The Academic Senate voted to reinstate admissions to a restructured international development studies major at an April 16 meeting, over a year after a review found several problems with the program and suspended admissions.
“It was a wake-up call for the program to respond to a constructive review and also push ahead to make a much better program,” said Professor Joseph Watson, chair of the Undergraduate Council.
Students who have completed major prerequisites can start applying fall 2010, with admissions following winter 2011, said Professor Michael Lofchie, chair of the international development studies program.
These students will enter a major that has been reformed in three specific ways in response to the Senate’s criticism, Lofchie said.
One complaint was that too many students were enrolled in the major ““ currently, there are about 520, said Sandy Valdivieso, an academic counselor.
International development studies is an interdepartmental major, and includes classes in areas like political science and anthropology. Since these departments typically restrict courses to majors on the first pass, the high number of international development students vying for leftover spots meant that many could not get the classes they needed, Lofchie said.
Lizeth Flores, a fourth-year international development studies student, experienced this problem.
“I’ve been in international development the whole time I’ve been here,” Flores said. “Now I’ll be a fifth-year because I wasn’t able to get into (major) classes, and I wasn’t able to get into classes in other departments.”
The new program aims to reduce the number of students to about 300 within two years with a more competitive admissions process, Lofchie said.
“We’re going to create one space in the major for every two people who graduate,” Lofchie said. “If 150 (international development) students get their bachelor degrees this spring, that’ll create 75 spaces.”
Before the major’s reformation, students who completed all prerequisites could simply declare the major, he said. Now, students will have to complete an application with several essay questions.
The second change is an increased level of faculty involvement as opposed to relying on lecturers to teach classes, Lofchie said.
“(The suspension) cast a negative image over the program, and so the task of getting faculty to commit to the program was more complicated,” he said.
In the past, if the program wanted a political science professor to teach an international development course, that professor would simply swap one class for another.
“The department loses the course, we gain a course,” Lofchie said. “It’s different when departments are impacted in terms of the enrollment crisis ““ department chairs are very reluctant to release faculty members.”
Now, professors will add on an international development studies class onto their regular course load and receive either a $6000 research grant or summer stipend, Lofchie said.
“Research funds are very tight right now, and (international development) students are pretty motivated, so it’s a total win-win situation for faculty,” he said.
Finally, the reconstruction of the major has streamlined the courses students will take.
“We had many courses that weren’t really development courses ““ antiquity of the Middle Eastern world, folklore music,” Lofchie said. “We had too many of these courses that were far too distant from modern development, so we carefully combed through the curriculum and took out a whole number of these courses.”
Students will also have to take two lower economics courses instead of one, Valdivieso said.
Other programs have gone through similar suspensions, Watson said.
“They come back stronger and better programs,” he said. “In this case, the review process has made this a much better major.”
Now, Lofchie said, the changes just have to be put in place.
“You know the game Tetris, it’s like holding that Game Boy and you’re just about to start, but you still have to push the start button,” he said. “Now we’re in a position to start to implement the reforms, see if they work at all, and adjust accordingly.”