Changes are coming for the International Studies program, a major once reserved only to Lincoln Center students. International Studies (IS) allows students to explore the intersections between political theory, culture and global affairs, drawing in over a hundred majors per class. IS at Fordham is an interdisciplinary major, where students are encouraged to pick from a number of regional tracks or a global track, making it an opportunity for students of diverse backgrounds and interests to engage in a variety of academic disciplines.
In the past, Fordham had only offered the IS major to Lincoln Center students, but for many years now, students at Rose Hill have been able to declare the major — although this often required traveling down to Lincoln Center for course requirements. Students entering Fordham at Rose Hill would have to wait until they were on campus before declaring their IS major. However, in the last few years, it has become an increasingly popular major at both campuses, opening up opportunities for students to access their courses on either campus easily. Now, students who are planning to enter Fordham at either campus will be allowed to declare an IS major before they attend.
The biggest changes for the 2023-24 school year are the installation of a Rose Hill International Studies Chair and the re-installment of a student board. In 2021, the department officially applied to be a part of Rose Hill, thereby opening up the ability to install a co-chair for the major. Dr. Ida Bastiaens was named as the Rose Hill Chair, and she is now overseeing all RH International Studies majors while Dr. Sarah Lockhart will now exclusively serve as the advisor for Lincoln Center majors. Lockhart expressed her excitement for the student board’s input, as it will be a good way to gauge both chairs’ and students’ aspirations for the program. When asked what changes they hoped to see in the future, both chairs echoed similar sentiments Bastiaens said:
“I think Dr. Lockhart and I are really trying to modernize the program a bit because it hasn’t gone through an extensive review in some time. We put out applications for a student board so students can help with things like organizing activities and giving input on study abroad. The student board will help with any sort of curricular discussions that we have, so just thinking about ways we can improve the program in terms of being responsive to students.”
Beyond the new installment of a second chair and the student board to give insight are the changes to the senior thesis requirement. Although the thesis is still mandatory for this year’s seniors, the word count has been reduced, hopefully allowing students to focus more on content than stressing over reaching a minimum word count. Lockhart explained that the shortened thesis aims to address a few major problems:
“We were trying to address a couple problems: For one, students being intimidated by the length. We wanted to encourage students to focus on something more narrow, [and] if you have a shorter thesis and it’s good, you can publish it – you will rarely see a journal publish more than 10k words.”
The IS program’s thesis requirement is a single semester course, where students are expected to work with their professor and a chosen thesis advisor to write a comprehensive thesis on any topic of their choice – from international security in Hungary to nightlife culture in Lebanon to French youth radicalization. But the biggest change to the IS major thesis will not begin until the 2024-25 school year when the mandatory thesis requirement will officially become optional. Lockhart explained what went into this change:
“The program committee, with the support of the deans, unanimously agreed to make the thesis optional with the class of 2025. We are still working on the details – what classes will be allowed to substitute for it. The intention is to have a 4000 level class that is related to the student’s track. The idea is that most 4000 classes require a large research paper – we want there to be a research component. In the next month, we are having chair members survey their departments for classes that would be appropriate for it.”
Although this will be a big change, both Lockhart and Bastiaens stressed the importance of a thesis. Students will continue to be encouraged to do the thesis because it builds valuable research skills and can demonstrate to both future employers and graduate schools a high level of competency in important skills. The hope was expressed by both chairs that this change is meant to make students happier and more engaged in their studies, releasing those students who find the thesis more painful than anything from the obligation.
As Bastiaens puts it, the thesis is “Really an opportunity to say, ‘this is really interesting to me’ and dive into it.”
