U.S. History

Volker Janssen, Ph.D. Professor of History and Vice-Chair Volker Janssen specializes in the history of California, American prisons and rehabilitation programs in the mid-twentieth century, the American economy, and cultures of technology. He has published essays on the history of incarceration in the Journal of American History, the history of science journal Osiris, in Darren Dochuk’s and Michelle Nickerson’s Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region, as well as Rob Chase’s Caging Borders and Carceral States. His book on the emergence of California’s Department of Corrections with Oxford University Press has long been in the making and will be completed in 2020. His edited volume Where Minds and Matters Meet explores the ways in which Western and California history and culture shaped 20th century technological developments, and his “A Tale of two Crises” in Sheila Collins’s and Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg’s When Government Helped compares the American economy of the 1920s with the eve of the Great Recession. Volker Janssen has also written peer-reviewed study texts on the Great Depression and the Sixties for the Academic Decathlon – a national high-school academic competition, is also an irregular contributor to the popular history site history.com. Janssen is a strong advocate of internships in history education, loves to help students figure out original career paths with their degrees and remains deeply involved in the improvement of graduate education on campus. Janssen is an enthusiastic advocate of High-Impact Practices in higher-ed. That’s why he pushes diverse teamwork projects in his classroom and irregularly teaches the study abroad program in Berlin, Germany, and the DC Scholars program in the nation’s capital. Though always passionate about history, Volker Janssen did not set out for higher education right away. Born near Frankfurt, Germany, he first dabbled into stand-up comedy and music before going abroad to work on engineering projects in London and Belize, Central America for a few years. He then worked as a newspaper editor for a small German-language newspaper in New York City before returning to Germany to attend Hamburg University and work as a reporter for the NDR, a branch of Germany’s National Public Radio. A Fulbright scholarship brought him UC San Diego in 1999, where he got hooked on archival research and decided to pursue an academic career rather than work as a journalist. When Volker Janssen is not working, he spends time with his wife and two children, working his garden, baking bread, and recovering his guitar-skills.

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Dr. Waskiewicz received her BSBA from Georgetown University and her MA and PhD from the Institute of French Studies at New York University. With a specialization in Franco-American relations and over ten years of teaching experience at the university level, Sylvie left academia to join the ranks of higher education publishing. She has spent the last nine years editing college textbooks and academic journals in the humanities, social sciences, and world languages.

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Vickery received his B.A. in Inter-American Studies and Spanish in 1969 and his M.A. in International Relations in 1970 from Florida State University. He served 3 years in Germany as a counterintelligence officer with the US Army. In 1974, he graduated from Torchbearer’s Bible School in Holsbybrunn, Sweden. After teaching in both public and private schools in Florida, Vickery came to ORU in 1986 where he attended the Graduate Seminary, completing his M.Div. in 1989.  He has been an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church serving at various churches in Oklahoma from that time to the present. He has been teaching at ORU since 1990 in both the Graduate Seminary and the History, Humanities, and Government Department. He completed his Ph.D. in History from Oklahoma State University in 1996. Vickery has a passion for teaching. Through the use of drama, humor, video, and music, his goal is to create a curiosity within the student that drives that person to want to learn History. Too often, students view history as simply memorizing names and dates. Vickery wants us to ask why something happened, what it means to us today, and how God has worked His plan through the event or person. His particular interest is Military History and how warfare has shaped the past and gives insight into the future. He has authored two books on that subject Washington: Legacy of Leadership (2010) and Andrew Jackson: The Iron-Willed Commander, (2011).  Both books were published by Thomas Nelson as part of a series called The Generals. His interest in theology and ethics resulted in the publication of Bartolome de las Casas:  Great Prophet of the Americas, (2006) by Paulist Press. Vickery was a major contributor to the Openstax U.S. History (2016) Rice University free online text. He has also authored several academic journal articles and presented papers in universities around the world. As a way of making history interesting, Vickery has portrayed historical figures such as Henry Ford, Woodrow Wilson, Sen. Joe McCarthy, Bishop Francis Asbury, H.L. Mencken, Bartolome de las Casas, and Marquis James in dozens of schools, churches, conferences, and libraries around the country, as well as appeared in Chautauqua-style events in six states and England. Recognizing the importance of geography and culture, Vickery has led student groups on study trips around Europe and the Americas. He has also lectured as a destination lecturer on cruise ships around the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas.

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