As an exiting senior, I’ve had four years to reflect on the choice of my major. I declared as a Women and Gender Studies major my first year, and I can imagine no other major that could suit me better.
However, I can imagine plenty of ways in which Augustana could have done a better job of making me, along with all other WGST students, and all other students in interdisciplinary fields, feel more like we belonged in this school.
If I could change one thing about Augustana before I left, it would be to improve the way the school supports majors like Women and Gender Studies, Africana Studies, Latin American Studies and Asian Studies. As a WGST major, I can only speak to what I’ve seen in my department, but I know the other fields have similar, if not worse, struggles.
Especially in the wake of President Bahls’ diversity statement, there is no time like the present for Augustana to take some of these suggestions more seriously. It will not be the first time students have made similar demands, as is evidenced by the multiple student protests over the last two years that have included demands similar to what I suggest here.
Faculty can make or break a department. WGST already has some excellent faculty members who teach WGST classes. But every single professor in the department also teaches classes in a different department. This splits their time, energy and attention between these disciplines and between the students in each department who need them, in and out of the classroom.
Most other departments have dedicated tenure-track faculty lines, but not WGST, Latin American Studies, Africana Studies or Asian Studies.
Even if these fields don’t have many student majors, the classes still fill up at rapidly thanks to the school’s system of perspectives. I’ve had trouble getting into 300-level classes I need for my major because students from other fields are trying to get a Diversity perspective or Perspective on the Individual and Society out of the way.
The department has to tack on these prefixes and suffixes to these high-level classes because they have to, but it shouldn’t have to be that way.
If we had more faculty and more funding, these interdisciplinary departments could offer more 100 and 200 level classes that could allow non-majors and minors access to these fields of study for perspectives. It would save the 300 level classes for the majors and minors, so we could get the same challenging, rigorous class experiences that other majors do in their 300-levels.
Smaller departments shouldn’t have to justify their existence constantly to be recognized by the school as valid fields worthy of funding and tenure-line faculty. If Augustana truly values diversity, it will do so by crafting a landscape of faculty, funding and departmental support that will revitalize our academic experience, not continue to re-shape the standard model of a Predominately White Institution.
Even in the face of the looming budget cuts thanks to the mismanagement of Governor Rauner, these small interdisciplinary departments are worth investing in. It is not always convenient or easy to do the right thing, but putting money behind the support of diversity on campus is worth the extra work.