Wayne State College’s Department of History, Politics and Geography recently faced changes to its programs of study by combining three majors into one comprehensive major with three different concentration options.
WSC used to offer programs of study under the former department that included geography, history and political science. With the new comprehensive major, instead of a student majoring in say political science, they’d be a social sciences major with a concentration in political science. The same goes for geography and history.
The process to condense these majors started back in 2020 when the department went under a program review, a process each academic program undergoes every seven years. Phillip Fox, an associate professor of history at WSC served on the committee focused on making changes to the curriculum at the college.
“Amongst the feedback was encouragement to consider integrating the different majors in our department together in this way,” Fox said.
After the program review started, many conversations took place over the next two years about this integration idea, and the reorganization slowly became a reality.
The faculty’s focus was trying to maintain the program’s strength by not removing any of the courses they had previously been teaching. Instead of subtracting, the faculty would be adding a few more courses to these majors.
“We’re bringing in a little bit more, so you get exposure to some of the other strengths we have in our department,” Fox said. “We’re trying to make the programs more robust.”
Throughout this process though, there have still been unintended consequences such as categories switching through the online degree audit and other technological difficulties.
These quirks can be viewed poorly by the students, but Fox wants to reassure those in these majors that the faculty is not trying to impose on them or punish them, nor could the students have seen this coming or worked around it.
“From a student’s perspective, it can seem like this came out of nowhere, but it’s something that’s been going through this extensive review process,” he said. “Any of these steps could’ve led to a change or said that it’s not moving forward. Before we get final approval, you can’t share it with the community.”
According to the official WSC website, the department of history, politics and geography lists three programs of study, which are now concentrations, while the department of communication arts, for instance, lists eight programs of study.
Even though there’s a difference in how many programs there are within these two departments, the purpose behind changing the majors in the social sciences department is to add to the program rather than subtract.
“Many of the programs across campus are concentrations within other comprehensive majors, so this is a common kind of structure for academic programs,” Fox said. “We’re working through it to make sure everyone can get to where they’re trying to go.”
