The Environmental Studies department and the Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies department will undergo curriculum changes this year that the Educational Policy and Governance Committee (EPAG) recommended and the faculty approved in May.

The Environmental Studies department will maintain its status as an interdisciplinary department and will hire two full-time faculty members, both of whom will start in Fall ’05. The Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies department has created a Media Studies minor and undergone a name change from Humanities and Cultural Studies.

The committee’s recommendation for the Environmental Studies department came more than a year after the approval of a new academic structure put the department’s future in jeopardy.

In February 2003, EPAG approved the new structure, which requires interdisciplinary departments to have at least two full-time faculty members. Since the Environmental Studies department previously had only one core faculty member, it was necessary for EPAG to review the department under the new policy. Under the new rules, EPAG had to either authorize the department to hire an additional faculty member, disband the department entirely, or house the department within another department.

Last fall, Environmental Studies Professor and Acting Director of the department Brett Smith submitted a proposal to EPAG explaining why Environmental Studies deserved an additional faculty member.

“Our feeling was that it is a truly interdisciplinary program and that it would violate the principle of Environmental Studies to say it was a sub-set of any other discipline,” Smith said.

According to Smith, the department is now looking to hire a public policy expert and an environmental historian to expand the course offerings beyond the environmental science courses currently offered by professors from other departments. “We strongly believe that you need to have [the sciences, social sciences and humanities] all represented in order to solve environmental problems,” he said.

Smith hopes the hires will be an asset to the entire college, as they will add an environmental dimension to the political science and history departments.

Smith, who has a temporary position in the department, said it is not yet clear what his role will be but that he will not be one of the two full-time faculty members.

He said that the search committee has been formed and that candidates for the positions are expected to be on campus in October and November for interviews and public presentations.

Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies

Clay Steinman, the chair of the newly christened Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies department, said that the most popular concentration within the Humanities and Cultural Studies major is film and media. This popularity, in addition to student discontent with the inability to have a major or minor with “media” in the title, led to the creation of the Media Studies minor.

For the minor, students will be required to take Media Institutions, plus four other courses of which only one may be in film studies.

Humanities and Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary department, so its Media Studies offerings will cover a wide variety of issues by drawing on classes from departments such as International Studies and Hispanic Studies. Whereas many other colleges have Media Studies programs that focus on production, Macalester’s program is heavily academic with a concentration on media criticism and analysis. “We offer one of the top media studies programs at a liberal arts college in the nation—I’m just thrilled with our program,” Steinman said.

In one of the many curriculum changes last year, the faculty voted to dissolve the Communication and Media Studies department. Professors Leola Johnson and Steinman moved into Humanities and Cultural Studies, and Professor Adrienne Christensen is now housed in the Political Science department.

Last year’s curriculum issues included an extensive debate over the future of the Russian department, which culminated with a faculty vote to keep the department. Urban Studies became a concentration within Geography, and Latin American Studies and Spanish combined to form Hispanic Studies.