Reviews identify flaws in International Studies program

Since its founding in 1962, the International Studies (IS) program has been one of the most popular majors at the University. With 332 enrolled students, it is currently the third largest undergraduate degree program in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

However, because IS is a program and not a department, it does not have its own tenure-track faculty. Students in the major have expressed how it is difficult to find an “academic home” within the major.

The IS program recently compiled an internal review that assesses its current state. The document identifies areas that need improvement, including the lack of an intellectual core, a workable advising system for students, a methods requirement, course availability and diversity and inclusion.

Also, an external review, led by the Homewood Academic Council and a group of distinguished academics, was commissioned to evaluate the program.

Senior Sung Park who is pursuing a triple major in IS, Sociology and East Asian Studies criticized the program’s structure.

“The IS program could be considered a little disorganized or too broad in its scope,” Park wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “Part of that is undeniable due to its large size, but even so, I feel like IS lacks the teacher-student relationships of other majors. That probably plays a role in the relative lack of it feeling like an academic home.”

Sydney Van Morgan, the director of the IS program, said progress has been made. She highlighted the creation of the International Studies Leadership Committee (ISLC), a student-led advisory committee.

“We have a whole new range of events offering talks where we bring in important people, other academics, world leaders, to meet with our students,” she said. “It’s been rough — and this is a comment that I have heard from students — because this is a problem for any interdisciplinary program.”

Sophomore Constanza Mayz, who is member of the ISLC, explained some of the activities the group had organized in the past, such as an ice cream social and held extended office hours for students to meet professors. She hopes that the group will host more events in the future.

“We are still fairly new, though, so I think we have a lot of capacity to improve our events as the semesters progress,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

To provide academic advisors for its students, the IS program pulls faculty members from other departments.

“We have a system whereby we meet with students as sophomores and ask them about their interests in related academic disciplines in other departments, and we try to then assign faculty based on that information,” she said. “We try as best we can to pair students with faculty in the departments that they’re most interested in.”

Sophomore IS major Colleen Anderson feels that the assignment of academic advisors begins too late in the school year.

“This year, the only problem is the lack of individual academic advisors for each student, but once they assign us advisors I will feel more comfortable with the IS academic advising system,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

Park emphasized the importance of students having a connection to faculty members within their department.

“There are no dedicated IS faculty so it’s hard to feel a connection with the department in a meaningful sense,” he wrote. “That’s just inevitable due to the nature of the IS program.”

One of the unique features of IS is that it offers several double major track programs with other departments like sociology and political science. According to the  internal review, these tracks are a way for students to achieve a more focused academic study. Of the current 332 students in the IS program, a little less than two thirds have undertaken another major or minor.

Van Morgan explained that the program is currently attempting to increase the number of tracks available to students.

“We have been talking to programs, for example we’ve been talking to the Italian department about a different track,” she said. “What I often say about the tracks is that they are special ways of combining double-degree programs. Any student who majors in International Studies can double major or triple major. We highly encourage students to do that.”

Junior Allie McManus, who is in the double major track for IS and sociology, found that she identified more with the sociology department.

“My academic home is with the sociology department,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “The relationships I’ve formed with professors have been because of sociology.”

In order for IS to have its own faculty and academic advisors, it would have to become a department. Such a change would depend on the recommendation of the Committee for Centers and Programs. Van Morgan explained that such a transformation has yet to be discussed.

“We have to wait for the review we receive from the review committee,” she said. “In a couple months, they will release their recommendation for the program but right now, there are no plans to turn International Studies into a department.”

Sophomore Emily Stearns supported the idea of  IS becoming a department.

“That would allow IS students to have access to classes that better match their skills and interests,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “For example, I think the history classes here are taught in a way that’s very much tailored to history majors and difficult for IS students to succeed in. It’d be great to see some history classes that are IS-specific.”

Regarding student diversity in the program, the Self-Study Report states that on average, 11 percent of the graduating body is made up of underrepresented minority students (URMs). In both the 2012-13 and 2014-15 school years, only four students who identified as an URM graduated from the program.

Van Morgan explained how such proportions reflect the proportions of URMs at the University.

“The 11 percent is consistent with the number of minority students at Hopkins in general. On average, we are on par with the representation of minority students across the school,” she said. “I’d love to do better than that. I’d love to encourage more underrepresented minorities to join the major, and we’ve been thinking about and talking about ways to do that.”

Van Morgan also pointed out that while the IS program has worked to improve diversity, more could be done.

“One of the things that we have done is we have added need as a criterion in several of our funding competitions, and we take that very seriously. It’s very often that need overlaps with minority status,” she said. “We’re trying hard to ensure that those students who really need the funding are getting the funding in addition to having the academic requisites of that funding.”

She also spoke about her efforts in reaching out to other campus organizations for diversity.

“We are doing things like partnering with the Center for Africana Studies. We’ve cosponsored activities with the Office of Multicultural Affairs. There’s lots more that we could do,” Van Morgan said. “I’m very interested in looking at other universities, like George Washington and similar types of schools are doing a lot to reach out to URMs, because I think it’s very important that they get involved in IS and international education.”

Of the students that entered the school in the 2015-16 academic year, 15.5 percent of students would be identified as URMs according to the Office of the Registrar.

Anderson believes that the diversity in the IS program is  proportional with the rest of the University but thinks that improvements could be made in the diversity of the courses taught.

“I think the IS student body is about as diverse as the rest of the JHU population, but there definitely seems to be more of an inclination towards European focus areas... as opposed to a more diverse selection of classes,” she wrote.

Park still attested to the benefits of the IS program.

“Despite whatever shortcomings it may have, it’s still a great path for students to explore their interests and gain knowledge in a lot of different fields,” he wrote.