New degree offerings provide optimal options

William Farrell teaches criminal justice courses on the IU Southeast campus. A bachelor of science degree in the discipline is one of several new four-year programs available to IU Southeast students in the southern Indiana/Greater Louisville area.

The best feature about the additional degrees is that the university has added them while primarily utilizing existing resources and classes that were already offered, said Gilbert Atnip, vice chancellor for academic affairs.

“We tried to be sensitive to student demands while building on existing resources to create new options for them,” Atnip said.

The newest degree program, which was approved by the Higher Education Commission in December, is the offering of a bachelor of fine arts degree. While IU Southeast already had offered the bachelor of arts degree in fine arts, the B.F.A. will be more concentrated in art, Atnip explained, whereas the B.A. in fine arts requires more general education courses. A more selective program, the B.F.A. degree will be limited to 40 qualifying students.

Atnip said plans are in the works to make the new degree available next fall.

Two new bachelor’s degrees became available this fall, one in journalism, the other in criminal justice. Courses in these areas had been offered for some time.

For a number of years, the campus also has offered the associate of science degree in journalism. But students over time have expressed an interest in a four-year program to make them more marketable, said Jim St. Clair, associate professor of journalism and coordinator of the degree at IU Southeast.

Sensitivity to those demands led to a four-year effort to gain approval by the Indiana Higher Education Commission of the bachelor of arts degree in journalism. St. Clair said that the core journalism courses already had been offered for the associate’s track. The primary change will be for students to take more of the general education courses required to earn the bachelor’s degree.

Adding the four-year program was good news to working journalist Jason Hancock, who is attending IU Southeast while maintaining a full-time staff position with the New Albany Tribune.

“I was very excited,” Hancock said. “I don’t think I’d be able to advance very far with an associate’s degree.”

St. Clair said that in today’s job force even small dailies require writers to possess a bachelor’s degree. “This makes our students more competitive,” he said.

Criminal justice is another area where courses had been offered without the availability of a degree. For the first time this fall, students were able to work toward a bachelor of science degree in criminal justice.

In student surveys conducted by the Office of Admissions, more had inquired about this degree than any other, said Atnip. “It’s off to a very good start—50 students have declared it as a major.”

Other four-year degrees added by IU Southeast since 2001 include:

• Bachelor of arts in an individualized major which requires faculty supervision and allows students to tailor their major to areas that aren’t currently offered by the university;

• Bachelor of science in chemistry, mathematics or biology, which concentrates coursework more heavily than the bachelor of arts in the chosen area of study; and

• Bachelor of arts in international studies will be implemented next fall and will make use of existing studies, with overseas study strongly encouraged.