Students wishing to study an aspect of history not covered by our regular course offerings may look into doing an Independent Study with one of our faculty members. Supervision of an independent study is solely at the discretion of individual faculty members, who may be unable to take on a supervision over and above their other obligations.
A course of independent study is intensive and advanced. It consists of substantial amounts of reading and writing about a topic of particular interest to a student who has made arrangements to work with a member of the Department, usually with whom she or he has already taken regular course work. It should be borne in mind that at Rutgers as well as at other universities it is a generally accepted norm that for every hour of academic credit a student receives she or he can be expected to do two hours of work per week outside of class. For a 3-credit course independent study, this would mean a total of about 9 hours of reading and writing per week, or 135 hours of work during a semester.
If a student is interested in pursuing an independent study, he or she should contact the potential supervising professor as early as possible, leaving ample time to make arrangements.