The Council on Academic Affairs approved a new sociology course, a new anthropology course, and a new psychology course at their meeting Tuesday.

These classes are SOC 4131, Sociology of Poverty and Social Welfare, ANT 3610, Language and Culture and PSY 3518, Psychology of Language Development.

Darren Hendrickson, department chair and professor of sociology, spoke on behalf of the sociology and anthropology courses.

He said sociology professor Michael Gillespie developed SOC 4131.

One of Gillespie’s areas of expertise as a sociologist has been studying poverty.

“The issues and problems of poverty, welfare programs that have been developed to address poverty, and so we’re taking advantage of his expertise with this course,” Hendrickson said.

The course will be of particular interest to the segment of students who are sociology majors interested in careers in social services and social work.

“That kind of fits in with the curriculum,” Hendrickson said.

Hendrickson said the only prerequisite for the class was the introductory course, SOC 1838G.

JaLisa Smith, a senior psychology major, asked if it could be used for the criminology minor.

“As it stand right now, it would not be an option for the criminology minor,” Hendrickson said. “But it would be for the sociology minor.”

Hendrickson said the class could still be of interest for criminology students.

The class was unanimously approved.

Hendrickson presented the proposed ANT 3601 class for Angela Glaros, an anthropology professor, who could not be at the meeting.

“One of her specializations is what we call linguistic anthropology,” he said.

Anthropology as a discipline has four sub-fields: cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archeology and linguistic anthropology.

“We have courses that cover those first three subfields, but nothing currently in the curriculum that deals with linguistic anthropology,” Hendrickson said. “So that fills that gap for students interested in the anthropology minor.”

This class was also unanimously approved.

The next new class the CAA voted on was PSY 3518.

John Mace, professor and department chair of the psychology department, talked to the CAA about this class.

“The general content of this course is language development,” he said.  “It is kind of the crossroads of two specialty areas in psychology.”

These areas were cognitive psychology which studies language and developmental psychology studies the development of language.

“We have been offering it as a special topics course because it’s only been offered online, now we want to make it a regular course as an elective or majors in psychology,” Mace said.

The only pre-requisite class would be the Intro to Psychology class.

Debra Reid, a history professor, pointed out that the course description limited the course to psychology majors and general studies majors.

“Even if there was just a line in the rationale that explained that, but I missed where it’s explained,” Reid said.

Mace said it was not explained in the course description.

He said the communication disorders and sciences department offered a similar course, which is a required course in the major.

“They had concerns that some of their students might take our course and then want to take credit for it,” Mace said. “Or some of the students from might think, ‘oh, I can take the psych version,’ and no, it wouldn’t count and we don’t want to tailor it in such a way that it might count.”

Mace said since the course would be for a psychology audience, the department thought the limitation of the course would be the best way to handle that.

Rebecca Throneburg, a professor of communication disorders and sciences, said there was a large overlap with some of their classes, sometimes over 80 percent.

“We’re going to say you can’t get credit for both CDS 2200, which is basically language development, and language development in psychology,” she said.

The PSY 3518 course was unanimously approved.

The CAA will meet again next Tuesday 2 p.m. in room 4440 of the Booth Library.

 

Cassie Buchman can be reached at 581-2812 or cjbuchman@eiu.edu

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