Long effort results in new minors

By Jessica Vosgerchian
Daily Staff Reporter  On  October 24th, 2007

After years of lobbying by a Residential College alum, LSA Student Government and Chemistry Department professors, LSA has begun offering six new academic minors. Five of the majors are in chemistry-related fields. The other is the University's first peace studies concentration.

Peace and Social Justice, offered through the Residential College and open to all LSA students except RC Social Science concentrators, incorporates courses from several fields, including environmental studies and political science, that deal with social inequality and resolving conflicts.

The minors created in the Chemistry Department - chemistry, biochemistry, chemical physics, chemical measurement science and polymer chemistry - are the first minors offered in the field. The minors are not open to students already concentrating in chemistry and biochemistry concentrations.

The Peace and Social Justice minor is the result of two years of campaigning by Residential College alum Will Travers and members of LSA Student Government.

Travers began pushing for the creation of the minor in 2005. His goal was to establish the minor at the University as part of the senior project he developed for his Individualized Concentration Program degree revolving around peace studies.

Travers said he wanted to continue pursuing peace education after transferring from Wayne State University, which allows students to major in Peace and Conflict Studies, but only if they also major in any other subject.

"I had just transferred from Wayne State and they had one over there, so it was kind of surprising that Michigan didn't," he said. "The type of people who go to Michigan, it's right up their alley."

Several other colleges, including the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University, have peace studies programs.

Travers worked with RC Lecturer Helen Fox, who advised Travers's individual concentration and now directs the minor, to find professors and courses dealing with conflict resolution or social discrimination.

Andrew Yahkind, former president of LSA-SG, said he heard about a meeting Travers was holding to present his research on peace studies majors at other schools. After attending, Yahkind decided to include the proposal in LSA-SG's campaign for the creation of minors - such as the international relations program - across LSA.

"(Travers) had done everything we would have done in researching the proposal," Yahkind said. "It was really about getting the ball rolling with the administration using LSA-SG's contacts."

Yahkind said the Peace and Social Justice minor's two-year development process was short compared to the time it generally takes the University to implement new academic programs.

"The wheels of academic reform turn very slowly at the University," he said. "Michigan always tends to look to see what other schools are doing instead of taking initiative."

Brian Coppola, associate chair for curriculum and faculty affairs in the chemistry department, said faculty in the department had considered creating several minors for years but just recently started to pursue it - a move many chemistry departments at other colleges made long before, he said.

"The honest answer is we're probably five or six years overdue in doing it," Coppola said. "It finally made it to the top of the agenda."

Coppola said the department delayed developing a minor program because the field of chemistry seemed too broad a subject to be contained in the smaller course requirement for minoring. Creating several minors was the answer to that, he said.

"We (the Chemistry Department) were locked into the idea that one size fits all," he said. "What broke the log jam in our thinking was the idea that the minors could represent different specializations."

Coppola expects the minors will be attractive options for pre-med students who want to diversify their medical school applications by majoring in liberal arts with a chemistry minor.

LSA freshman Abby Anderson said she plans on majoring in chemistry and then applying to medical school. But she said the minors are an appealing option if she decides to concentrate in another subject.

"If I decide not to major in chemistry, I'd definitely minor in it," Anderson said.

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