Insufficient advising and limited senior seminar offerings were among complaints raised by international relations concentrators in a survey conducted by the IR Department Undergraduate Group last spring. The program's new director said IR's interdisciplinary status makes increasing course offerings and hiring new faculty difficult but that the sole concentration adviser's new appointment as a full-time assistant director should relieve pressure on advising.
Peter Andreas, an associate professor of political science with a joint appointment at the Watson Institute for International Studies, is now director of the program, replacing Melani Cammett '91, who served as director for one year but is currently pursuing a fellowship at Harvard University. Claudia Elliott PhD'99, the only general concentration adviser for the several hundred IR concentrators, will now serve full-time as faculty lecturer and assistant director of the undergraduate program.
IR concentrators expressed their frustrations with advising in an IR DUG report that compiled feedback from 115 junior and senior IR concentrators in an effort to "generate more accurate information about the state of IR at Brown."
Only 10 percent of the survey's respondents said they considered the guidance they received from concentration advisers "very useful," while 32 percent described it as "somewhat useful" and another 28 percent said it was "occasionally useful."
Elliott said she was devoting "well beyond" the time she was compensated for as an adviser and was holding weekly open office hours to see as many students as possible. "This wasn't reflected in the DUG report," she said.
But this year, Elliott said her new position will allow her to see many more students and to offer more office hours.
"We needed someone who was here with more consistency to deal with a growing student body interested in the study of international relations," she said, noting that the number of concentrators has nearly doubled over the last 10 years.
Andreas said that while he sympathized with the IR DUG's concern, the "sheer size" of the program makes the advising load "a challenge, to say the least."
But Andreas said he thinks IR concentrators' concerns are true of advising at Brown in general.
"By Brown standards, I think the IR program does a reasonably good job with advising. The next step would be to look comparatively," Andreas said.
The DUG report does compare IR advising to two of the University's other largest undergraduate concentrations - biology and history - and highlights IR's comparatively higher student-to-adviser ratio and the limited availability of advisers in the program.
"One of the main frustrations that students had with the advising process was that it was very impersonal," said Michael Boyce '08, a member of the IR DUG executive board. Boyce suggested the program match students with advisers who have similar research interests.
Andreas said this is partially the case with the current system, which assigns students to advisers whose work broadly relates to their selected concentration "track."
Boyce said that while this is a start, it's not sufficient because the four tracks are so wide-ranging. "It doesn't go all the way to ensuring that student-faculty interests are properly matched," he said.
Boyce recommended that the program take steps to "incentivize" advising for faculty, but both Andreas and Elliott said resources for interdisciplinary programs, like the IR concentration, are limited. "We're completely dependent on the rest of the University in terms of providing faculty and courses," Andreas said.
Concentrators surveyed in the DUG report also expressed dissatisfaction with the limited number of senior seminars, urging the program to encourage professors to teach multiple seminar sections and offer research assistants to reduce time demands on professors.
This is easier said than done, Andreas and Elliott said.
Because of the University's departmental system, the graduate school allocates teaching assistants based on the needs of each department - not the needs of interdisciplinary programs like IR. "As a program, sometimes we find ourselves going from department to department, knocking on doors," Elliott said.
Hiring new professors to reduce teaching loads and offer more courses depends on departmental needs, Andreas said, adding that "We don't have any budget to hire new faculty."
Elliot said the heavy teaching load and limited number of courses are "a reality that's on our hands," adding that most seminars are led by visiting scholars.
Andreas said Brown's recent internationalization initiative may bring new faculty and courses. "(It) creates a real opportunity for the IR program," he said.
Boyce said he hopes these efforts will increase the status of Brown's IR program among its peer institutions, and that IR concentrators will be on the "leading edge" of the initiative. "They are, in a lot of ways, the face of Brown in the international community, so in that way they are tremendously important to Brown's international relations efforts," Boyce said of the program's concentrators.
Students can benefit from the University's internationalization initiative through events held at the Watson Institute, Elliott said. "Whatever plans are implemented through the internationalization of Brown are going to filter through the Watson Institute for sure."
Nearly 45 percent of the IR DUG survey respondents reported attending Watson Institute events only once a month, and roughly 30 percent said they rarely or never attend events.
Andreas said he was surprised by these numbers and encouraged concentrators to take advantage of what he called an "under-utilized resource."
