As a double major, it is incredibly frustrating to see classes for other majors that could be applicable to my degrees in history and government or writing and communication, but there is no way for me to take them.
For context, I want to go into law. The history and government department offers several law-adjacent classes such as Philosophy of Law and Constitutional Law, which I have taken or plan to take.
The Stafford School of Business offers a Business Law class, but as a history and government major, I cannot take the class. I can understand a business major only being allowed to take Business Law and maybe the other two as electives, but why can a history and government major take two law classes but not the other?
It feels like several departments are siloed, or isolated, from one another. We should instead be encouraging students to take courses from various points of campus to gain a more well-rounded education.
With history and government and writing and communication both being interdisciplinary degrees, it is ironic that they are quite isolated from areas that could have similar coursework, such as agricultural communication, business, or agribusiness.
Agricultural communication students have a Layout Design Print Ag and NR class. Instead of learning layout and design in the publishing process class, why can’t there be another, less specialized class for writing and communication students?
There are several holes in the classes students are allowed to take, and I am a firm believer in the fact that, as academics, students can benefit from a more interdisciplinary approach to our education. This approach, however, is only possible by broadening the classes we are allowed to take with our major, and with that, possibly combining classes when possible.
For example, there are two visual rhetoric and design classes: One is marketing, and the other is an English class.
Both classes have the same course descriptions: “A professional writing course covering the basics of visual rhetoric, rhetorical practice, layout, editing, and design of print and online media.”
I cannot wrap my head around why we have two visual rhetoric and design courses that seem to focus on the same topics. If one was geared more towards those interested in marketing and the other for public relations or another field, I could understand the need. However, I don’t understand the need for two upper-level classes with the exact same course format.
There are a few solutions that the entire student body could benefit from, one of the better ones being cross-listing courses. Making specific courses available for more students fosters interdisciplinary learning.
Cross-listing courses would enable students to make what they want out of their major. To thrive as an academic, students deserve an interdisciplinary education.
Another solution could be creating more interdisciplinary majors, minors, and certificates to cover more ground for students that want to take classes they can’t. For example, a “Public Relations” minor could include courses such as: Intro to Public Relations, Visual Rhetoric and Document Design, Photojournalism, and Newswriting.
However, adding a major or minor to an institution is no easy feat because it must have a program map and be approved by the University System of Georgia, among many other steps. ABAC cannot just wake up and decide to create a major.
Although this is a complex issue I have come to realize on campus, there are many reasons I can understand that would validate the courses being the way they are. One of the major issues is class size. If a class were opened to several majors, it would become an issue of the professor’s workload, finding a classroom to accommodate for that many students, and possibly having to make teachers’ assistants more prominent on campus.
The goal of a student’s education should be not to be confined to departmental silos, but instead to integrate different disciplines into their educational journey. This would lead to a richer education that reflects the diversity of the world we live in.