The International Relations and Development Studies programs have been brought under one director, Professor of Political Science Mark Blyth, who informed concentrators of the change in a letter Sept. 9. Blyth held a town-hall meeting for concentrators to discuss the change Tuesday night.
"There is no merging of concentrations. IR and DS will stay as IR and DS," Blyth said at the meeting in the Watson Institute's Joukowsky Forum. Concentration requirements will remain the same, he added.
This move was part of the University's broader goal of reviewing and improving on the current curriculum, which dates back to 2005, Blyth said, and was not connected to financial issues.
"Far from cutting capacity, the dean of the faculty and the Watson Institute have just given the International Relations program its biggest rise in resources in the history of these programs," he said at the meeting.
The appointment of a director is just the beginning of a process to maximize administrative coordination between the two programs, Blyth said. To assist him in this task are Associate Directors Claudia Elliott in IR, Cornel Ban in DS and new programs coordinator Sherita Allen.
Blyth said he hopes to address many of the problems IR and DS students currently have, such as advising. Because these concentrations are not departments, concentrators suffer from a lack of advisers and permanent faculty. And particularly for IR concentrators, the small student-to-adviser ratio makes productive and engaging advising time very difficult, he said.
Blyth said he also envisions a much better website for both programs. He plans to hire a permanent web staffer to do a "complete makeover" of the websites. In particular, Blyth is interested in implementing a web resource that can address the problem students have with meeting concentration requirements.
As interdisciplinary programs, IR and DS draw their concentration courses from a variety of departments, which creates problems when other departments decide to remove or add certain courses.
"We are hostage to what other departments offer," Blyth said.
To reduce this unpredictability, Blyth wants to merge the program websites with Banner so students are constantly informed of changing courses and will know whether a certain class will satisfy concentration requirements. Blyth said this automation of the website will significantly cut down on administrative time, allowing advisers to spend more quality time discussing academic and intellectual matters with students and not merely meet to talk about requirements or sign declaration forms.
To facilitate the ongoing transition, there will be a committee to collectively address and discuss issues in both programs. Associate Dean Kathleen McSharry is staffing The Future of International Studies at Brown, a committee which will include Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, Director of the Watson Institute Michael Kennedy, Ban, Elliot, Blyth and other faculty members. Bergeron has also selected two student representatives for the committee — IR concentrator Michael Ewart '11 and DS concentrator Christina Kovacs '11.
Blyth said he hopes including people from a variety of academic and intellectual backgrounds will help inform the decisions of the committee.
The committee plans to meet a total of six times throughout the semester. Members will begin by reviewing the current state of education in the departments, and will specifically go over the 2008 report from the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, McSharry said. But before the committee meets, McSharry wants to have a student-run meeting to receive more student feedback on this recent change to the IR and DS programs.
Responses from faculty members have been positive, but students present at the meeting seemed somewhat skeptical of the improvements this change will make.
Many believed that the advising process needs a huge overhaul. "I wish it were more personal," said IR concentrator Helene Vincent '11.5, noting that because there are so few advisers, she receives broad advice that doesn't necessarily pertain to her interests.
Potential IR concentrator Marc Monsod '13 agreed. "It's not as accessible as I would like it to be," he said. "I feel I haven't fully reaped the rewards of advising."
Another DS concentrator also expressed the need for the programs to offer more courses within the concentration to prepare concentrators for a thesis, which is required of all DS concentrators.
Blyth said he believes that future student forums and committee meetings will address these concerns.
These capacity and administrative problems are not specific to the IR or DS programs, added McSharry. There is a "deep, structural issue" because the number of social science concentrators is increasing around the nation, while the size of the program faculty does not change, McSharry said.
— With additional reporting by Brigitta Greene
