This blog post from "The Professor is In" writing for "The Chronicle of Higher Education" is meant to provoke thought from job applicants. The question asked is about how a candidate would redesign a major. I was not asked that question in any of my job interviews, but a year and a half out of graduate school, and 2 months into my new job at Nazarbayev University I was asking my colleagues how we should number new courses we were offering in the spring.
That question led down a rabbit hole of discovery and confusion about the major as it had been designed (hastily) four years earlier before there were students and with only one or two faculty members had been hired. It was a curriculum designed with good intentions (dual tracks for political science and international relations) and a capstone course requirement. However, the curriculum didn't reflect some key realities of our situation.
First of all, our students all wanted to major in "International Relations" because that was something that translated into the local context - even if what they learned was different from diplomacy and history that constitutes such majors in local universities. "Politologia"[1] just didn't translate. The capstone courses had no guidelines, and scheduling hadn't been thought of, so not all of our senior majors were going to be able to take these classes - the ones they needed to graduate. The undergraduate curriculum also hadn't accounted for the need for professors to split time between undergraduate and graduate teaching with the creation of a standalone MA program at the beginning of the 4th year - the same year I joined the department.
Using examples from our partner university - Wisconsin at Madison - and programs I was familiar with, I redesigned the curriculum to maximize flexibility for faculty and students. We had some discussions as a department about what we wanted our students to master, and made decisions about requiring both research design and qualitative methods and quantitative methods for all of our majors. We also had to make decisions about elective courses that could be dual-listed for MA and BA students. In the end the curriculum changes were significant, but not necessarily revolutionary.
Kelsky outlines the basics of an undergraduate curriculum in the social sciences, and it matches quite closely with what we did with our renamed major Political Science and International Relations (PSIR):
The curriculum was approved by our school Teaching and Learning Committee, and took effect at the end of my first year. In a few months our seniors will graduate - the first full cohort to graduate under the new standards. In that time our department has grown and we've added majors, but the curriculum has weathered the storm.
I guess the moral of this story is that things worked out well.
________________________
[1] Политология the Russian word for political science, but still not political science like we understand in the US context.
That question led down a rabbit hole of discovery and confusion about the major as it had been designed (hastily) four years earlier before there were students and with only one or two faculty members had been hired. It was a curriculum designed with good intentions (dual tracks for political science and international relations) and a capstone course requirement. However, the curriculum didn't reflect some key realities of our situation.
First of all, our students all wanted to major in "International Relations" because that was something that translated into the local context - even if what they learned was different from diplomacy and history that constitutes such majors in local universities. "Politologia"[1] just didn't translate. The capstone courses had no guidelines, and scheduling hadn't been thought of, so not all of our senior majors were going to be able to take these classes - the ones they needed to graduate. The undergraduate curriculum also hadn't accounted for the need for professors to split time between undergraduate and graduate teaching with the creation of a standalone MA program at the beginning of the 4th year - the same year I joined the department.
Using examples from our partner university - Wisconsin at Madison - and programs I was familiar with, I redesigned the curriculum to maximize flexibility for faculty and students. We had some discussions as a department about what we wanted our students to master, and made decisions about requiring both research design and qualitative methods and quantitative methods for all of our majors. We also had to make decisions about elective courses that could be dual-listed for MA and BA students. In the end the curriculum changes were significant, but not necessarily revolutionary.
Kelsky outlines the basics of an undergraduate curriculum in the social sciences, and it matches quite closely with what we did with our renamed major Political Science and International Relations (PSIR):
- (100 level) Introductory courses to acquaint students with the vocabulary and contours of the discipline.
- (200 level) methods courses that help students know the questions that can be asked, and how they can be answered.
- (300/400) courses where students think about knowledge production, debates, and more complex issues within the discipline.
The curriculum was approved by our school Teaching and Learning Committee, and took effect at the end of my first year. In a few months our seniors will graduate - the first full cohort to graduate under the new standards. In that time our department has grown and we've added majors, but the curriculum has weathered the storm.
I guess the moral of this story is that things worked out well.
________________________
[1] Политология the Russian word for political science, but still not political science like we understand in the US context.
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