The Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) this semester relaunched the Urban Studies minor, which was previously housed in the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies (CIS).
According to Professor of UEP and Urban Studies Minor Program Coordinator Weiping Wu, UEP, which offers two graduate programs, took the initiative to re?launch the minor program in order to reach out to undergraduates.
"We basically felt that given how closely our master's program matches the undergraduate minor, we put in a little bit more effort to get students into this field," Wu said.
"If you have a department that can house a degree program or even a minor program, it's always better for the students," she added.
CIS, which administers four of the university's academic programs and is affiliated with 20 other interdisciplinary studies programs, was unable to give the Urban Studies minor enough resources and attention, Wu explained.
"It makes sense to house Urban Studies in a setting as close to its core knowledge base as possible," Assistant Professor of Sociology Ryan Centner told the Daily in an email.
The minor has kept the same format it had while within CIS, requiring students to take five courses from at least three of the following departments: Anthropology, Art History, Child Development, Community Health, Economics, Education, History, Sociology, Political Science and UEP.
UEP wanted to preserve the traditional interdisciplinary structure of the minor, Wu said.
"We want to keep that tradition so that our students are exposed to discussions of urban issues from anthropology or even history, from humanities to social science," she said.
"Cities are the most complex, multifaceted and inspiring yet disheartening human creations of all time," Centner said. "Even beginning to deal with them sensibly and creatively necessitates some dexterity across fields of knowledge."
Robert Joseph, a freshman who is pursuing a minor in Urban Studies, enjoys the program because of its interdepartmental design.
"It's incredibly interdisciplinary," Joseph said. "That's one of the things I like about urban studies. I think it covers a lot of different things."
Chase Maxwell, a junior, said he became interested in Urban Studies after taking advantage of some of the UEP courses available to undergraduates and only declared his minor in Urban Studies after the program was relaunched by the department this semester
The main benefits in grounding the minor program in UEP are the affiliation with a specific department and the opportunity to work with faculty, Maxwell explained.
The minor also requires students to complete a capstone project in collaboration with two faculty members from any of the departments that list courses for the minor. One of the faculty members must agree to work with the student as the project director, according to the UEP website.
The project can take a variety of forms including a thesis, a comprehensive research paper or a visual presentation, Wu said.
Both Maxwell and Joseph expressed interest in the possibility of an Urban Studies major program being offered in the future.
"I just hope that the [minor] program has a lot of opportunities to work with faculty, and they do end up eventually planning the [major] program, even if it's not in my lifetime at Tufts," Joseph said.
The current goal is to spread awareness about the minor and build up the program from two students last year to at least four or five students this year, Wu said.
According to Centner, there is strong student interest for the program and it is just a matter of establishing unified faculty support for the program outside of UEP.
"Now that Professor Weiping Wu has reached out to urban faculty and worked cooperatively to flesh out [and] move forward with an enhanced program, we have the potential to really make something impressive out of Urban Studies at Tufts," Centner said. "Now, the challenge for Wu and her successors is to make sure Urban Studies garners more faculty, connects with similar initiatives at Boston?area institutions and develops crosscutting relationships with other programs here at Tufts."
