPSHIRE POST SECONDARY EDUCATION COMMISSION

The nation's first college dedicated exclusively to the study of history, including
important aspects of American legal history, will open its doors in August 2010. It will
be located in Salem, N.H., and has been created by the Massachusetts School of Law at
Andover (MSL).

The American College of History and Legal Studies (ACHLS) will also be a novel
senior, or completion, college, offering only the junior and senior years of college. After
their junior year, students who do well at ACHLS will be able, if they wish, to enter law
school at MSL and receive their B.A. after the first year of law school, rather than after a
fourth year of undergraduate school.

This new senior college is "a revolutionary development in American higher education,"
said Lawrence Velvel, MSL dean and cofounder, and a recognized leader in law school
education reform. "ACHLS' curriculum will focus exclusively on general American
history and legal history, with attention to U.S. history in the context of world history and
the history of constitutional and regulatory law."

Velvel said professors would teach by the discussion method, rather than by the lecture
method; class size will be held to 20 students or fewer; and that focusing exclusively on
history will enable ACHLS to hold tuition down to $10,000 a year, "inexpensive by
today's standards."

The new college "will stress rigor of thinking and analysis, fluent speaking and good
writing," Velvel said, "with students being required to write many short-to medium-sized,
heavily critiqued papers in every class on topics raised by the material discussed in the
classroom."

"ACHLS' faculty will be comprised of educators who have a broad interest in all of
American history rather than an intellectual focus on limited portions of it," Velvel said.
"What's more, their primary interest will lie in teaching and working with students rather
than in doing research and writing on narrow slices of our national past."

"The public and our leaders are too often ignorant of history," Velvel explained when
discussing one of the reasons for founding ACHL. "We believe a greater knowledge of
the subject can enable this country to avoid repetition of past mistakes and have a more
successful future."

"Further, as a high percentage of elected officials, judges, and corporate executives are
lawyers, it is imperative to begin the process of trying to ensure that American leaders,
especially its lawyers, have the historical knowledge needed to make intelligent decisions
in the national interest," Velvel said.

Students who wish to do so can concentrate their work in any of four areas: (1) the
history of civil rights in the United States; (2) urban history; (3) the history of American
foreign affairs; and (4) the lessons taught by history. Courses offered will include "The
History of Women's Rights"; "Race in American Law"; "American History in the
Context of World History"; "The History of American Constitutional Law"; "The History
of Economic Regulation in the United States"; "The History of the Growth of Cities in
the United States"; "The History of Immigrants in the Northeast"; "The History of
American Foreign Relations;" "The History of the Clash Between Ideals and Practicality
in the United States."

Velvel and a group of colleagues established MSL in 1988 to provide an inexpensive yet
rigorous legal education that would be a pathway into the legal profession to students
from working class, minority, and immigrant backgrounds as well as people in midlife
seeking a legal career. MSL's tuition today is $14,500 annually, or about just 40% of the
tuition of other private law schools in New England. Some 85% of MSL's students pass
the Massachusetts bar exam and its moot court student teams have been ranked first in
the Northeast region, ahead of all Ivy League competitors, and third overall in the United
States.

Noted legal scholar Brian Tamanaha of St. John's University has called for "more law
schools (to) look like Massachusetts School of Law" in that this model "would produce
capable lawyers at a much lower tuition, which would be good for the students and good
for society."

Because MSL's pedagogical techniques have worked so well, and are as applicable to
history as to law, many of the practices that have made MSL a successful law school will
be employed at ACHLS.
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