Feasibility Review Template

UCC document 10/30/2018

The first step in program revision is feasibility review, a process through which the UCC assists proposing faculty members
in evaluating the strategic implications of their proposals.

Please use the questions on this template to guide discussions within your department or program and develop your
reasons, goals, and justifications for the proposed changes.

Type the requested information directly into this document, leaving all prompts and questions. Please try to keep the entire
document to no more than 5 pages; you may find it useful to include links to materials available online.

Attach the resulting document and a pro forma budget to an email directed to the Chair of the UCC.

For ideas in their early stages, ask the UCC to include your plans in a charrette to brainstorm possibilities more informally.

What is being proposed? Emergent Studies Major

New program_X_ Change to existing program__ (Place ‘X’ after one)

Degree_X_ Certificate__ Minor__ (Place ‘X’ after one)

Title of program: Emergent Studies__

If program currently exists, what is its 4-letter Banner code:

Proposing Faculty Member (PFM): Lauren Beck

Custodial Department: College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Office

Custodial College: College of Arts & Sciences

1. List the reasons this creation and/or change of the program is being proposed.

The Emergent Studies program will allow students to create their own multidisciplinary major.

The program is designed to meet the needs of three distinct populations of students:
1) Self-directed students interested in problems and careers that require multiple disciplines and blended
thinking.
2) Undecided students who benefit from active advising, self-development, and strong exposure to many
fields to make informed decisions about their future course of study.
3) UNH students looking to graduate where there are difficulties completing the major or where it is not a
match for their current career and life goals. These students could modify their existing major, taking
advantage of skills they have already acquired, and graduate.

This program will contribute strongly to recruitment, retention, and graduation. Graduates will have the
adaptability and self-direction to do well in a range of future employments.

2. List the program’s goals and student learning objectives that identify the competencies at graduation.
Competencies can include interpersonal and technical skills.
 Goals:
 Develop self-aware and self-reflective decision makers.
 Provide graduates with a professional passport of soft skills including:
o Critical thinking
o Methods of disciplinary analysis
o World and cultural awareness
o Corporate team skills
o Capacities for discourse, discovery, creative practice, and collaborative experiences
 Provide a path of close faculty support through onboarding, the first-year experience, and the transition to
self-created or existing major study.
 Facilitate the exploration of emerging career pathways

Objectives: By graduation, students will be able to do the following:

 Analyze complex problems with multiple disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, effectively
describing problems, analyses, and solutions in written and oral form.
 Analyze their own individuality, personal strengths and interests, and articulate plans to connect those
qualities with short-term career plans and lifelong habits of mind.
 Complete and present a self-designed capstone project that shows disciplinary thinking from two or more
disciplines and evidence of the student’s own creativity.

3. Describe likely impact of the program on the graduates’ career opportunities five to ten years following graduation.
Include any eligibility for certification or other credentialing likely to be available to graduates.

Complex problems require solutions that involve a wide range of disciplinary knowledge in the humanities,
sciences, and arts, as well as thinkers that can work as part of interdisciplinary teams. Examples include
sustainability, climate change, automation, and technology, and this program will provide students with the
opportunity to develop the knowledge and interdisciplinary mindset needed to contribute to some of these most
pressing issues.

Further, part of the mission of the University is to produce graduates who are prepared for not just their first jobs,
but for the rest of their lives. College graduates now change jobs on average within five years of graduation. The
average employee now changes careers five times in the course of working life. Further, employers are actively
seeking employees with broad skills sets in critical thinking, communications, and the humanities. The
interdisciplinary program will prepare students to become adaptive self-learners and flexible thinkers. The
employment outcomes are strong post-graduation; for example, Colby College’s self-designed major program touts
that 100% of their majors were employed or in grad school within 6 months of graduation, and Hanover College
comes in at 99% after 7 months of graduation.

Some examples of self-designed majors that have been created at other universities include Environmental
Chemistry, Language and Development in Children, Geo-Science Journalism, Sustainable Agriculture Education,
Neuroscience, Political Philosophy & Ethics, and Global Health Education.

4. Provide the evidence that supports your responses to item 3. This can come from advisory boards, professional
organizations, accreditation agencies, licensing boards, or employers. This also may include internal UNH
assessment data.

o AAC&U Report on liberal education:

  “When hiring, executives and hiring managers place a high priority on graduates’ demonstrated
proficiency in skills and knowledge that cut across majors, and hiring managers are closely aligned
with executives in the importance that they place on key college learning outcomes.”
 “As noted above, the college learning outcomes that both audiences rate as most important
include oral communication, critical thinking, ethical judgment, working effectively in teams,
written communication, and real-world application of skills and knowledge. This is consistent with
findings from the employer survey that Hart conducted on behalf of AAC&U 2014 (published in
2015).[2] https://www.aacu.org/research/2018-future-of-work

o Employers seek soft skills:

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ddeming/files/deming_socialskills_aug16.pdf

o Humanities and digital skills have application in the tech sector:

https://www.fastcompany.com/40425362/how-a-degree-in-scandinavian-mythology-can-land-you-a-job-
at-one-of-the-biggest-tech-companies

o Interdisciplinary mixtures of humanities and liberal arts with technical skills are shaping the future of hiring:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/anantagarwal/2018/10/02/data-reveals-why-the-soft-in-soft-skills-is-a-
major-misnomer/#3d6af5b66f7b

o Hanover college self-design major outcomes: https://www.hanover.edu/academics/programs/design

o Colby College self-designed major employment outcomes: https://colby-sawyer.edu/self-designed

5. What is the anticipated market for the program? Append any preliminary market research documentation, e.g.,
data from Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, its Occupational Outlook Handbook, the Robert Half
Salary Guide, and relevant professional publications that present trends for supply and demand.

Given the large range of potential majors that students could create under an individualized program, it is difficult
to produce data on individual outcomes, which will depend on the disciplines involved in the program design.
However, each graduate of the program will be emerging from an institution with a strong commitment to
professional preparation, and from a program that recognizes the needs of the larger labor market, regardless of
the student’s disciplinary background. See https://www.aacu.org/research/2018-future-of-work, as well as the
sources in the previous question, which highlight the need for soft skills arising in the humanities, arts, and
sciences, but framed in a professionally oriented context.

Students in individualized majors will leave with strong disciplinary skills in their chosen areas of interest, strong
soft skills, and a broad ability to integrate these varied skillsets in the pursuit of complex problems. This set of
characteristics responds directly to the needs of employers seeking people with strength in “oral communication,
critical thinking, ethical judgment, working effectively in teams, written communication, and real-world application
of skills and knowledge.”

Customizable majors are also showing up in business literature. Forbes’ “20 High-Paying College Majors You’ve
Never Heard Of,” specifically mentions bespoke majors, such as the University of Virginia’s degree in youth and
social innovation. Students who graduate with this degree go on to work in child welfare, educational corporations,
social service agencies, or think tanks. In many ways, this is the value of Emergent Studies—that students have a
wide variety of career options they can pursue—as such, we are able to meet demand for focuses that other
institutions do not offer.
6. List the ways this program directly delivers on our University’s mission, vision and values and those of the custodial
college.

This program is strongly aligned with the university’s mission. The program is by nature student-centered, with an
emphasis on experiential, collaborative, and discovery-based learning. The interdisciplinary nature of this self-
designed major program also explicitly matches the university’s mission to integrate excellence in the liberal arts
with professional education and skills. The university’s vision statement states that we aim to “foster an
educational environment where students benefit by creating, doing, and achieving.” Every step of the Emergent
Studies program, from project development and major proposal to the culminating project, is student-led and
focused on collaborative, hands-on activity.

The College of Arts and Sciences is currently developing a mission statement, supported by ongoing conversations
among the faculty. Core values that have been consistently highlighted by the faculty include the role of the College
in providing a professional passport, the delivery of a strong core curriculum integrated with programs of study,
high-impact practice offerings, and strong advising. Each of these strengths is at the core of Emergent Studies,
which will foster innovation in these areas to develop strategies that can be adopted by other programs in the
college and across campus.

7. Propose a curriculum, listing likely “Major Requirement” courses, identifying those that need to be created, and
those that already exist.

Students will take their first-year courses (UNIV 1141, ENGL 1112/1113/1114, and COMM 1130) as a cohort; this
will not require us to create new courses, but there will be logistics involved in terms of coordinating with the
registrar and directors of these programs to ensure Emergent Studies students are enrolled as groups. The
outcomes of the courses will be the same as the outcomes for non-Emergent studies sections.

In the first year of study, undeclared students in A&S as well as those students wishing to declare into the program
intending to apply into the major will take two prescribed courses per semester.
Semester 1:
 UNIV 1141 will introduce students to academic research, collaborative work, and presentation.
 COMM 1130 will lay the foundation for oral and visual communication tools, skills, and strategies.
 Students will present their culminating projects, which will require them to use skills gleaned from both
courses, in the First-Year Expo.
Semester 2:
 ENGL 1112 will follow from the groundwork established in UNIV 1141 and focus on the production of
written material in a variety of modes and contexts.
 Emergent Studies Seminar (new course) will give students a forum to discuss topics of interest, reinforce
interdisciplinary conversations, and, as the course develops, provide a method for creating and sustaining a
culture of wisdom from cohort to cohort, year to year. All Emergent Studies students will be expected to
participate in the seminar each year they are in the program.

In the second year of study, students will be encouraged to explore the core curriculum. The objectives of the
second year are to reinforce the cohort community with at least one shared course per semester, and to allow
those students interested in applying into the self-designed major in Emergent Studies to develop the necessary
skills.
Semester 1:
 Professional and Academic Methods (described below) building on the first year curriculum.
Semester 2:
  Emergent Studies Seminar
 (for those students intending to continue into the major) Individualized Major Design. Students will apply
to the Emergent Studies program during the semester. Feedback from the oversight committee should
allow time in the class to react to feedback and improve the proposal.

The new courses that need to be created are as follows:

 Professional and Academic Methods – First semester of second year, with two objectives. The course will
extend the existing Digital Humanities course from one to three credits and integrate production (e.g. the
maker space, digital text creation, audio and visual tools) and method (the interplay between disciplines in
complex problems, how to work and design in a team of domain experts).
 Individualized Major Design – second year course leading to the Emergent Studies major. The course
product will be the proposed course of study, including class selections, research question, and advisory
committee.
 Emergent Studies Seminar - Repeatable course intended to present and reinforce interdisciplinary mindset
and methods. Focus on student research and presentations.
 Capstone Project/Colloquium - Development and defense of the final project – the final colloquium will
consist of a presentation and explanation of the student artifact, and a conversation with the advisory
committee.

Major requirement courses:

Students choosing to major in Emergent Studies will, in collaboration with their discipline advisors, construct
coherent programs of study in at least two major topics (for example, biology and art). The courses must be
approved by both the student’s advisory committee and the Emergent Studies oversight committee, which will be
constituted from affiliate faculty.

8. Identify the NSSE High Impact Practices incorporated in the program, with reference to how they will be
identifiable to students (e.g., course titles, program names)

NSSE identifies the following high-impact practices:

 Advising. While not formally listed as a HIP by NSSE, academic advising meets the definitional criteria for a
high-impact practice and is a foundational component of the student’s educational experience. (see
http://apps.nacada.ksu.edu/conferences/ProposalsPHP/uploads/handouts/2017/C072-H02.pdf). Emergent
Studies will develop and promulgate an energetic, active, and appreciate advising model. Advising work will
be done with an eye to providing students guided pathways to a cohesive Core experience and to utilize
collaborative disciplinary expertise in helping students pursue their major interests.
 Learning community or some other formal program where groups of students take two or more classes
together. In the first year of the program, undecided students who have entered as “undeclared” will be
put into a cohort and will go through an exploratory year of study. The undecided cohort will move
together through a carefully designed first year that provides them opportunities to discover what kind of
academic and professional study are appealing to them.
 Faculty-mentored research. Leading to the capstone project will be a relationship with faculty advisors and
research mentors who will mentor and guide the student in the development of their research questions
and the form of the capstone project. This implements faculty-mentored research through the entire
Emergent Studies curriculum.
 Study Abroad. Opportunities for students to participate in study abroad and study away experiences will be
developed by the program, supported by relevant programming.
 Culminating Senior Experience. In their second year, students who are interested in continuing in
Emergent Studies with a self-designed major will take a course in project development during which they
 will design their own course of study, writing a proposal that outlines the courses they will take and the
capstone project they will complete. They will form a project committee consisting of two faculty members
in relevant disciplines and one Emergent Studies affiliate. The proposal with its course of study, major
name, outcomes, and committee, will be reviewed by the Emergent Studies Executive Committee for
approval. In their final year, Emergent Studies students will take a capstone course, in which they will
design their capstone project. All students in the program will leave with an artifact. This artifact should be
loosely understood and could be, for example: digital, physical, community-based, or entrepreneurial.

9. List potential contributors among UNH faculty and departments. Identify the anticipated roles that those
contributors would need to play and to what degree they have agreed to play that role.

A wide range of individual faculty from across the university are expected to participate in advisory capacities for
interested Emergent Studies students – this will be on a voluntary basis. Preliminary meetings and collaborative
conversations reveal a great deal of interest in providing individualized programs of study.

Certain faculty members will be needed to teach the Emergent Studies versions of the first year experience core
courses (UNIV/ENG/COMM). The initial instructors will be members of the design team, including those already
experienced in the leadership of the Common Course (Lauren Beck) and in first year writing (Lauren Beck and Mary
Isbell). Subsequent instructors will apply to be designated affiliate faculty, which will provide a pool of personnel
for course instruction, curriculum design, and oversight.

10. Identify likely needs for new faculty and support personnel, referencing data from your pro forma budget.

We believe that we can achieve the goals of this program with our talented existing faculty; however, the program
will need a coordinator and there will be needs related to advisor training, etc. The coordinator should receive a
stipend and release time (see budget).

11. Identify likely needs for new or modified facilities, technical resources, accreditation costs, and library resources.

Existing facilities and resources are sufficient to serve the Emergent Studies program, which is covered in the
general accreditation. The coordinator should be assigned an office large enough to hold regular meetings with
students, faculty, and the oversight committee.

12. In its evaluation of new programs and program changes, the UCC must be mindful of all programs presently offered
by the university. How does this program relate to other programs?

There is currently no program supporting individualized majors on campus. The previous interdisciplinary degree,
Liberal Studies, is burdened with the conventional perception of such a major as little more than preparation to
teach elementary school. The degree has been removed from the books by the A&S Dean’s Office. Students in
Emergent Studies will be required to take upper division courses in their relevant disciplines, and of course that will
impact those departments. However, as students will design a large range of majors, with a variety of upper
division interests, the impact on individual departments or courses should be minimal.

13. Identify any supportive connections to industry, community, arts organizations, government, or further education
institutions.

We are pursuing a grant that will help support various aspects of the project. The service-learning office will be a
support for students whose capstone projects or major courses may require community partnerships. We hope to
 establish connections to local industry, community, and arts organizations once we have a better sense of the types
of majors students will be creating and how these relationships could support the students’ learning.

14. Identify potential areas for grant-writing, industry support, or other new funding.

We are currently preparing a grant proposal to the Davis Education Foundation. As part of the proposal, we are
requesting start-up funds for release for pilot design, initial assessment design, summer stipends, and professional
development travel to conferences and site visits for existing and aspirational programs.

15. Summarize any input that has been provided by advisory boards (e.g., for a department or college).

One of the first tasks of the Emergent Studies Coordinator will be to establish an advisory board drawn from faculty
with interdisciplinary backgrounds and expertise. The board will develop standards for project approval and
evaluation, in coordination with the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. A liaison from the Undergraduate
Curriculum Committee will sit on the oversight committee responsible for vetting and approving Emergent Studies
individualized programs of study.

16. Which other universities and colleges offer programs that compete (or would compete) with the envisioned new or
changed program, and in what way are they competitive?

Many schools offer interdisciplinary or custom majors in Connecticut and in larger New England. UConn and
Wesleyan, in particular, offer majors that fit that description. However, these programs are typically recruiting the
very top students coming out of high school – there is little access to complex or custom courses of study for
students in the profile that New Haven serves. This program should be a fertile ground for recruiting and teaching a
group of talented, creative, broad-minded students that will not otherwise have access to this type of educational
experience.

We perceive a demand for custom majors and courses of study arising from the educational interests and tastes of
Gen Z students, as well as the particular type of student who was bored by the compartmentalized instruction in
high school and whose grades do not reflect their interests or abilities.

17. Provide details of the University’s ability to recruit to and retain students in this program made by the University
Office of Enrollment Management.

The proposed program will serve as both a recruitment and retention tool.

Providing a cohort-based first year experience will help bring undeclared students into the campus community,
increasing retention. Providing an individualized major will also allow students considering departing the university
due to lack of interest or fatigue in their chosen majors to use that course credit and knowledge in the construction
of a new course of study informed by their existing coursework.

A major concern among University of New Haven undergraduates is academic advising – the Emergent Studies
program will provide undeclared students and Emergent Studies majors with collaborative advising relationships
focused on coherence and student interest, and receptive to student needs.

Individualized majors appeal to a student segment that is currently not being successfully recruited to New Haven –
driven, autodidactic, creative students that don’t want to narrow their studies to a single discipline. This is
particularly true of students who don’t respond to the professional/vocational reputation of many of the
university’s programs.