Spanish department faces declining numbers
With the spring trimester underway, Northwest Missouri State University is gearing up for curriculum changes in the fall.
In a December Board of Regents meeting, several changes were made, including adding seven new courses and revising a degree program.
In the College of Arts & Sciences, the English & Modern Languages department approved a multi-action proposal to remove the study abroad requirement from the Spanish major.
Michael Hobbs, department chair, said recruitment has become more difficult because students indicate they believe they cannot afford to travel abroad.
“They think study abroad will be prohibitively expensive,” he said. “That’s not the case, but if you believe that, that will definitely affect the way you choose a major.”
The requirement was put into place in 2012, and enrollment has decreased from 51 in 2012 to 20 in 2014.
“It was evident our major was declining,” he said. “We were convinced from anecdotal evidence that the requirement was decreasing our number of majors. It got low enough that we thought we would be in trouble if we didn’t raise our numbers. That’s why we decided to delete study abroad as a requirement.”
Hobbs said he was receiving numerous reports from faculty saying students balk at the idea of having to do study abroad.
“Just having that bit of evidence in hand,” he said, “they were convinced this was causing trouble with our enrollment and recruitment.”
The requirement was put in place originally because faculty believed it would be nice to require students to study abroad, Hobbs said.
“It’s not a bad idea,” he said. “The idea of studying abroad is awesome, but the idea of losing a Spanish major because you’re requiring something people believe they can’t do is not a good thing. We don’t want to not be able to have a Spanish major, so it was either have a study abroad requirement or try to maintain our major by getting rid of that requirement. We’re pretty sure it will make our numbers go back up.”
However, study abroad is still available as an elective.
“We’re doing everything to encourage our Spanish majors to do study abroad,” Hobbs said, “but it came to the point where we were deciding between requiring study abroad or having a Spanish major at all. It would be best to remove the element and maintain our major for the sake of our department and university.”
As a result, the total hours required for the Spanish majors will decrease from 37 hours to 34 hours.
“None of us liked the idea of taking study abroad out since we value highly study abroad as an experience,” Hobbs said. “We would love to see everyone be able to do that, but we also believe this will help us recruit majors and retain our Spanish major. If we lost our Spanish major, that would be a big negative for the campus. We think this is a good thing and will help us recruit more students into our major.”
Additionally, several other departments have made curriculum revisions. Humanities & Social Sciences passed a multi-action proposal to create a new course for the graduate program in history in addition to adding one hour to the “thesis” requirement. Raising the requirement from 5 to 6 hours allows students to qualify as full-time and be eligible for graduate assistantships and financial aid. The graduate program also added a course in “advanced historical writing.”
With the College of Education and Human Services, the Behavioral Sciences Department passed a multiple action proposal to create a master’s program in Sport and Exercise Psychology.
Northwest Provost Timothy Mottet said there are no peer institutions offering similar programs.
According to the Association of Sports Psychology, there is an anticipated increase in occupations in this field, and those occupations are expected to grow rapidly.
Completion of the program will allow students to apply for Sport Psychology Consultant Certification through the Association for Advanced Sport Psychology.
This new requirement allowed for the creation of four new courses, including “sport and exercise psychology,” “advanced sport and exercise psychology,” “professional ethics and standards in sport and exercise psychology” and “practicum in sport and exercise psychology.”
Forty-five total hours are required for the program.
