An Interdisciplinary Major

Although my college is small, it does have a major in medieval and Renaissance studies. As I'm getting settled in here in my second year, students are increasingly coming to ask me about the major, so I've had to get familiar with its requirements.

And its requirements are a little odd. That may have to do with the program's history--it seems to have been somebody's pet program, years and years ago, before being taken over by a committee. One of the oddities is that students have to jump a bunch of hurdles. They can't simply declare the major, but have to write a proposal explaining their course selections and outlining their capstone project, even though as sophomores they're 12 to 18 months away from doing that capstone project.

The major is also explicitly designed to be interdisciplinary. They have to take medieval-ish courses from at least four disciplines, and can't have too many from any one department. The problem is, we're so small that some of those courses aren't taught very often. It is easy for students to get courses in English and history; the courses in religion and music and art history and philosophy are harder to fit into their schedules.

On the one hand, because prospective majors have to go through some hassles and plan carefully, they tend to be good, organized, and highly motivated. Thumbs up! On the other hand, the difficulty of setting up the major certainly discourages some people, and places a burden on even highly motivated students. There's one student who's taken a slew of courses in history and English lit and a couple in art history. However, s/he still needs a course from a fourth discipline, and fitting it into his/her schedule is being harder than it ought to be. Just how interdisciplinary does this major have to be, anyway? Might it be time to think about revising the major requirements?

Recommendation season

I have had several talks lately with students considering graduate school. All of these students are pretty savvy, and I can tell when I start in with the spiel about the job market, etc., that this is not the first time they've heard of such a thing. Some of them have decided not to apply for next year, after all.

More awkward is the case of a student applying for a program in Not My Field, who nonetheless asked me for a letter. There is no major in Not My Field here at Small College (I doubt there is at very many small colleges, in fact); student has, I think, a double major in history and Field Related to Not My Field. So I've agreed to write the letter, and I can talk about the student's general intellectual qualities and work ethic, but it's definitely harder to talk with confidence about what the student can contribute to NMF, since I don't know it that well. I also worry that the student is operating at a disadvantage without a major in NMF--the student also seems pretty nervous. So I'll just write the best letter I can, and try to consult with student about a plan B if things don't go as hoped.

Observations of the last three weeks

I am supposed to be grading papers this weekend. But I had my students turn in their papers via an online system, which appears to be down.

Several of my advisees are lovely, poised individuals who have been a breeze to advise. Others have mysteriously vanished and missed key moments of the registration process.

My students have all been sick, and I fear I'm only narrowly avoiding getting sick myself.

Next week my file comes up for reappointment review.

More later.

I'm back from my research trip, and back at work. It's vaguely surreal to be back in the office and classroom.

Also, I am advising, and some of students have proposed schedules that are sadly delusional. No, you should not sign up for multivariable calculus if you have only taken high school algebra II.

End of the week

Well, it was less "easing in" than I'd hoped. The processing and welcoming of new students (and bidding farewell to their parents) went off fine, but registering the new students teetered on the brink of disaster all week. Our online registration system is clunky and difficult at the best of times, and this time it kept refusing to recognize new students as first-years, which meant it wouldn't register them for their required first-year courses. Argh. It is not a good thing when your college's registrar has to send emails titled "Don't panic!" in the middle of registration. I had enough to do trying to keep track of my advisees' interests, AP credits, and the like, without also having to fight the software.

On the other hand, the prospect of starting class on Monday does indeed seem like a breeze, in contrast.

Easing in

Class doesn't start for me until next week, but I'm going to have to be on campus every day this week. Faculty at SLAC are expected to attend opening receptions and new student orientation activities--we all got recruited to either lead a discussion on the campus's common reading or give a mini-lecture that gives them a taste of teaching. As a new advisor, I have an advising workshop to go to, and then I need to meet with my crew of new advisees and get them registered for fall classes.

This is maybe more involvement with new-student stuff than faculty have at larger institutions, no? But this is part of the atmosphere SLAC sells itself on. I'm actually hopeful that it will be a good way to get myself more used to a structured routine. I have been spending the summer sleeping late and having very unstructured time, and I need to get used to getting up earlier and paying attention to what time it is.