Prospective government majors from the Class of 2008 will have to keep their eyes open for news this spring as they apply to the major. On Oct. 9, the government department received approval for several changes to its major program. These changes, which include four new requirements regarding minimum acceptable grades, program breadth, and class pacing, will take effect for the Class of 2008 and all succeeding classes.
Many of the changes are part of an effort by the department to discourage students with no intention of completing the major from using government as a second major to gain priority admission to courses. Members of the department said they hope the changes will enhance access to its upper-division courses.
“As of Oct. 1, 82 of our 170 majors are double majors,” said Chair of the Government Department Richard Boyd. “We want to ensure that as many of these double majors as possible have an educationally defensible reason for having two majors, and not just a strategic goal of enhancing their enrollment prospects in our courses.”
No student with a GPA below B+ (88.33) on their entire transcript may declare or maintain a government major if he or she also has another major. Members of the department said the goal is to preserve access to its courses for single majors and double majors who have above-average GPAs.
For breadth across the government concentrations (American politics, comparative politics, international politics and political theory), majors will be required to take at least one upper-division course in three of the four concentrations. To compensate for this new requirement, the minimum number of introductory and upper-division courses required to complete a concentration will be reduced from five to four.
Majors will also now be required to complete stage one of the general education expectations for admission to the major in an effort to increase majors’ scientific and mathematic literacy. Students who are currently enrolled in classes satisfying the expectations at the time of application to the major will be admitted to the major provisionally.
“The great majority of our majors typically satisfy this new requirement anyway and we believe it is educationally desirable for all of our majors to do so,” Boyd said.
To ensure pacing of courses in the major, students who have not completed at least four courses for government credit by the end of their junior year will be required to drop the major.
“They do not represent a radical departure from past practice,” said Professor of Government Peter Rutland of the changes. “Radical measures would have been, for example, a cap on the absolute number of people entering the government major.”
President of the WSA Jesse Watson ’06 said the revisions were short-term solutions that can still be strengthened.
“That misses that part of the population that is serious about being a government major and having another major [but] doesn’t have the grade point average,” Watson said of the minimum GPA requirement for double majors.
Government department faculty members are optimistic about how students will receive the new major program.
“We anticipate that government majors will respond favorably to the new regulations, which, we believe, will improve their ability to enroll in the courses they wish to take, encourage them to experience the joys and challenges of a wider range of sub-disciplines, and assure that they are better prepared than under the current regulations for advanced work in political science,” said Professor of Government James McGuire.
“I don’t think the requirements are significantly ‘heightened,’” Rutland said, noting the reduction of introductory and upper-division courses required to complete a concentration.
The revisions were inspired partly by an external review of the government department by four political science professors from peer institutions, which took place in October 2004. The government department faculty developed the proposed changes in the spring of 2005.
The Educational Policy Committee (EPC), a sub-division of the WSA, approved the changes. The EPC is composed of six faculty members, two voting student members and two additional student members. It addresses academic issues including the review of programs and departments, academic regulations and general academic procedures.
“It’s important to note that the EPC has historically given each department the freedom to shape itself,” said Sam Ruth ’08, student chair of the EPC. “If we didn’t grant this kind of flexibility and self-governance to departments, we might not have creative majors like CSS and COL.”
The last significant revision of the government major occurred in the early 1980’s.
“We have made incremental changes since then,” Boyd said. “We also regard these new requirements as incremental changes.”
An advance notice of the new major regulations is available at the government department’s website, http://www.wesleyan.edu/gov/majoring.html. A final version will be drafted later this semester.
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