Fast-track degrees up for final vote

By Jeffrey Christian
The Collegian

Fresno State students could have new major choices next fall after the California State University Board of Trustees approved fast-tracking two new bachelor programs.

The new bachelor programs for cognitive science and environmental science must now await final approval from the California Postsecondary Education System before they can be put in the 2007 catalogue.

The new environmental science program will complement the existing joint bachelor program with UC Riverside.

“There are about 20 majors in the program right now and it is the first joint program at the undergraduate level between a UC and CSU,” Chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences Frederika Harmsen said.

There are currently three emphasis options in the joint program: earth science, behavioral policy and health sciences – which also has an additional three options – and life science.

The new bachelor’s program will create an in-house program with easier admission standards.

To qualify for the joint program, students must meet UC admission requirements – a 3.2 grade point average – and must also be willing to spend two academic quarters on the UC Riverside campus.

The new environmental science bachelor program will have a lower 2.5 grade point average requirement and will open the major to students who weren’t able to study away from Fresno for two quarters.

While the environmental science program currently has about 20 students, Harmsen anticipates that the new bachelor program will be slightly more popular.

“Eventually we think that the in-house environmental science degree might have 30 to 50 students in the major,” Harmsen said.

There are several different career paths for students working on bachelor degrees in environmental science, including environmental toxicology, soil science, environmental management policy and ecology.

Cognitive science, which just recently became available as a minor, ties together different aspects of philosophy, psychology, computer science and linguistics.

“We actually envisioned a major before a minor, but it’s much quicker to get the paperwork through for a minor,” Michael Wolf said, the cognitive science program coordinator.

According to Wolf, the cognitive science program doesn’t fit the traditional idea of a department because it truly is a multidisciplinary program. The new cognitive science bachelor’s program will allow students to take a couple of core cognitive science classes in addition to specific classes in areas of linguistics, computer science and philosophy.

According to Wolf, cognitive science is an academic field that offers students immediate entry into career fields such as research, information technology, clinical pathology and law enforcement.

“Anything where you need some sense of how a machine can work together with the way that someone actually thinks; cognitive science is an invaluable degree,” Wolf said.

Discussion for the creation of the program began in late 2003, but formal talks didn’t start until the following year. Wolf said the secret to successfully creating the new program was to utilize classes that were already in the catalogue and maximize resources.
“It was very clear in our minds that there was no way that we could ask for $10 million, a new building and to put in a supercollider for the heck of it. We realized if we were going to do it, it was going to have to be something where we took existing resources and made better use of them,” Wolf said.
Although there are only a small number of students currently studying cognitive science as a minor and only another 20 students anticipated once the new bachelor’s program is created, their enthusiasm and interest in the field more than makes up for their small stature.

“Students who get into cognitive science are usually the ones who have an itch for it,” Wolf said. “If we could consistently have a devoted group of 15 to 20 students who we couldn’t chase out of our offices and who had an itch for it, then let’s just say we’d be the happiest clams in the ocean.”

Comment on this story in the News forum >>