Introduction of new minors echo many students’ wishes

Haley Hodges Staff Writer haley.hodges@drake.edu

Starting next semester, Drake University will be offering minors in six languages, upgrade its concentrations in East Asian or Latin American Studies to minors and a new curriculum for international relations majors’.

Previously, Drake had only offered a minor in Spanish and a certificate for other languages. Now, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese language minors will be available beginning in the fall of 2017.

The changes were presented in a joint informational session on Friday, Feb. 24 and drew a group of about a dozen people.

“I want to go into Embassy work, and to be able to at least know about the culture and know the language (would) be a step up,” said Darby Matt, a sophomore studying International Relations and Law, Politics and Society who is now interested in pursuing an

Arabic minor. “(Arabic) seems really pertinent to the global climate. It’s all over the news, so I figured it was a good job field.”

“A lot of students said they wanted a minor on their transcript, not a concentration, and certainly not a certificate,” said professor Marc Pinheiro-Cadd, director of World Languages and Cultures.

“We knew students wanted minors and we know that the word ‘concentration’ is not used consistently across the campus ... Students don’t know what a concentration really is, so we wanted to do something that not only students clearly understand but also something that prospective grad schools and employers would clearly understand.”

Pinheiro-Cadd said that, in one of his previous capstone classes, his students had looked at competing universities and found that they offered language minors and majors and believed Drake should as well.

“We knew that we were not competing as well with prospective students and I consulted with the office of admissions and we agreed that it may not change somebody’s mind to come to Drake but ... it might be the thing that sways them,” Pinheiro-Cadd said. “A place like Drake should have language minors and it should have majors too and we’re working toward a Spanish major.” Currently, the Spanish minor has over a hundred students, so Pinherio-Cadd said he believed the interest was there.

Pinheiro-Cadd said that Drake had previously had a language program offering more options, but it was disbanded, resulting in several tenured professors losing their jobs. In accordance with a regulation, a similar program could not be introduced for at least three years following the old program’s end.

Drake then created a different program, which PinherioCadd became the director of in 2009, and started to rework the program to be more inclusive to all languages. Along with the new language minors, the international relations (IR) major has developed a new curriculum that will be in effect in the fall.

Much like the language minors, students currently enrolled in the programs will have the option to switch to the new curriculum or to finish out their current programs.

Professor Mary McCarthy, the chair of the international relations committee in the political science department, said that the programs often overlap.

“We happened to change at the same time, but we did consult with each other. One of the exciting things about the new minors in world languages and cultures is that you can easily pair a world languages and culture minor, (with) language or area studies, with an IR major,” McCarthy said. “You can be an international relations major with an East Asian studies minor or an international relations major with a French minor. I think that this is a way to really bolster the expertise of our students.”

International relations minors were already required to take two years of a language. The combination of both is common and practical.

In reworking the international relations minor, McCarthy said the goals were to provide a more comprehensive and relevant curriculum for a changing field.

“We have spent the last few years thinking about how the needs of our students would be best met by the requirements,” McCarthy said. “We feel that we want to increase the political science core of the international relations major and also increase the exposure of international law and international security.”

The new curriculum will be offered at the beginning of next semester.

Information about the new curriculum for both the new international relations requirements and the language and culture minors are available at http://www.drake.edu/wlc/ languagestudy/.