Major Changes

Additions, subtractions, moves and mergers reshuffle programs across The New School

With Reporting By: Shawn Carrié

At one time, Eugene Lang College offered only one major—Liberal Arts. Fast forward to 2014 and the school is a pastiche of many majors, divisions and specializations in constant flux. Changes announced this semester show a deeper cross-pollination among Lang, Parsons, Public Engagement and Social Research, with many new programs and centers, while some departments are suffering cuts due to the reshuffling.

UNITING THE DIVISIONS

The New School’s disparate performing arts divisions will be coming together under the same roof, as Mannes College will move downtown and join with Jazz and Drama to form The New School for Performance. “The university will be – for the first time ever – all together down here,” Provost Tim Marshall said, announcing the merger at February’s University Town Hall.

Mannes students, whose musical prowess graces 85th Street, will move 70 blocks downtown to join the rest of The New School’s campus after 98 years uptown.

“I am a bit sad, because the building has some really beautiful attributes,” Mannes freshman Jake Savransky said, “but it will be nice being close to other New School students, and personally, I feel the move will be convenient for me because of transportation.”

Arnhold Hall will undergo renovations to turn the building into a central hub, featuring spaces to bring together performances from the school’s artist tribes. Drama, keeping its distance, will shift some of its activities into the new center for performance at Arnhold Hall, but still maintain its facilities on Bank Street in the West Village, removed from campus and just a block from the Hudson River.

“When we talk about this, it’s like, ‘what took you so long?'” Provost Marshall joked of the natural conclusion to bring together the schools.  “But there’s already extraordinary work being done,” he explained. “Improvisation is being worked into the curriculum across classical and jazz music and in drama, there are ensembles between the two musical divisions, there’s opera work happening between Drama and Mannes with Parsons doing costumes, lighting and sets — so it’s a really vibrant and exciting moment for performance.”

SOCIAL INQUIRY, ANYONE?

Lang College has long prided itself on its interdisciplinary approach, but after Fall 2014 it will be discontinuing the self-designed interdisciplinary track in social inquiry, which combined courses in anthropology, sociology, politics and urban studies. Over the past few years, Lang has started offering undergraduate majors that mirror the graduate programs at The New School for Social Research (NSSR), and with the addition of politics in 2012, sociology in 2013 and now anthropology in 2014, the social inquiry track started becoming redundant. “The creation of disciplinary majors in the various social sciences provided net-additive choices for students,” said Jonathon White, associate dean of students at Lang.

Students who opted for the social inquiry track were technically liberal arts majors and designed their study from a recommended outline of courses concentrated in a subset of social sciences-related departments, but the title didn’t appear anywhere on their transcript or degree. “In the past, students could say ‘I took a few classes in politics and some here in economics,’ but the actual degree itself only recognized liberal arts as their major, which didn’t say much about what they were studying,” Dean White explained. While students can still opt to choose their own path in the liberal arts program, administrators hope the change will encourage students to choose one of the newly-available majors.

The new changes reveal a coalescing of Lang’s traditional single-major interdisciplinary approach with NSSR’s structured specialization of fields and “reflects the closer ties between The New School for Social Research and Lang,” said Professor of Anthropology Lawrence Hirschfeld. NSSR had already begun to make some graduate-level classes available to undergraduates and then started offering dedicated classes to Lang students.

“We have always offered social science courses, and always offered courses taught by joint and other faculty,” Hirschfeld explained. “The decision to introduce ‘breakout’ majors and minors in the social sciences simply formalizes opportunities for students to engage in the curriculum and faculty already in place.”

FOOD’S ALMOST READY

In Fall 2014, The New School will begin offering a major in Food Studies. The proposed curriculum for the new Bachelor of Arts degree was sent to The New York State Education Department for approval last December. Fabio Parasecoli, coordinator of the Food Studies program, says it’s not just about learning how to eat.

“We look at history, society, cultures — the focus is this connection between individuals, communities and societies with food, which is such an important part of daily life,” Parasecoli said. “What we eat is who we are, in many ways.”

For years, The New School for Public Engagement (NSPE) offered classes in the Food Studies department with an optional minor, listing 19 courses this semester in topics such as culinary criticism, urban agriculture and the food industry. Administrators had been considering expanding the program for years, but had to hold off due to budget concerns. Under the new bachelor’s degree curriculum, students can expect a wider range of topics, with courses such as Urban Food Systems, Social Justice in the Food System and Food Policy, Agribusiness & Finance. “The new curriculum is going to reflect this politically progressive attitude that New School students have,” said Lisa DeBenedittis, associate provost for curriculum and learning.

Administrators are hopeful that a growing student interest in food sustainability, nutrition and sourcing alongside an ever-expanding New York food industry will stimulate interest in studying food as an academic discipline. The program’s website lists food policy research and advocacy, culinary management, public relations and culinary journalism as potential career paths for its graduates. NSPE has an agreement with The International Culinary Center where students can take culinary training courses, receiving both transfer credits and giving students the chance to meet and work with professionals in this field. According to the New York City Department of Health, with over 20,000 restaurants catering to NYC residents,  “The faculty hopes that a new major will attract more students to the program and encourage students who are aspiring food writers and restaurant owners to go out and pursue these careers,” said Parasecoli.

THE END OF EDUCATION (STUDIES)

On February 5, Lang freshman Victoria Santiago opened an email informing her that the major she had been hoping to declare, education studies, would no longer be offered in the future. The decision to discontinue it came as a disappointment to some underclassmen who considered declaring it as a major. “I’m really upset that the administration decided to cancel the major,” she told the Free Press. “I will probably transfer out of The New School now, honestly. My reason for staying was that particular major.” Juniors and seniors who have already declared their major as education studies will be able to graduate with it on their diplomas, but they will be the last students to do so.

Santiago is not the only underclassman who was taken by surprise. Lang freshman Emma Pachecho came to The New School because of her interest in the education studies department, and hopes to one day open her own school with an arts-focused curriculum. “I wanted to learn in a place where my ideas would be heard, and accepted,” she said. “I wanted to learn in an environment like the one I hope to share with my students.” Like Santiago, Pachecho is also considering transferring.

Since it was established in 2010, about 30 students have declared education studies as their major and 13 have graduated thus far. The decision to cut the program started to appear imminent after a failed attempt to find a senior faculty member. According to Lang Dean Stephanie Browner, the decision to eliminate the program also came after consideration of what would be better for the faculty in the department.

Students weren’t thrilled by the administration’s decision not to include their input in the choice to cut their major. “I was shocked,” Pachecho said. “I still don’t know what I want to declare now that it’s gone.”

Dean Browner was apologetic about not including students in the process of eliminating the major but she said she did not want to disrupt the administration’s decision making. “I was eager to speak to students but had to respect the process,” she said, “I’d love to have every major in the book, but administration is not a theoretical project, and we have to make trade-offs; we have to pick and choose.”

Despite frustrations from students, administrators say there has been an ongoing conversation with faculty on of what will happen to the department. Courses in education studies, of which there were seven offered this semester, will continue to be available. Professors Natalia Mehlman-Petrzela and Jaskiran Dhillon will continue teaching and join Lang’s global studies and history departments, respectively. “It is unfortunate this program will no longer exist at Lang, but I am excited to continue to teach courses about the history of education,” Professor Natalia Mehlnam-Petrzela told the Free Press.

In an email, Dean Browner said, “This change has happened in response to new opportunities and while it includes the loss of a program that has widespread respect, it also includes fresh opportunities for education studies professors, their new colleagues, and the programs they are joining.”

NEWS ON JOURNALISM

Originally a concentration tucked within the writing track of Lang’s literary studies department, Journalism will become its own major starting in fall 2014, assuming it makes it through to state certification. Heather Chaplin, Faculty Advisor to The New School Free Press, will be the director of the new Journalism + Design program which is a collaboration between Parsons and Lang.

“I took a look at The New School and it seemed obvious that we could get a world class journalism program using what we have under our own roof,” Chaplin said. While taking advantage of what The New School already has to offer, Chaplin wants to use the school’s location in NYC to bring in practitioners working at the top of their field.

“The curriculum will introduce students to world class journalists, designers, developers and coders,” Chaplin said.

The journalism curriculum is completely reinvented, introducing courses such as News Narrative and Design in The Digital Age, levels one to three. Students will also be able to take a variety of media-specific courses like Interactive Design or Podcasting, in addition to in-depth reporting topics in like politics and food studies, which will vary from semester to semester.

Despite the Journalism program’s expansion, the literary studies department is suffering. Citing higher enrollment numbers in the writing concentration than in literature, the department, two years ago started letting go of part-time faculty in both tracks, according to Literature Professor Nicholas Birns, who was informed last year that he would not be rehired after the fall 2014 semester. “My sense, never officially verified, is that the issue was largely financial,” Professor Birns told the Free Press.

Some students were displeased. “I’m taking his Emerson & Thoreau class this semester, and my personal opinion is that he is one of the best professors I’ve had at Lang and his cut is a huge loss to the New School community,” said Amelia Pang, one of Birns’ students.