Spring Break
CMS major delayed for further revisions
by Miranda Neubauer
Senior Writer
News | 3/10/09
Posted online at 6:49 AM EST on 3/10/09
A proposal for the Communications, Media and Society major was withdrawn from a vote at last Thursday's faculty meeting because further revisions were deemed necessary, Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said at the meeting.
Seven faculty from the Anthropology, American Studies and Sociology departments had made the proposal to the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering Committee over February break. The major would include two core courses, one media theory and one media history class and three separate tracks for Journalism, Technology and Communication and Culture and Communication. The program had been approved by the University Curriculum Committee Feb. 26 along with the Business major, which the faculty did approve at Thursday's meeting.
Jaffe said in an interview that members of the humanities and social sciences school councils had expressed concerns about the curricular and pedagogical aspects of the program. He said the faculty who had proposed the program had revised their proposal but had not yet had time to resubmit it before the meeting.
The chairs of the humanities and social sciences school councils could not be reached for comment by press time.
"When we first presented it to the UCC [Feb 26] there were some concerns about the third [Culture and Communication] track. … The feeling was that that track was a little amorphous and that it maybe needed to be tightened up a little bit just so that it would be a more productive educational experience,"
Prof. Maura Jane Farrelly (AMST), director of the Journalism program, told the Justice. "I think there was also a little bit of concern expressed … by some of the people in the humanities about trying to tighten up the relationship between the major [and] the humanities."
Farrelly noted that the first track had a solid orientation towards journalism while the second track was oriented toward technology. "The third track, …. we had it oriented toward culture ... we had some courses in there that were about museums and museum culture; … we had other courses that were about politics and political culture and other courses that were about advertising, so the thought was, can we construct something that will give students a little bit more guidance in terms of what they should be picking?"
Seven faculty from the Anthropology, American Studies and Sociology departments had made the proposal to the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering Committee over February break. The major would include two core courses, one media theory and one media history class and three separate tracks for Journalism, Technology and Communication and Culture and Communication. The program had been approved by the University Curriculum Committee Feb. 26 along with the Business major, which the faculty did approve at Thursday's meeting.
Jaffe said in an interview that members of the humanities and social sciences school councils had expressed concerns about the curricular and pedagogical aspects of the program. He said the faculty who had proposed the program had revised their proposal but had not yet had time to resubmit it before the meeting.
The chairs of the humanities and social sciences school councils could not be reached for comment by press time.
"When we first presented it to the UCC [Feb 26] there were some concerns about the third [Culture and Communication] track. … The feeling was that that track was a little amorphous and that it maybe needed to be tightened up a little bit just so that it would be a more productive educational experience,"
Prof. Maura Jane Farrelly (AMST), director of the Journalism program, told the Justice. "I think there was also a little bit of concern expressed … by some of the people in the humanities about trying to tighten up the relationship between the major [and] the humanities."
Farrelly noted that the first track had a solid orientation towards journalism while the second track was oriented toward technology. "The third track, …. we had it oriented toward culture ... we had some courses in there that were about museums and museum culture; … we had other courses that were about politics and political culture and other courses that were about advertising, so the thought was, can we construct something that will give students a little bit more guidance in terms of what they should be picking?"
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