Though the art history department cut the museum studies minor two years ago, it is still listed in the UCLA Registrar’s General Catalog and online, creating confusion for students.
When it was offered, the museum studies minor incorporated courses in art history as well as world arts and cultures to teach undergraduates about “the history, theory and practice of museums and museology,” according to the UCLA Registrar website.
The department could not offer enough courses to keep museum studies. However, students can still find the minor listed on the Registrar’s website as well as on the UCLA Admissions website.
“I’ve received no official notification that (the minor) has been suspended or discontinued,” said Kathleen Copenhaver, associate registrar in charge of publications and scheduling.
The discrepancy has caused problems for students who planned on taking up the minor but did not realize it had been cut.
“I looked it up last year, and it seemed like something that would be useful to my career,” said Lexy Hartford, a second-year anthropology student. “I want to focus on archaeology, and I figured another career path for archaeologists is working in museums.”
Hartford’s roommate, second-year economics student Liz Olinger, also planned on pursuing the minor. Neither knew it was no longer available until Olinger’s mother notified them after calling the art history department about two weeks ago.
“It screwed up my plans for the rest of college,” Hartford said. “There are a lot of minors, but I thought (museum studies) is most useful for my future career plans.”
Instead of museum studies, Hartford and Olinger now plan to minor in art history, but they said they are still not satisfied.
“I’m just disappointed,” Olinger said. “(The art history minor) is a good alternative, but I feel like I have a less diverse choice now for classes.”
The reason for cutting the minor was not a financial one, said Saloni Mathur, an associate professor of art history, who has been involved in the minor since she began teaching at UCLA 10 years ago.
“In this case, it was that the architects of the museum studies minor retired,” she said. “There was nobody left to teach the core classes.”
From 2003 to 2005, a number of those professors retired, leaving no one to teach several classes in the minor. The department tried to keep the minor, but after a few years, they realized that not enough courses were being offered for students to finish the minor, Mathur said. In 2008, the department had to dismantle the program.
Officially eliminating the minor starts with a department faculty vote, and then the proposed change must go through the Faculty Executive Committee and the Undergraduate Council within the Academic Senate. Richard Weiss, vice chair of the Undergraduate Council, said in a voice mail message he did not know anything about the minor.
Dell Upton, chair of the department of art history, could not comment on what stage the minor is in because it was shut down before he joined the department.
Copenhaver said the minor will continue to appear in the General Catalog until she is notified that it has been disestablished.
“If it’s really a defunct minor, it’s got to go, and it’s got to go officially,” Copenhaver said. “They can’t just call me up.”
Some saw the loss of the minor as a detriment to the university.
“I don’t think the program should be cut because it undermines the quality of the school in general,” said art history graduate student Helen Ellis.
Mathur said, though, that the loss of the minor is not a complete tragedy because there are still opportunities for students to get involved with museums.
“What we have now is not an actual minor, but we offer internships that allow you to build links to museums,” Mathur said. “We continue to allow ways for students to pursue their interests without a formal minor.”
Internships may be more useful than the minor anyway, said art history doctorate student Jessa Farquhar. She said that having a minor in museum studies may be misleading to students who want to work in museums because they need experience to get those jobs.
“Experience is everything,” she said. “Once you’re in, one thing leads to another if you have work ethic, do your job and do it well.”
As an undergraduate, Farquhar got an internship at the Smithsonian Institute through a professor who knew a curator there. These are the kinds of relationships that current UCLA professors have with museums in Los Angeles, and this provides connections for students, Mathur said.
There are still museum studies courses, such as Art History C103A, which will next be taught by Mathur during Session A in summer 2011.
Although the minor is gone, Mathur said she remains confident in the opportunities still available.
“There’s no question that an art history (student) who is interested in a possible career in a museum can get there through our undergraduate program,” she said.