Slavic Dept. Drops 'Rigid' Requirements

Correction appended.

The department of Slavic languages is working to increase interest through new changes to its major and concentration requirements.

Students within the department will no longer be required to write a senior thesis and the language requirement will be reduced from four years to three. The department will also increase its offerings, adding a third major and three new concentrations on top of the previously existing two. These changes are in effect for the upcoming fall registration for all except rising seniors.

Professor Valentina Izmirlieva said that, in her three years as director of undergraduate studies in the Slavic department, she kept noticing how current Russian majors struggled to work with requirements that she called "rigid" and said she believed they accounted for the relatively low interest in the department. This year, just 10 students will graduate from the department. "We expect these numbers to double in the next five years, given the many new options that we offer with the new program," Izmirlieva said.

The faculty began seriously discussing revisions to the program last year. Within seven months, they had drafted the final proposal which was recently approved by the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee.

In the previous system, students could receive majors or concentrations in Russian language and literature or Russian regional studies. Each required that students take four years of Russian language, leaving students little breathing room to decide if they want to major in Russian after their first year.

"We're offering a lot of interesting courses in translation that attracted a lot of students from other departments, but they had to be taken as extracurricular courses because they didn't count for the Russian major requirements," professor Izmirlieva said.

The reforms have, for the first time at Columbia, created a concentration that requires no knowledge of the Russian language at all-ideal for the "Dostoevsky buffs or Nabokov buffs," who want to pursue their appreciation of Russian culture without the hurdle of learning the Russian language, Izmirlieva said.

"We hope to attract the kind of student who wouldn't normally come to a Slavic open house," she said.

The reforms also crate more flexible policies towards elective classes so that students don't have to take the same seven required courses.

The new Russian language and culture major-the only one to still require four years of language classes-is aimed at students who are looking to attain maximal proficiency in Russian, while the Russian literature and culture major is directed at those who plan to pursue an academic career in the Slavic field.

The Slavic studies major is the most flexible major of the three, with many opportunities for interdisciplinary studies within the Slavic field. Students can either focus on a particular Slavic (non-Russian) literature and culture or do a comparative study of several Slavic literatures. This major also allows for a disciplinary focus in the various fields of history, political science, art, economics, religion, music, or others.

Bradley Jenson, CC '07 and a Russian regional studies major with an economics discipline, said he thinks the changes are a good move. "It would've made my life a lot easier," he said. Jenson went abroad during his junior year and found it tedious getting all the courses he took in Moscow to count for his major because of the strict requirements.

"They've given more electives and loosened up some requirements. Students in their second year still have time to get a major in the Russian department," Jenson said. "I really don't see any drawbacks."

Professor Izmirlieva noted that sophomores who had met with her after recently declaring their majors seemed excited about the changes. "They've signed up for something much more rigid than what we have now," she explained. "If anything, it [the changes] will make their lives easier and more interesting."

CORRECTION: The original version of this article misspelled the name of professor Valentina Izmirlieva.