Secondary Field Proposals Flood In

In an attempt to approve as many secondary field proposals as possible in time for spring shopping period, administrators recently extended the submission deadline to Nov. 6.

As of yesterday, the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) had received more than 20 secondary field proposals.

Assistant Dean of the College Stephanie H. Kenen, who has been coordinating the approval process, said she knew of at least a dozen other departments currently “thinking about or working on” secondary fields.

Kenen stressed the importance of considering proposals this fall in order to provide as many seniors as possible with the opportunity to graduate with a secondary field on their transcripts.

“The aim right now is to post information on as many approved secondary fields as possible before shopping period in the spring term,” Kenen wrote in an e-mail.

If a department misses the fall deadline, it will likely have to wait until after Feb. 15 for consideration in the spring.

Sixteen departments have already submitted secondary proposals to the EPC; astronomy, Celtic languages and literature, classics, English and American literature and language, engineering and applied sciences, folklore and mythology, Near Eastern languages and civilizations, government, history, linguistics, math, organismic and evolutionary biology, philosophy, Sanskrit and Indian studies, Slavic languages and literatures, and visual and environmental studies, according to Kenen.

Several of these departments plan to offer more than one secondary field.

For example, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures submitted a proposal suggesting two separate tracks, one in Russian studies and one in Central European studies, according to Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities Justin M. Weir.

The EPC has also received proposals that are not directly affiliated with specific departments; some professors, for example, have submitted a proposal for an interdisciplinary secondary field in health policy.

The deadline delay did not encourage all departments to submit secondary field proposals this fall, however.

The Department of Economics, for example, still plans to meet in late November to discuss secondary fields, and it will not submit a proposal until the spring deadline, if at all.

“Our informal sense is that there is considerable potential demand for a secondary field in economics, but we want to make sure we make an informed and responsible decision,” Professor of Economics James H. Stock wrote in an e-mail.

The EPC, which has already met twice this semester to discuss secondary field proposals, expects to post the first approved secondary fields to secondaryfields.fas.harvard.edu soon after Nov. 6.

The EPC has discussed eight of the submitted proposals thus far, all of which require some follow-up, according to Kenen. “For some, we just need a bit of additional information; others might require some revisions,” Kenen wrote.

Administrators are currently ironing out the details of how the Registrar’s office will track students’ secondary fields.

“Implementing a new curricular initiative from scratch involves many background details that students don’t think about (nor should they have to),” Kenen wrote. “The time-frame for the implementation of secondary fields is actually going quite well, even though it may not seem that way from the perspective of students who are eager to get started on their studies in a secondary field.”

—Lois E. Beckett contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Johannah S. Cornblatt can be reached at jcornbl@fas.harvard.edu.